A new post written @huffingtonpost on the #commoncore
by Chalk Face, PhD
I don’t know, some things are appropriate for the Huffington Post.
This came from conversations I’ve had with proponents of the CCSS. There is a rabid insistence that it’s not a curriculum, it’s just standards, as if that makes it less intrusive or more palatable.
If that insistence is ideological, I get it. But if it is based on some kind of understanding of the nature of curriculum, then it’s incorrect. We then have to reexamine other claims made by those that insist erroneously that the CCSS are merely a collection of benign and generic standards. Who would spend so much money on that?
Burning Bridges
by plthomasedd
Deborah Meier and Elliott Witney have been attempting to bridge differences about ideology and practices associated with Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools, a “no excuses” view of children, poverty, education, and the world.
I admire Meier’s patience and diligence in this discussion and strongly reject KIPP and other “no excuses” schools as racist and classist. Witney’s responses do nothing to change my mind, but do expose a strategy found among “no excuses” advocates that is burning bridges, not bridging differences. In Witney’s 23 April 2013 response, he makes two claims:
“Today, there are literally hundreds of public schools—both district and charter—that are proving that zip code does not define a student’s destiny.“Because of this movement, we now find ourselves at a point in which no one in our country can logically argue anymore that students from underserved communities can’t achieve at high academic levels. We still have a long way to go before we see entire school systems or states achieving these types of results with students. We have proof, however, that it can be done.”
The direct and subtle claims in these comments are repeated often, but fail both the weight of evidence as well as the rules of civility and logic (in other words,
