Should High Schoolers Be Required to Read Executive Order 13423?
Ezra Klein asks this at WashPo’s Wonkblog:
Top story: Are we getting smart on education policy?Common core standards become a lightning rod. ”The Common Core State Standards in English, which have been adopted in 46 states and the District, call for public schools to ramp up nonfiction so that by 12th grade students will be reading mostly ‘informational text’ instead of fictional literature. But as teachers excise poetry and classic works of fiction from their classrooms, those who designed the guidelines say it appears that educators have misunderstood
Stanley Kurtz: Centralized Control of Curriculum Leads to Tyranny
Stanley Kurtz writing at National Review noted that parents are starting to wake up over the push for a national curriculum:
Why does President Obama want your child to read “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management” in school? It’s not the business of a president to shape your local school’s reading assignments. The Constitution and several federal laws prohibit it. Yet by conditioning federal education aid and regulatory waivers on state acceptance of the “Common Core,” Obama has managed to manipulate the states into adopting what is fast becoming a de facto national K–12 curriculum.Parents across the country are just now waking up to the fact that President Obama has forced
Mourning the Loss of Poetry
On Sunday The Washington Post had a great story that highlighted some of the criticism of the Common Core ELA standards. One teacher pointed out what she had to remove from her curriculum as a result.
Jamie Highfill is mourning the six weeks’ worth of poetry she removed from her eighth-grade English class at Woodland Junior High School in Fayetteville, Ark. She also dropped some short stories and a favorite unit on the legends of King Arthur to make room for essays by Malcolm Gladwell and a chapter from “The Tipping Point,” Gladwell’s book about social behavior.