joeburz posted:

It's more about you being butthurt over common core but yeah its a derail.

Joementum posted:

It turns out that the thing about Romney arriving by helicopter was a false press rumor.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Common core is poo poo, just because its a Democrat initiative don't make it less poo poo.


Why would he arrive by helicopter? I doubt an unelected Republican ex-governor is able to jet to any aircraft carrier willy-nilly during a Democratic administration. No, far more likely that Romney will take a swift boat or walk the gangplank.

DemeaninDemon posted:

What's wrong with a set of standards all kids must reach, broken down by year?

DemeaninDemon posted:

What's wrong with a set of standards all kids must reach, broken down by year?

Agnosticnixie posted:

You are either trolling, lying, or trying to universalize a very limited experience. The vast majority of the world's academics are more likely to know the german than the latin nomenclature or most of these things and moved past latin nearly a century ago.

FAUXTON posted:

God just seeing that makes me smile remembering how insanely sick of a burn that whole exchange was. You don't normally get to call something in a debate a "sick burn" without being obviously hyperbolic but that was an exception for the ages.

Stultus Maximus posted:

Must reach or else...?

FAUXTON posted:

God just seeing that makes me smile remembering how insanely sick of a burn that whole exchange was. You don't normally get to call something in a debate a "sick burn" without being obviously hyperbolic but that was an exception for the ages.

Any worse and it would have just been "look motherfucker nobody has used battleships for a hundred years" which it pretty much was, just sanitized for the virgin ears of America.

Everblight posted:

And even this was eclipsed just weeks later by "Proceed, Governor..."

quote:

For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.

The Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade were eligible under the federal program for free and reduced-price lunches in the 2012-2013 school year. The lunch program is a rough proxy for poverty, but the explosion in the number of needy children in the nation’s public classrooms is a recent phenomenon that has been gaining attention among educators, public officials and researchers.

“We’ve all known this was the trend, that we would get to a majority, but it’s here sooner rather than later,” said Michael A. Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University, noting that the poverty rate has been increasing even as the economy has improved. “A lot of people at the top are doing much better, but the people at the bottom are not doing better at all. Those are the people who have the most children and send their children to public school.”

...

DemeaninDemon posted:

What's wrong with a set of standards all kids must reach, broken down by year?

DemeaninDemon posted:

What's wrong with a set of standards all kids must reach, broken down by year?

Treads posted:

As a concept, standards would be a bit more effective by saying roughly "reach this line, I don't care how you do it". As it is, they are both determining the line, and what you have to do to reach it. Still even setting a line ignores the fact that depending on your students, you should have vastly different goals for the semester. Teaching is not like assembling a car.

Also, as already alluded to, the penalty system causes teachers to only teach to pass the tests in order to get money. Generally, the result of this is the the teacher in question has to rush through the material, and rely on the students doing rote memorization. This leads to a fairly substandard understanding of the material.

DemeaninDemon posted:

Teacher reviews student and makes a recommendation on whether or not to hold them back? I dunno we could throw the kid into the Grand Canyon if it makes you feel better.

chitoryu12 posted:

There's also the question of exactly why these standards are standards. What makes the cut for what students "need to know"?

chitoryu12 posted:

There's also the question of exactly why these standards are standards. What makes the cut for what students "need to know"?

My Imaginary GF posted:

Because it doesn't matter whether the students are able to reach those metrics if the students don't comprehend why they've achieved those metrics.

Treads posted:

As an idea, there is nothing wrong. The devil is in the details, however. It's notoriously hard to implement a standard program to do this. One of the biggest problems is that teaching is incredibly situation specific, so the more you try to boilerplate a standard solution, the more you are likely to fail. To make matters worse, solutions with consequences("must reach") have so far inevitably caused well funded school districts in well to do areas to gain more funding, and poor schools to get less. Rich kids do better, poor kids do worse essentially. This is setting aside the fact that students in poor school districts are often already massively disadvantaged due little to no home/parental support.

