Gallup Poll: Common Core opposition continues to creep among teachers and parents
Hoosiers Against Common Core’s favorite Bostonian, Jaime Gass of the Pioneer Institute, had this to report to Fox News regarding the recent national polling on Common Core performed by Gallup.
“The national polling data reveals more bad news for the Common Core because 60 to 65 percent of America’s teachers are either ‘frustrated’ or ‘worried’ by it, only 20 percent of teachers are ‘enthusiastic’, and 44 percent of teachers now view Common Core ‘negatively’, Jamie Gass director of the Center for School Reform at the Boston-based think tank, Pioneer Institute said to FoxNews.com.
Any politician trying to sell this idea in 2016 is toast. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
? A close read of the article, in at least a couple of places, seems to push the idea that the more familiar teachers are with it, the better they like it. So it doesn’t look like a real good example of an anti-common core piece. And as we know, it’s not just the standards, it’s the curriculum and/or texts that are still being used in Indiana schools. That little tidbit still hasn’t got into the national consciousness, it doesn’t seem.
And further, it quotes them as saying the little tykes don’t have the typing skills and computer skills to take the tests. Well duh! What genius decided that just because kids could play Nintendo that they could type and spell? I took typing in tenth grade fifty years ago. And in that vein, and going back to the curriculum, I took Geometry in tenth grade…as an elective. They are trying to push it, and algebra, in not only third, but also FIRST grade. You do NOT have to be an “educator” to know there is a whole heckuva lot more wrong with this scheme than just “standards”. This train was created to wreck.
It appears that the solution for ridding ourselves of Common Core must be done through the political process of election. We have the opportunity to, hopefully, elect a State Superintendent who believes in the and understands that we need Hoosier standards, and more local control of education and not the nationalization of education. We need someone who understands that we’re not educating a collective, but that we educate individuals with different abilities, different skills, different thought processes, but who share a similar heritage of American and as Hoosiers. Even with that, we have differences from one location to another, and this is what makes us unique as a culture. We need to do more than just teaching to the test, and teaching students to understand technical manuals while forgetting the classics. And it’s a mistake to present Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in a cleaned-up format.
There is no difference in Math or in English reading/writing skills, whether you are from Lafayette or from Tuscaloosa. These are basic and fundamental skills.
And, local control does not mean that high standards should not be expected. Why would anybody want their children to go to school without any expectation of a *minimum* skill we expect them to acquire. What if the teacher were nuts? Is it not too risky to not have any expectation? Frankly, it would be irresponsible to play these games with these children future.
Again, there nothing wrong with expecting more. If the conversation is about also “teaching the classics”, and would be all for it. To me, I want us to thrive for excellence, and to expect more from our education system and from our children. But, you cannot “teach the classics” when they cannot do basic reading and understand what they read.
Louisiana’s Governor Jindal is enjoining a lawsuit challenging Commie Core proponents circumvention of his state’s public disclosure process:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/07/Gov-Bobby-Jindal-Joins-Louisiana-Lawmakers-in-Common-Core-Lawsuit
Good for Gov Jindal. There is a real risk Louisiana might fall out of the bottom 5 states in academic achievements.
I also heard that indeed Math is Commie ideology, specially as it relates to enforcing minimum standards. But you are a bit too harsh on English education. It is only Socialist. Not like Math.
God help all our children.
Gallup is insane. As a public high school teacher in Maryland, I know of no teacher that likes the implementation of Common Core, much less 41%