Parents, teachers, and other citizens who oppose the Common Core standards in Louisiana say corporate cronyism propelled proponents of the highly unpopular reform to win the super-majority in the recent state board of education elections.
Tennessee state Rep. Andy Holt’s (R) attempt to take a state-mandated test along with eighth grade students is over for now, being blocked by both the state department of education and the Obion County school district’s administration.
A recent publication states that a reported drop in the number of black males in medical school is due to “unequal” educational opportunities and other racial disparities.
A third grade math problem went viral after someone posted it on Reddit, sparking another debate about controversial Common Core standards. The test asked for 5×3. The student correctly answered 15 and wrote out 5 + 5 + 5 =
The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments–known as the Nation’s Report Card–show that only a third of the nation’s eighth graders are at or above the proficiency level in math and only 34 percent are at or above the same level in reading.
Results of national tests administered to approximately 600,000 students across the country demonstrate that – for the first time since the early 1990s – math scores of fourth and eighth graders have dropped. Eighth grade reading scores declined as well, and those for fourth graders remained flat.
Americans were told the Common Core standards initiative would allow more students – particularly low-income and minority students – to achieve “college ready” status in order to be successful in higher education. The supposedly more “rigorous” standards were sold as the way to achieve greater preparation for advanced education for American students. Recent evidence, however, demonstrates this is not the case.
The Early Assessment Program, supervised by the state Department of Education and California State University, estimates that a paltry 2% of Fresno Unified 11th-graders would succeed in college-level courses.
A national coalition of parents is releasing a letter to House and Senate education committee leaders urging them to suspend their talks on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal law until a new administration is elected.
Politico has issued a notice to GOP 2016 contenders: “Common Core has won the war.”
Bill Gates renewed his foundation’s commitment to the Common Core standards initiative, saying that while there is still much more to do, he believes “we are on the right track.
Obama’s comments appear to be a reference to the Common Core standards – though he does not call the reform by name, likely because the unpopular initiative is now often described as “toxic” and “poisonous.” The president nevertheless adopts the usual pro-Common Core position that the nationalized standards are higher or more rigorous than other standards – although there is no independent research that validates that claim.
Jeb Bush has dropped to 4 percent support among the GOP presidential field according to a newly released Pew Research Center poll. Asked about his response to his donors while campaigning in New Hampshire, Bush compared his path to 2008 Republican nominee John McCain.
Arne Duncan, who has served as Education Secretary throughout Barack Obama’s tenure as president, will be replaced through the end of the president’s term by former New York State education commissioner and Common Core champion John King, Jr.
A Painesville, Ohio father, fed up with the Common Core standards’ method of teaching math to students, decided to get even, writing a check to the school using the x and o system of Common core, rendering the check inexplicable to the bank.
In a remarkable admission, the former director of the Race to the Top (RttT) competitive grant program and chief of staff to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the federal government “forced” full support for adoption of the Common Core standards from each state by requiring its governor, chief state school officer, and head of the state board of education to sign off on the grant application.
In a video made available to Breitbart News, GOP presidential contender John Kasich responds to an activist parent’s challenge about his failure to protect private student data in his state. The Ohio governor replied that he had no clue what she was talking about.
On Wednesday, California’s Board of Education acknowledged that more than half of the state’s students in third through eighth and 11th grades failed Common Core math and English tests. The results of the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments were announced for the first time, reported The Fresno Bee.
Middle school parents in Tennessee are up in arms on learning that their children were instructed to recite and write, “Allah is the only god,” as part of a world history project.
According to the New York Times, while Dale Russakoff’s new book, The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools? has just hit bookstores Tuesday, it is already “a source of enormous contention.” It begins in 2010 when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg became the subject of much media attention as he announced on Oprah that he would throw $100 million into Newark, New Jersey’s failing public school system.
The radical Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has developed a Common Core-aligned “anti-bias” K-12 curriculum–which it says is meant to teach tolerance in schools.
