Common Core & Crazy
"Common Core" is the fancy new dress for the repugnant old hag known as No Child Left Behind. It is a call by the misinformed and slow-witted for yet more government heavy-handedness in education. Like its failed predecessor, it posits as a solution a series of steps for applying standardization to a problem which doesn't respond well to standardization. Ramesh Ponnuru writes in Bloomberg about the stench emanating from this reanimated edu-crat corpse. This stands out for me:
The first time a Marine Corps drill instructor tells you to "Drop and gimme fifty!", it's unlikely you'll complete fifty push-ups even if you were a high school athlete -- certainly not at the pace he wants you to do them, and especially since he's pushing his fist into your back the entire time. Let's say you get to 44 before you collapse, whereupon you get your ass chewed off, immediately whereafter you find yourself running around the grinder for half an hour screaming "I'm a little faggot girly man!" at the top of your lungs.
Question: What do you think is going to happen the next time the D.I. tells you to drop? You think he's going to shout "Drop and gimme forty-three!"? No, he's going to demand 60 push-ups. You know what? You'll get over 50 this time, which you couldn't do -- or didn't think you could -- just the day before.
You see the process, I'm sure. It's not rocket surgery. But somehow edu-crats and crusading reformers can't seem to figure out this very basic form of behavioral instruction. The politicians are only too happy to oblige these starry-eyed idealists -- provided you give all the schools' money to the politicians so they can "help you," of course.
The seeds of our destruction...
Common Core supporters sometimes suggest that with a single set of standards, states could determine if they’re doing worse than their neighbors, and that this knowledge will make them eager to reform their schools. They said something similar about the No Child Left Behind Act that Congress passed a decade ago: Parents would learn that schools were failing to make their kids “proficient” in English and math and would demand reform.
It didn’t work out that way. Many people got mad when the law labeled their schools failures. State and local officials responded by setting a lower bar for proficiency.
The first time a Marine Corps drill instructor tells you to "Drop and gimme fifty!", it's unlikely you'll complete fifty push-ups even if you were a high school athlete -- certainly not at the pace he wants you to do them, and especially since he's pushing his fist into your back the entire time. Let's say you get to 44 before you collapse, whereupon you get your ass chewed off, immediately whereafter you find yourself running around the grinder for half an hour screaming "I'm a little faggot girly man!" at the top of your lungs.
Question: What do you think is going to happen the next time the D.I. tells you to drop? You think he's going to shout "Drop and gimme forty-three!"? No, he's going to demand 60 push-ups. You know what? You'll get over 50 this time, which you couldn't do -- or didn't think you could -- just the day before.
You see the process, I'm sure. It's not rocket surgery. But somehow edu-crats and crusading reformers can't seem to figure out this very basic form of behavioral instruction. The politicians are only too happy to oblige these starry-eyed idealists -- provided you give all the schools' money to the politicians so they can "help you," of course.
The seeds of our destruction...
posted by Jar(egg)head at 13:16
1 Comments:
Common Core, No child left behind, Standardized testing, it is all about one thing, power. The Intelligentsia know better than you dumb hicks in fly over country, because they are smarter and went to those elite schools back East, and just are better than you, so you should listen to them. But you don't, and you don't elect them like you should and you think you know what is better for your child than some faraway Government. So they need to take that power away from you. How do they do that? They keep dumbing down the populace and making more dependent on them for a living. Before you know it, you will let them make all the major decisions in your life as long as you have enough money to get the new I-phone or X-box and the only vote you will care to cast is for the next American Idol.
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