Common Core: Child of the Edublob

Back in 2010, when Jim Rex was Superintendent of Education in South Carolina, the state adopted the Common Core Curriculum pushed as the answer to all things wrong with education in the United States. Now the state is in its second transitional year as it moves to the "new" standards.

If you peruse the shift from previous state guidelines in the "language arts," for example, you will discover that 80 percent (at least) are simply restated and reworded versions of the old. New additions are not an improvement, nor are they more rigorous. In the high school grades classic literature is downplayed in favor of "relevant" materials. The program is a fraud, perpetrated, as with most educational reform, by those farthest removed from the classroom.

Now teachers will spend hours learning that (made-up example) previous standard E4.16 should now be marked into lesson plans as ELA5.23a.  No doubt that work will contribute mightily to students' learning.

States (including SC) adopted the standards in the hopes that they would get more funding from the federal government, including Race to the Top funding, but the entity that really rakes in the money is the edublob. Imagine the financial opportunities for generating new teaching materials, new workbooks, new tests, new workshops, and other general accoutrement for administrative, teacher, and student readiness!

Don't you wonder how much your local school district has already spent on this exercise in wheel-spinning?