10 June 2013 The tea
parties - all they know they learned from as misspelled poster
“The tea party is wrong on the Common Core curriculum
By Jack Markell, Published: June 9
Jack
Markell, the governor of Delaware, co-chaired the Common Core
Standards Initiative.
“Over the past three years, 45 states have adopted the Common Core
State Standards. These objectives were developed to ensure that
America’s students acquire the academic skills they need to reach their full
potential.
“Yet the Common Core standards are under serious assault by the
tea party movement, which argues that they were developed by the federal
government [“A new battle for tea party,” front page, May 31].
This assertion lacks any basis in fact. The Common Core was developed during a
year-long process by state leaders — Democrats and Republicans — along with
highly respected members of the business community and people in education,
including many teachers…”
Cassi
Creek: This aversion to upgrading
education standards to a nationwide minimum seems to me to be the very least we
can do to provide a better education to public school students.
In the past there has been a severe
geographic pattern of inadequate schools in the southern United States. Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi,
Tennessee, and Texas always rank at the bottom in dollars spent per student and
in student performance on standardized testing.
The states’ rights gangs and the local
educational standards mob are components of the gene pool for the southern U.S.
that seem to be determined to undermine all attempts to upgrade education to
the point at which U.S. students can compete head-to-head in the STEM curricula
that will determine the nation’s place in the developing global economy. Will it be German, French, Russian, Indian, and
Canadian graduates who take over the space programs, who expand the scope of
cancer and other disease treatment, while American high school graduates are
found to be increasingly under or unqualified to work in the high tech world
that has become today’s reality?
One
need only look at the recent Texas test book fight that resulted in
frighteningly inaccurate revisions of history by board members who honestly
believe that biblical characters must have spoken English, to understand just
how dangerous local educational standards have become.
While we are 50 separate states, we
need a national standard for education.
If left to their own mechanisms, the red states will continue to decline
in money spent per student and in the quality of education provided. We’ll have the dichotomy the military families
mention on an even wider scale.
We
can’t afford nor should we allow any further decline in the quality of our nation’s
schools.
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