Anybody here have experience with the Common Core curriculum?

Common core is national education curriculum. The options for teaching would not include faith based instruction ( Non-Evolution etc ). It could also be seen by some states as a reduction in “states rights”. It does teach the student “how to learn” and problem solving. Some vocal individuals in my area forget that the USA students have dropped to only average but only they only see big government telling them how the schools are to run. I live in North Carolina which 46th or 47th in teacher pay.

I have talked to some teachers about it. I will start by saying I am in favor of some basic national standards. What I don’t like about what I am hearing is all the cross learning in younger grades. They put “reading” into every subject. I don’t think a first grader should miss a lot of math problems because their reading comprehension isn’t great. Now the kid who might have found a love for math, but has trouble with reading, hates math too. It really bothers me.

Or, the child who would have loved reading, but is assigned reading material they have no interest in.

I think reading is very important, but I think the emphasis at very very young ages for comprehension of assigned materials is overdone.

I wonder if there are actual studies that show crossing over reading into math at very early ages actually produces positive results? It really feels to me that people who are not “math people” decided that was a good idea. My general feeling is most people in the ivory towers of the school system are not math people.

@Tropical_Willie I don’t completely understand what you wrote about faith based. Are you saying religious schools don’t have to follow common core? I don’t think of common core as addressing religious teachings at all. Public schools already are not supposed to teach religion and things that go along with that like creationism. How does common core address that?

@JLeslie It seems pretty clear from his parenthetical remark that he is talking about a prohibition on teaching creationism and other religious-based fallacies in the public schools.

@janbb If that is included in common core, which instinctively I highly doubt it is even mentioned, but my instincts have let me down more than once, how is that any change from the law of the last 30+ years?

If common core is somehow changing a public school’s curriculum in regards to teaching creationism, then the school was breaking the law already and probably will continue to do so, until someone brings suit.

The complaints I have heard from my son’s teachers is the new standards implemented by the Government sterilized the learning process and stripped them of their ability to teach lessons contextually with outside materials. I know both my sons said learning became a chore instead of being challenging in fun creative ways. Now I would expect any teacher would have wiggle room to change things up but Common Core removed a lot of the classics that brought culture and depth to the learning process.

I also so the effect it had on my son who is a high achiever student where he got thrust into groups where he was dummied down by the curriculum or found himself teaching the kids in his group that couldn’t understand the material. Our schools in our district overall are excellent and had excellent programs before this and Common Core has scrubbed away many of the finer elements of their curriculum.

This one group sums up a lot of the complaints out there and is has a lot more points of contention than this one:

“The curriculum replaces the classics with government propaganda. According to the American Principles Project, “They de-emphasize the study of classic literature in favor of reading so-called ‘informational texts,’ such as government documents, court opinions, and technical manuals.” Over half the reading materials in grades 6–12 are to consist of informational texts rather than classical literature. Historical texts like the Gettysburg Address are to be presented to students without context or explanation.”

“The bloated program is underfunded. Local school administrators have already started complaining that the grants aren’t enough to cover the requirements behind them. “We were spending a disproportionate amount of time following all the requirements,” said Mike Johnson, the superintendent of Bexley schools in Ohio, which turned down the last half of a $100,000, four-year grant this school year. “It was costing us far more than that to implement all of the mandates.”

I heard someone on the radio this week that made the point that the reading lists provided are only a list of suggested readings, not required readings as some school districts have interpreted them but that they are having trouble getting school officials to understand this.
He certainly wanted to encourage teachers to research and use other books in their teaching and not pass up an opportunity just because it had not been mentioned.

I need to do further research into it myself, just to know what is being discussed.

@JLeslie Sorry I’ve been off-line for 8 hours, some schools systems in the public sector are teaching creationism. Several states allow this now but with the “Core” coming in these school systems would derail the “Creationism” teachings.

@Tropical_Willie They are breaking federal law. Here are some court cases that emphasize how when challenged, teaching creationism is found to be unconsititutional and ilegal. Bible belt states nortoriously don’t give a damn about the constitution or the supreme court rulings when it comes to religion.

I still have a very very hard time believing common core addresses this topic. Do you have a link demonstrating that? Why would it? Why would the people who created common core bother to write down, “teachers may not teach creationism,” when it is already against the law?