Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Missouri Education Watchdog: Teacher Speaks Out Against Common Core

Missouri Education Watchdog: Teacher Speaks Out Against Common Core:


Teacher Speaks Out Against Common Core


A teacher speaks out against Common Core: 
One goal for all is not likely to be an equitable system. We should push back against the Common Core imposition with teacher professional development, socio-culturally responsive curricula, and project-, performance-, and portfolio-based assessments work at the most local level.

Like many teachers right now, I have a Common Core app on my iPad. Reading through the newly refined learning standards for K-12 students, I am concerned about my IEPs, especially the ELLs who are perhaps also ADD and receive pull-out services, or others whose paras might not be familiar with strand 1.RFS.4, which says that a first grader needs to be able to “read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension” and are only worrying about keeping him from bouncing off the wall when I’m trying to DRA half the class 


Common Core Legislation in Missouri Moves Forward

From Missouri Coalition Against Common Core, May 6, 2013:

SB210 Passes Out of the Senate

Today SB210 was perfected in the Senate. Discussion centered around the public's need for more information on this very large change to our education system.  

Two amendments were added to the bill. One is a long standing amendment to change the timing and process of the decision for the state to take over a district which has lost its accreditation.

The second amendment sets up an interim committee to study the foundation formula. It was noted 

Bill Gates and Teachers on Film! Gates Should Spread the Wealth for ALL Government Employees. (DESE included)


Effectiveness benchmarks should be required for all government employees, not just teachers.  Government employees must obtain marvelous results.  If the results aren't marvelous, they are ranked ineffective and theycan dance their way into unemployment.   



Bill Gates is determined to fix education and knows which tool to use to do it - the camera. In this interview with Fast Company he talks about expanding his three year pilot program, Measures of Effective Teaching,  in which teachers were filmed in the classroom as a means of providing "feedback" on