A 9th-grade assignment at a Mississippi high school is causing concern and disgust among parents. A mother recently posted her student’s assignment to Facebook in a special group that was created for the growing discontent parents feel toward public school education — “Inappropriate Common Core Lessons.” This particular assignment asked 14-year-old students to determine the identity of a fictional rapist based on sperm DNA.
Not surprisingly, parents were not amused. The mother who posted the assignment reported that the teacher did not require the students to complete it — and parents were grateful for that — but she was still disturbed by the content in the “teaching” material. Common Core has long been hated by parents and teachers alike, not only for its inappropriate content but for the convoluted math techniques that serve only to frustrate students and parents.
Along with hard-to-understand math problems, the Common Core tests have included strange product advertising noticed by students.
According to Phillips, the Common Core-aligned tests — which were taken last week by third, fourth and fifth graders — contained misleading questions, subjective reading passages and even product placement…”There were product placements (i.e., Nike, Barbie) woven through some exams,” wrote a group of NYC principals in a statement.
Other parents have reported inappropriate questions directed at 9-year-olds about dating and other adult topics. Let’s not forget the “Daddy is cheating on Mommy” reading comprehension exercise.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/551479916843561996/
More and more states are dropping out of the Common Core standards as time goes on. Just recently, Kansas decided to pitch it.
The Common Core educational standards for reading and math, long a source of intense political controversy, will soon go by the wayside in Kansas…In August, the board officially approved new, updated standards in math. And on Tuesday, it will receive the final draft of new English language arts standards, with final approval slated for November.
Once that happens, the Common Core standards will become a thing of the past in Kansas.
A study that was conducted in 2016 showed that 62 percent of states have dropped Common Core testing.
The number of states participating in the consortia formed to develop tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) has dropped sharply, a new study has found.
CCSS is a set of national standards dictating what students should know at the end of each grade level. The U.S. Department of Education awarded grants in 2010 to two consortia, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), to develop Common Core-aligned assessments.
The 2016 fall edition of Education Next, an education journal published by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, reports, “In 2010, the PARCC and SBAC consortia reported having 26 and 32 member states, respectively, representing diverse political environments,” but between 2011 and 2016, the number of states planning to use the new tests dropped from 45 to just 20, a 62 percent decline.
It’s surprising, with assignments like the one above, that parents haven’t demanded that 100 percent of states drop Common Core. But at least progress seems to be rolling slowly toward taking back public education for common sense.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member