Monday, March 25, 2013

Can't Really Argue With These Points

Jay Greene:

4) Common Core is providing license to all sorts of crazy and contradictory local policies. Districts are cutting literature, pushing back Algebra, increasing constructivist approaches, reducing constructivist approaches… all in the name of Common Core. When parents and local voters complain, the schools dodge accountability by claiming (perhaps falsely) that Common Core made them do it. A big danger of trying to build a centralized system of controlling schools is that local education leaders will blame the central authority for whatever unpopular thing they choose to do. It’s like the local Commissar blaming shortages on the central authority rather than his own pilfering. It shifts the blame.

5) Common Core is bringing out the worst in many of its advocates — people who are not naturally inclined to be hypocrites, sycophants, and dissemblers, but who cannot resist becoming so because of the lure of power, money, and the need to remain relevant. If you need examples of this, well, you probably haven’t been reading this blog.

Well, I'm not so sure they aren't so "naturally inclinded."

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