By exercising even a little of the critical thinking the pushers of these national standards claim to want mandated in all classrooms, consumers can learn a big, valuable lesson about polling that seeks to shape public opinion rather than honestly gauge it.
Suppose instead of making common cause with corporate titans and Washington technocrats to impose Common Core standards uniformly on education, philanthropist Bill Gates instead used his vast wealth to create his own brand of schools to compete in a vibrant educational marketplace.
Glenn Beck hosted a live, interactive event at 700 theaters across the country in order to formulate a plan of action for Americans to fight Common Core.
Most experts recognize that reward systems are especially valuable at the earliest ages to help students attain the habit of deferring gratification. Failure to develop this habit can handicap learners for the rest of their lives.
Education · Featured · Politics
Pressure from the upcoming national elections has combined with years of steady grassroots pressure in Wisconsin to finally shift Gov. Walker towards giving some attention to Common Core.
The new AP United States History course teaches a biased version of American history that focuses on our nation’s supposed faults rather than our accomplishments.
Economics · Education · Featured · Government
College education has more and more been described by the political left as a right to which citizens ought to be entitled. This view has been popularized among left-leaning students, many of whom are energized by ruinously expensive college loans. They clamor for the “fair solution”, namely that the government should pay for all of it. The effort to make college a right is a disastrous proposition. It is a dangerous pipe-dream that could devastate an already rickety higher education sector. There are problems with the way student loans and college fees operate at present, but this is not the way to fix it.
Budgets/Taxes · Education · Featured · Government · Liberty
The Declaration of Independence, proclaimed by members of the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, is the founding document of the American experiment in free government. What is too often forgotten is that what the Founding Fathers argued against in the Declaration was the heavy and intrusive hand of big government.
It’s vacation time for the nation’s school kids and, while they play, states are beginning to push back against the latest effort of the federal government to exert total control[...]
Could one ruling by one Los Angeles Superior Court judge free public education from the stultifying grip of the teacher tenure system and lead to widespread use of incentives to reward excellent work by teachers and students alike?
The public, even parents of school aged children, tend to trust those in authority to make good decisions and enact credible laws regarding our public education system, believing that any[...]
Education · Environment/Energy · Featured
This is a YouTube video showing exploitation of kids for climate change taking place in Canada. Also displayed is a number of YouTube videos around the world showing the same exploitation taking place in other countries.
Education · Featured · Government · Liberty
Through the implementation of the Common Core State Standards Initiative and the increasing use of technology in the classroom, the federal government has a greater capability to access individual students’ personal information.
Economics · Education · Government
The federal workforce needs fresh blood. The percentage of its employees under the age of 30 hit an eight-year low of 7% in 2013, government statistics show, compared with about[...]
In Part 1 published by Thorner and O’Neil at Illinois Review on Monday, June 2nd, Common Core Language Arts and Math were evaluated and shown to be seriously lacking in content as a practical and common sense approach to education, assuming as it does that all children will learn what is prescribed at the same rate within each grade level.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence has started to prance about the country, touting himself as the governor who ousted Common Core, a set of national curriculum and testing mandates in math[...]
Education · Featured · Liberty
Antithetical to the true purpose of education, the Common Core State Standards Initiative simply prepares students to enter college of the workforce. The curriculum merely teaches “skills” that will supposedly help students in the workforce, rather than truly educate them.
It’s common for people to pretend public education is free. But it’s not. Parents buy access to certain public schools with their mortgage or rent check. A 2012 study of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas found houses near high-achieving public schools cost approximately $11,000 more per year, or 2.4 times as much, as houses near low-achieving public schools. It also found the typical low-income child attends a school that scores below average on state tests, whereas the typical middle- or upper-income child attends a school that scores above average.
To briefly summarize Common Core, the decision to adopt the Common Core standards was left almost exclusively in the hands of the governors and the state boards of education. The public was not made aware that our education system was in the process of being changed, and certainly we were clueless that all states had been asked to accept an education system initiated at the federal level, something our forefathers prudently warned against. However, forty-five states committed to those standards, and did so even before the standards and/or accompanying curriculum were completed.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence has started to prance about the country, touting himself as the governor who ousted Common Core, a set of national curriculum and testing mandates in math and English. But it’s Oklahoma that may actually merit that distinction, if Gov. Mary Fallin signs a bill to do so by June 2.
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