“Next year the College Board will roll out a major change in the SAT that will make comparisons with past results impossible, and allow Common Core proponents to argue ‘these are different and better tests, so don’t pay attention to past results,'” Wurman states. “We are lucky that this year’s SAT has not changed yet, so the decline is clearly visible and cannot be hidden or denied.” The College Board president is David Coleman, the so-called “architect” of the Common Core standards.
Newly-released documents indicate that the husband of Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s presidential campaign manager participated with other Ohio Department of Education (ODE) staff in a coordinated effort to falsely inflate the evaluations of some charter school sponsors.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said Thursday that the Common Core “is not working” and announced a plan to form his own “education commission” to review the standards initiative and report back to him on how to “fix” it.
Senator Marco Rubio has taking a conservative hard-lined stance against the Department of Education.
Last week, Danniel Henninger, deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, cited recent changes the College Board made to the Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) framework as a “victory” for conservatives. Experts on the framework, however, think that is quite a stretch.
Flamboyant YouTube stars, and perhaps Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s biggest supporters, Lynette “Diamond” Hardaway and Rochelle “Silk” Richardson—a.k.a the “Stump for Trump” girls—have turned the political world on its head.
“The Review Portal is too difficult for the average parent without an educator’s assistance since there is so much jargon, redundancy, and education speak,” Louisiana parent activist Caryn Jenkins tells Breitbart News. “Asking a parent to understand what a large percentage of the standards mean is like asking a teacher to understand physician orders in a medical chart. Jenkins said many parents are intimidated by having to review education standards, and the time required to participate in the review process is equally daunting.
ABDO, a Minnesota-based book publisher, is set to release a middle school textbook written by Professor Duchess Harris and Sue Bradford Edwards about the anti-police movement Black Lives Matter.
During a recent education summit moderated by Campbell Brown – who founded The Seventy Four, a non-profit website covering news about education reform – GOP presidential candidates Govs. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Scott Walker (R-WI) and Chris Christie (R-NJ) shut down Brown’s argumentative questions that were pro-Common Core.
A national poll has underscored the continued unpopularity of the Common Core standards with a majority of those surveyed opposing its use in America’s classrooms.
Six Republican presidential contenders met Wednesday in early-voting state New Hampshire to discuss education issues, including the hotly debated Common Core standards initiative.
The American Federation for Children, an organization that promotes school choice and advocates for school vouchers, partnered with The Seventy Four, a non-profit and non-partisan website that covers news about education, to host the 2015 New Hampshire Education Summit where experts in education reform and GOP presidential candidates spoke about reforming the educational system.
School is in session for the Republican 2016 primary candidates, and their report card grades on how they live up to the principles of the Constitution when it comes to their views on education policy and the Common Core initiative
The annual Education Next poll on school reform has been released, and the results are not good for the Common Core initiative, which seems to abide by the philosophy that the more Americans know about it, the more they do not like it.
Nobody has a God-given right to others’ money, pried from their hands by an intrusive, redistributionist government. But Kasich seems to disagree. Kasich is obviously of the opinion that government can be a force for good. Reagan ran and won on the principle that “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He governed on the principle that “as government expands, liberty contracts.” Not so with Kasich.
It appears that teachers in Brevard County in central Florida are leaving the profession in greater numbers. According to Florida Today, which interviewed some of the teachers voluntarily exiting, factors impelling the teachers to leave include the lack of respect from students and administrators, low pay, health problems, and the long hours necessary to prepare for classes.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded nonprofit Achieve Inc. — one of the developers of the Common Core standards— has announced that New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) has joined its board of directors. “By joining the board, Governor Hassan will
Sen. Marco Rubio said Thursday night during the GOP presidential debate in Cleveland that the problem with Common Core is that the U.S. Department of Education “will turn it into a mandate.”
During the GOP debate Thursday night, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush – who has individually and through his foundations been a champion of the federally funded Common Core standards – said he doesn’t believe the federal government should be involved