As a concept, standards would be a bit more effective by saying roughly "reach this line, I don't care how you do it". As it is, they are both determining the line, and what you have to do to reach it. Still even setting a line ignores the fact that depending on your students, you should have vastly different goals for the semester. Teaching is not like assembling a car.

Also, as already alluded to, the penalty system causes teachers to only teach to pass the tests in order to get money. Generally, the result of this is the the teacher in question has to rush through the material, and rely on the students doing rote memorization. This leads to a fairly substandard understanding of the material.

My Imaginary GF posted:

National politics. Education should be adapted to local comminities, by local communities. You think people bitch about the Texas educational material development issues? Just wait for several terms of Republican-dominated Congress realizing how to game Common Core to promote a national political agenda.

Students will rise to meet expectations. When those expectations are a core of poo poo, you're not giving students anything to achieve.

A Winner is Jew posted:

Yeah, say what you will about the education in the US when it comes to math and science but our school system is amongst the world leader in teaching kids how to actually think critically instead of just memorize facts and formulas.

quote:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

evilweasel posted:

It would be quite the trick for Congress to game a non-binding standards initiative created by the national governors' association.

420DD Butts posted:

What academics are you talking about? Because biology still extensively uses latin names.

Treads posted:

As an idea, there is nothing wrong. The devil is in the details, however. It's notoriously hard to implement a standard program to do this. One of the biggest problems is that teaching is incredibly situation specific, so the more you try to boilerplate a standard solution, the more you are likely to fail. To make matters worse, solutions with consequences("must reach") have so far inevitably caused well funded school districts in well to do areas to gain more funding, and poor schools to get less. Rich kids do better, poor kids do worse essentially. This is setting aside the fact that students in poor school districts are often already massively disadvantaged due little to no home/parental support.

As a concept, standards would be a bit more effective by saying roughly "reach this line, I don't care how you do it". As it is, they are both determining the line, and what you have to do to reach it. Still even setting a line ignores the fact that depending on your students, you should have vastly different goals for the semester. Teaching is not like assembling a car.

Also, as already alluded to, the penalty system causes teachers to only teach to pass the tests in order to get money. Generally, the result of this is the the teacher in question has to rush through the material, and rely on the students doing rote memorization. This leads to a fairly substandard understanding of the material.

Quidam Viator posted:

Quidam Viator posted:

God, thank you. I wanted to exit the thread, but that loving comment by Agnosticnixie... He's like the dumbest motherfucker on the planet. Trying to tell me that loving doctors sit around in academic journals writing about "DA BIG MUSCLE ON DA CHEST" and not the "Pectoralis Major". And that I'm trolling or lying because I claim that lawyers and doctors actively use Latin phrases through all of their work, or that I'm just making up lists like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legal_Latin_terms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medical_roots,_suffixes_and_prefixes

MOTHERFUCKER, THE WHOLE loving THING IS LATIN. Plus some Greek, which I also teach, and god dammit, I'm certified in German too, and I teach that as well you stupid poo poo.

Zelder posted:

Good God you write like such an rear end in a top hat man!

Quidam Viator posted:

And that I'm trolling or lying because I claim that lawyers and doctors actively use Latin phrases through all of their work,

DemeaninDemon posted:

Teacher reviews student and makes a recommendation on whether or not to hold them back? I dunno we could throw the kid into the Grand Canyon if it makes you feel better.

evilweasel posted:

Anytime you're using latin for any other reason in legal writing you probably look like an rear end in a top hat and should just convert it to English. And anytime you're reading a latin phrase you don't know you don't translate it and move on, it's time to do some research and figure out what the legal concept is.

edit: skimming the wikipedia link, the vast majority of phrases in there you should never use if it's past the 1800s.

