The disturbing education issue that is not being mentioned in the media or by policy makers is the massive amount of personal information that will be collected on every child, all in the name of “education.” Ultimately, the government will have archived massive amounts of personal information about every person from birth.
Common Core and More — Federal and National Standards and Policies
Article Ten of the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
This means that the federal government is not supposed to interfere in the educational affairs of any state. Yet since 1965, the federal government has heaped educational mandate upon mandate on the states through the strings attached to federal funding. The creation of the Department of Education in 1979 has not improved education but has eroded local control.
Scholastic Aptitude Test scores peaked in the mid 1960s and have declined ever since 1965, coincidentally when federal aid to local schools first started. We cannot infer causality, but it is clear federal aid did not help.
Public schools function best when they are truly run locally.
The federal law “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) required that ALL children must be proficient in math and language arts by 2014. It was a noble goal, but it was unrealistically naive. Now states want relief…..
Money can’t buy everything, it’s true…..but it can buy quite a lot. This article explains how major foundations–primarily the Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations– influence national education policy.
One of the concepts in the federal Race to the Top initiative is the evaluating of teachers and administrators to reward–or punish–them according to their “effectiveness”…. but this view does not recognize or attack the deeper problems.
The Shanker Institute called for the adoption of Common Core national standards for the entire United States. Many professors, governmental officials, analysts, educators, experts, and parents disagree. Read the critical response.
Are the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) the solution to all our education ills? No, but they are the pet project of bureaucrats, data-analysts, employees at the Federal Department of Education, and the like.
The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief School State Officers who are the proponents of the Common Core State Standards claim that the new standards will be an ideal solution for improving education in the U.S.A. But a leading education specialist calls the standards “pedagogically useless.”
See the reasons the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction wants to adopt the Common Core State Standards…. and the refutations of each reason below each statement.
“….But are the Common Core Standards really “revolutionary”? Or are they fundamentally the same as the sets of standards that currently exist in each of the 50 states, different only in their wording?….”
Common Core Standards of education for all the states is not the magic solution it claims to be.