Facts about Common Core

Even American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten—a Common Core supporter—acknowledges that top-down nature in which the standards were imposed on the states. “The public wasn’t involved,” she said to reporters in late 2013. “Parents weren’t involved. The districts weren’t involved.”

James Milgram [Stanford professor emeritus] and Sandra Stotsky’s [prof. of education emerita at the Univ. of Arkansas] research report showed that students who don’t have arrive on a college campus with a solid foundation in precalculus have much less chance of successfully obtaining a college degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). They said “Clearly, if this country [America] is seriously interested in 21st century mathematics and science, then there is even more reason to question Common Core’s mathematics standards.”

Even University of Arizona professor William McCallum, one of the lead writers of the math standards, admitted that they are not rigorous compared to other math-savvy countries.

A Reuters article explains how [standardized testing and data collecting from the tests] will supposedly work:

Does Johnny have trouble converting decimals to fractions? The database will have recorded that--and may have recorded as well that he finds textbooks boring, adores animation and plays baseball after school. Personalized learning software can use that data serve up a tailor-made math lesson, perhaps an animated game that uses baseball statistics to teach decimals.

Johnny’s teacher can watch his development on a “dashboard” that uses bright graphics to map each of her students’ progress on dozen, even hundreds of discrete skills. [read more]

A 2013 story from Smithsonian magazine explained how one New York company is proposing that we allow facial recognition software into the classroom:

Here’s how it would work. Using facial recognition software called EngageSense, computers would apply algorithms to what the cameras have recorded during a lecture of discussion to interpret how engaged the students have been. Were the kids’ eyes focused on the teacher? Or, were they looking everywhere but the front of the class? Were they smiling or frowning? Or did they just seem confused? Or bored? [read more]

One teacher interviewed for the story speculated that in five years this program will be used in classrooms all throughout the United States.

The Chicago Tribute also reports that students could soon be wearing “sensor bracelets” in the classroom to help track their engagement:

The biometric bracelets, produced by a Massachusetts startup company, Affectiva Inc., send a small current across the skin and then measure subtle changes in electrical charges as the sympathetic nervous system responds to stimuli. The wireless devices have been used in pilot tests to gauge consumers emotional response to advertising.

Gates [Foundation] officials hope the devices, known as Q Sensors, can become a common classroom tool, enabling teachers to see, in real time, which kids are tuned in and which are zoned out. [read more]

Source: Conform.

As Pink Floyd might say, Welcome to the Machine.

No technology in the classroom will make up for a incompetent teacher. If the students aren’t motivated, curious, or even passionate they probably won’t  learn. And if the teacher is just there for a paycheck—no passion for what he/she is teaching—the student’s won’t be passionate for learning either. The students will pick up on that.