Quidam Viator posted:

Quidam Viator posted:

No, I also worked for 6 years doing test prep for the Princeton Review, and got similar increases. Like it or not, the SAT and ACT are threshold guardians for college admittance, and they rely highly on a bunch of really inauthentic, terrible tricks. I know what they are, and using my decade of teaching experience along with my test prep experience, I can customize a course to create those results consistently. Those results are over 3 years, given an approximate 100 student sample per year. Like any kind of educational "research", the truth is that you can never get a truly representative sample because such a thing does not exist: these are minors, students, children, not loving widgets or statistical results in loving engineering. I know very well that I am able to produce those results with Latin vs. Spanish students (the only two foreign language options in my school) because I am teaching in a college-prep oriented school, and my Princeton Review classes were composed of students motivated in some way to improve.

Your sarcastic bullshit about opening an SAT prep school shows nothing except your lovely attitude and your stupid loving assumptions about the "existing literature". I know very well, having taught in inner-city schools and extremely rural, poor schools as well, that I could not generate those gains with a different population. That's the difference betweeen me and you and the other non-professional educators who claim to know poo poo from shinola: I have actually worked in the field, teaching and researching. You just make lovely assumptions and off-handed accusations about how my results are a lie.

I am not using the SAT as a defense for my program. I am using the SAT as defense for teacher freedom and as a direct attack against a standardized curriculum that CLAIMS to produce the kind of results that I can produce by doing the opposite things that I do. It fails consistently. Only an inspired, committed teacher, aware of his local school, district, and population, with the help of good administration, parents, and school board, can consistently produce the kinds of results I produce. It took me seven years of teaching in D and F schools to land a position where I COULD make that kind of difference. And yes, that few hundred points on the verbal sections of the SAT has likely made many of my students' college aspirations come true. That's my job.

icantfindaname posted:

I think students should be required to learn Native American languages. Many are unfortunately endangered or otherwise in sharp decline, it's the least we can do

forbidden lesbian posted:

I'm going to force him to marry Clarence Thomas

Stultus Maximus posted:

Yes, holding vast numbers of largely poor and minority students back will surely advance American society. Good call.

RuanGacho posted:

The fact that the Democrats and Republicans both agree that "education is broken" should be sending up some serious alarms to anyone who thinks they're already influenced too much by corporations.

The resident Latin teacher is right in that his classes have value as they're teaching the students to apply understanding from one source of knowledge to another, something Latin is in a rather unique position to do in western culture. That doesn't make it a panacea but it has value especially when tailored to the audience.

However our concepts of how education is supposed to be are largely based on no data at all. For all the other good Philanthropy done by them the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has been pushing education reform based on his politics for going on over a decade now and being one of the worlds richest people does not qualify Bill Gates as an expert, despite how much he may sense there's something amiss, it's not solved by his push for Common Core and Charter Schools.

What exactly are these standards supposed to prepare our students for? College and middle management? We can't even agree that students shouldn't be on this scheduled ready for deployment for The Workforce™ without being in crippling debt because that would mess with the holy market's ability to profit off of human existence.

In conclusion America is a land of contrasts, that it wants to choke on its own spite with.

DemeaninDemon posted:

Hey at least the majority of us here can agree on one thing: gently caress Charter Schools.

DemeaninDemon posted:

Instead they just slide right on through regardless of performance which also sort of, no, totally doesn't work.

I'm arguing that a national-level set of standards is an awesome idea. Note how I did not mention measuring those standards nor consequences of those standards. Well except when you asked and I have a half-assed response to it. A problem as complex as the hosed up public education of America doesn't get fixed with a blanket fixer-uper. Common Core's a good step in the right direction since it at least sets some standards. Those can be used to identify problem areas. Have any of you tried fixing something like at all? The very first thing you need to do, after putting on safety equipment, is to figure out what it should be doing. Then you can solve the problem.

poo poo it's kind of like the ACA but we all know how y'all feel about that heap.

edited in the part about fixing poo poo.

Stultus Maximus posted:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's enthusiasm for Common Core should set off alarm bells.