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Explore Common Core August 28th at MCC — 8 Comments

  1. Wonderful idea to open up discussion about this new education initiative to the public!

    I give U.S. Congressman Hultgren credit for having the vision to have this educational forum as there are a number of “pros and cons” about Common Core State Standards.

  2. Ah, yes, “Common Core” The Marxist Brainwashing Of America’s Schoolchildren. Let’s have a discussion. Preposterous! So glad my children are grown.

    “Three huge stoppers Common Core is throwing up in front of our school children in this K-12 disaster include:

    1. Dumbing down of all levels of America’s public school system;

    2. Taking away the rights of states to individually design, administer, and control their own schools;

    3. Setting up a 400 point “Data Mining” paradigm that will encode for the federal government a tracking system for each child. Such data will include parental income, babysitters, bus stops, and even political affiliations of Democrat or Republican/family voting patterns!” – Suzanne Eovaldi

  3. Common Core is designed to do to public education what ‘Affordable Healthcare’ did to healthcare – create chaos.

  4. I have a question for Randy…”Why on earth is the state handing their Constitutional duty over to the Federal Government?”

    Where is our state’s sovereignty?

  5. There are so many angles to Common Core is difficult to grasp.

    Public Education in the United States, and Illinois is one of the worst if not the worst offenders, is massively dysfunctional.

    Public Education is really political education since every school district in Illinois receives Federal funds, State funds, and local property tax funds.

    In Illinois public education about 75 – 80% is skimmed off the top for salaries and benefits, the remainder is spread around, and when there’s not enough a referendum is attempted.

    There is nothing more political than public education in Illinois.

    The real solution is to allocate x dollars to parents for their child’s eduction, and let the parent spend the money at a school of their choice.
    i.e. competition.

    The parent could choose public school, private school, online school, home school, etc.

    Now that is easier said than done because what is to say the parent doesn’t take the money and spend it on some addictive habit such as drugs, alcohol, gambling, or a family vacation.

    So there would need to be controls and checks and balances.

    Nonetheless.

    The current system be it NCLB, Common Core, or anything else is just mainly about politics.

    To say that your child is better off having the State of Illinois in charge of guidelines as opposed to
    Common Core is highly questionable.

    In Illinois the teachers unions (IEA, IFT) rule public education with an iron fist.
    While they have some good ideas certainly some of their top priorities are salary and benefit increases and one of their top avenues to achieve that at the state level is pension benefit increases in 38 of 40 years from 1971 – 2011.

    And how does legislation get passed in Illinois?

    It doesn’t get passed unless it goes through Michale Madigan.

    You trust Michael Madigan more than Common Core?

    Because Michael Madigan is Illinois Politics.

    Now Common Core is not the salvation.

    Basically Bill Gates is trying to figure out how kids are improving year over year.

    That in a nutshell is what Common Core is really about.

    Of course that’s an oversimplification.

    And easier said than done.

    It turned into politics of course because it’s public education which is all about politics.

    NCLB allowed states to dumb down their tests to meet the ever more stringent NCLB guidelines.
    Illinois elected to do so.

    ISATs were dumbed down.

    It would be interesting to see who the speakers/experts will be at the forum.

    Since most of your property tax dollars go to public education, even if you don’t have children in public schools, you should be interested in how the government is spending your money.

    One only has to talk to elementary, middle school, high school, and college graduates who have a “B” average to determine something is wrong with public education.

    Lots of those kids are where you would expect a B student to be, but lots are not.

    Something is wrong.

  6. By the way ISAT standards are now being increased in response to Common Core so in Illinois at least ISATs seem to be increasing standards not decreasing them.

    Each state has its own standards.

    The Federal Government can’t set education standards, that’s left up to the states.

    So Common Core is a set of guidelines not standards.

    The State Board of Education has wiggle room to set their own standards.

  7. Also the Federal Government can’t require the States to Adopt Common Core but they can and did create financial incentives for the States to do so.

    Really if nothing else parents should take away they need to be involved in their students education and not just rely on what government policy makers, administrators, and educators decide to teacher your child.

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