This Second Grader’s Revenge Against Common Core Math Will Make Your Day

The math curriculum used by the school is GO Math! The publisher of GO Math! is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
 
The litany of frighteningly stupid Common Core math worksheets never ends. Perhaps now, though, kids are starting to fight back in satisfyingly creative ways.

An alert reader sent The Daily Caller this image of her seven-year-old son’s perfectly reasonable homework answer. The boy attends a public elementary school in San Jose, Calif. He is in the second grade.
 
The parent who sent the homework question to TheDC noted that the curriculum aligns with the Common Core math standards.

“If you look closely under the math question, you will be able to see the Common Core standards in a blue-colored print that aligns to that particular question,” she explained.

The constantly burgeoning inventory of sad and hideous Common Core math problems is very long.



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How States And School Districts Can Opt Out Of Common Core

States that want to opt out of the Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) and/or the tests aligned to or based on its standards are being threatened by a toothless tiger that doesn’t want the states to know the tiger has no claws.

States are hearing, “It’s too late to back out”; “You’ll waste all the money you’ve spent on implementing the [low-level Common Core] standards your state board of education adopted three years ago”; “You’ll waste all the money you’ve spent on [self-described] Common Core consultants who have given [very costly] professional development to your teachers and told them what to change in their classroom curriculum to address Common Core”; “You will have to pay back all the money you got under Race to the Top (RttT)”; or, “You will lose your waiver and not get your Title I money.”

Can the U.S. Department of Education (USED) demand repayment from states that got RttT funds? Can it withhold Title I money from a state that loses its waiver? It is important to recall that Congress didn’t pass legislation requiring Common Core’s standards or tests. All it authorized in 2001 was a re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) called No Child Left Behind (NCLB). ESEA hasn’t been re-authorized since then, so there are no new or different education policies passed by Congress. A variety of conditions have been attached to the recent waivers issued by USED, but they may have no constitutional legitimacy since Congress didn’t approve them. States can certainly raise that objection.

At the national level:
 
If a state received RttT money and spent it, it most likely doesn’t have to pay it back if it now seeks to opt out of using Common Core’s standards (by any name) and any tests aligned to or based on these standards. Neither the RttT application nor the grant award from USED contained a repayment penalty for withdrawing from a commitment. Moreover, the Grant Award Notification from USED implied withholding of future RttT funds, not repayment of RttT funds already expended.

In other words, there seem to be no likely penalties if a state accepted a USED award of RttT funds and now chooses to withdraw from the agreement. States can justify their withdrawal on the grounds that the Common Core standards do not meet the original requirements of “common standards” outlined in the RttT application. These standards were supposed to be “supported by evidence that they are internationally benchmarked.” But they are not. The Common Core Validation Committee never received any evidence.
Nor has evidence been provided by two post hoc attempts to provide such evidence: the 2011 report by David Conley at the University of Oregon and the 2012 report by William Schmidt and a colleague at Michigan State University, Richard Houang. Conley’s report, funded by the Gates Foundation, contradicted the findings in his 2003 pre-Common Core report on college-readiness standards, while Schmidt and Houang’s report has been severely criticized on methodological grounds. It is unclear who funded it.


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How RIDICULOUSLY HARD Can Common Core Math Make Subtraction?

College students and others at George Mason University were dumbstruck by the tedious nature of an elementary level Common Core problem during a short series of interviews conducted by Campus Reform last week.

The problem, 32-12, was demonstrated to those on campus the traditional way and juxtaposed with the Common Core method.

“That was extra difficult for no reason” one interviewee told Campus Reform.

“Make it simple, cause that’s confusing.

If public schools continue to implement this garbage a lot of parents are going to be looking at private schools!


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The Caleb Bonham Show: Common Core Math on YouTube

Parents Warned: Big Brother Owns Your Children

Several opponents of Common Core have argued the standards set a bar that “dumbs down” what children need to learn, omitting key standards like proficiency in reading, writing, arithmetic, basic historical knowledge and exposure to classic literature.

