UPDATE: What’s Missing in Indiana’s ELA Standards + Chester Finn Is At It Again | Truth in American Education

Chester Finn Is At It Again | Truth in American Education:


What’s Missing in Indiana’s ELA Standards

Below is the report I sent to Governor Pence on April 8, 2014 containing the suggestions of four Indiana high school English teachers and over 20 literary scholars for improving Common Core’s English language arts (ELA) standards (mostly cut-and-pasted into Indiana’s draft #2, which was released on March 14, 2014 by Claire Fiddian-Green, Pence’s education policy advisor, and the Indiana Department

by Sandra Stotsky / 42min 

Chester Finn Is At It Again

Filed in Common Core State Standards by Shane Vander Hart on May 12, 2014 • 0 Comments

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Chester Finn writing at Fordham Institute’s blogcritiques Peggy Noonan’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Finn writes:

But she’s not right to offer absolutely no alternative—unless, of course, she’s content with American K–12 education the way it is, which I know she isn’t.

And she’s not right to fail to note that the Common Core would have been—at least at this point in time—a sort of ambitious pilot program involving a smallish number of states that were serious about the implementation challenges, until the feds blundered into the middle of it with “incentives” that turned it into a sort of national piñata. (It does, however, remain absolutely voluntary for states, and I will shed no tears when those that don’t really want to put it into conscientious operation in their schools stop pretending that they will.)

And she’s not right to overlook how much of the pushback that she cites comes not from “harried parents,” but from formidable interest groups that really don’t want to change how they’ve always done things, whether or not such change would be good for kids or the country. I have in mind textbook publishers, test-makers, teacher unions, and political opportunists of every sort, lately and most prominently of the “tea party” persuasion, who will do and say anything to take down Obama and everything he’s for.

How can we take Chester Finn seriously when he still claims that the Common Core State Standards are voluntary for the states.  How about telling Indiana that?  Also does anyone see the irony in him pointing out how the “feds blundered into the middle of (Common Core)” when at the same time criticizing Tea Party folks who will “do and say anything to take down Obama.”  So Chester Finn Is At It Again | Truth in American Education: