UPDATE: Common Core Assessments May Be Content-Neutered | Truth in American Education

Common Core Assessments May Be Content-Neutered | Truth in American Education:

Indiana House Votes to Repeal Common Core

The Indiana House passed SB 91 on a 67 to 26 vote.  SB 91 authored by State Senators Scott Schneider (R-Indianapolis) and Dennis Kruse (R-Auburn) in effect repeals the Common Core State Standards.Here is the bill digest:Adds a definition of "college and career readiness". Provides that before July 1, 2014, the state board of education (state board) shall adopt Indiana college and career

by Shane Vander Hart / 59min hide  //  save

Indiana’s Draft Standards: A Scoop of Common Core with Some Junk on Top?

The idea for pausing the Common Core in Indiana and then putting the kibosh on them is that the Hoosier state would actually come away with better standards.Somebody needs to tell that to the review committee working on them.  I’ve already written that it looks like the math standards will continue to use fuzzy math.   Hoosiers Against Common Core have discovered a stacked deck on the panel.Joy Pu

by Shane Vander Hart / 1h 

Common Core Assessments May Be Content-Neutered

Filed in Common Core Assessments by Shane Vander Hart on February 27, 2014 • 0 Comments

• 14
• 2

David Steiner

Ze’ev Wurman pointed out to me (and others) an interesting article written by David Steiner, former New York State Commissioner of Education and Common Core advocate, in Education Next.  In it he unwittingly makes a case against the Common Core.

First he points out how content poor the Common Core ELA standards are:

Formally, the ELA Standards “lay out a vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century” by specifying and encouraging the development of “the skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening that are the foundation for any creative and purposeful expression in language.”

These skills are important, but one cannot learn skills in the abstract: imagine trying to think critically about nothing in particular. In a February 2013 essay on the topic, E.D. Hirsch cites a 2012 study by the National Research Council, which found that “21st-century skills [are] dimensions of expertise that are specific to–and intertwined with–knowledge within a particular domain of content and performance.” Skills must be tied to content if they are to be learned effectively…

…Unfortunately, realizing this skill-knowledge potential requires more than simply adopting the