Sandra Stotsky, professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, actually sat on the Common Core Validation Committee, but eventually refused to validate the standards, because, she said, the math standards fail to prepare students for college-level math classes and the English standards take classic literature study off the rich menu for young minds in favor of more bland and ineffective “informational” texts and disconnected excerpts.

“We are a very naive people,” Stotsky later told Breitbart News. “Everyone was willing to believe that the Common Core standards are ‘rigorous,’ ‘competitive,’ ‘internationally benchmarked’ and ‘research-based.’ They are not.”

In a Wall Street Journal editorial written last month, Stotsky continued, “I know the Common Core buzz words, from ‘deeper learning’ and ‘critical thinking’ to ‘fewer, clearer, and higher standards.’ It all sounds impressive, but I’m worried that the students who study under these standards won’t receive anywhere near the quality of education that children in the U.S. did even a few years ago.”

Others object to the content of Common Core, like shockingly graphic books listed as “exemplars” for study.

Common Core Appendix B, for example, states that “the following text samples primarily serve to exemplify the level of complexity and quality the standards require. … The choices should serve as useful guideposts in helping educators select texts of similar complexity, quality and range for their own classrooms.”

Yet Linda Harvey, founder of Mission: America, revealed at EPC one of the exemplars is Toni Morrison novel “The Bluest Eye,” which is a disturbing tale of a daughter being raped by her father and then being befriended by a pedophile. Even more disturbing, the book portrays the rape scene from the viewpoint of the rapist.

Another exemplar text, listed for ninth graders is “Mother of Monsters,” a story in which a mother displays the virtue of “individuality” by intentionally deforming her own unborn children while pregnant.

Teachers in Newburgh, N.Y., where the Common Core exemplar “Black Swan Green” was scheduled to be used, pushed their district to return 6,000 copies of the book to the publisher, complaining that it contained “passages using inappropriate language and visual imagery that most people would consider pornographic.”

When asked at EPC when it would be time for parents to get outraged over the sexual content of Common Core’s recommended readings, Harvey responded, “It’s time to get angry now. The only thing that’s going to fix this is if dads go to the schoolhouse with pitchforks.”

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Republican Governors And How Can We Fool Them Today About Common Core - Shame On You

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) used an executive order to strip the name “Common Core” from the state’s new math and reading standards for public schools. In the Hawkeye State, the same standards are now called “The Iowa Core.” And in Florida, lawmakers want to delete “Common Core” from official documents and replace it with the cheerier-sounding “Next Generation Sunshine State Standards.”

In the face of growing opposition to the Common Core State Standards — a set of K-12 educational guidelines adopted by most of the country — officials in a handful of states are worried that the brand is already tainted. They’re keeping the standards but slapping on fresh names they hope will have greater public appeal.

At a recent meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers, one of the organizations that helped create the standards, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) urged state education leaders to ditch the “Common Core” name, noting that it had become “toxic.”

“Rebrand it, refocus it, but don’t retreat,” said Huckabee, now the host of a Fox News talk show and a supporter of the standards.

The changes are largely superficial, giving new labels to national standards that are taking hold in classrooms across the country. But the desire to market them differently shows how precarious the push for the Common Core has grown, even though the standards were established by state officials with bipartisan support and quickly earned widespread approval, including the endorsement of the Obama administration.

Supporters say the standards emphasize critical thinking and analytical skills, as opposed to rote learning, and will enable American students to better compete in the global marketplace.


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What’s Wrong With The English Language Arts (ELA) Standards?

According to Dr. Stotsky, an expert on ELA standards, Common Core consists of “empty skill sets . . . [that] weaken the basis of literary and cultural knowledge needed for authentic college coursework.” This means they state what students should be able to do – such as identify the main idea in a piece of writing – but not what they should know – for example, specific works of great writers.

This means that almost anything could qualify for “English language arts” study – even anti-capitalist tracts like Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, or photo essays from a newspaper.

But will Common Core require students to read more complex texts, as claimed? Dr. Stotsky cites a report that assesses the grade levels of some of the books in Common Core’s recommended reading list. According to this study, some of the novels for grades 9/10 in Common Core average about a grade 5 reading level; for grades 11/12, about a grade 8 reading level.

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