The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students
You know, as a parent I&#x27;d heard many things about &quot;Common Core&quot; from the media, other parents, and even family members. When my son got to kindergarten I was a bit worried about overbearing tests and the lack of a tried and true teaching method. Well, what we got were concepts. In kindergarten, my son learned things that I recognized as basic number theory...almost as if it came straight out of Andrew&#x27;s book of the same title. Nothing advanced, but the concepts were covered quite well. What he missed though was the ability to calculate quickly...this I had to get him to do at home, and it came in time. That being said, I think we need to divorce the common core from the testing standards. Pulling out of the teaching space, any good manager can tell you that applying a one size fits all approach to every person results in a lot of miss-match. Lets stop vilifying the common core, but rethink the way we&#x27;re forcing teachers to apply it and the tests that states mandate to go with it.<p>One wonderful point that the author makes is something I&#x27;ve been saying for years (as have many people):<p>What is called “the achievement gap” is actually an “opportunity gap.”<p>The opportunity gap is many things. It&#x27;s lack of a safe, low-stress home environment. It&#x27;s a lack of time from overworked parents. It&#x27;s lack of an environment that promotes kids social skills. Things like the boys &amp; girls club provide some help in neighborhoods that have them, but there needs to be much more. I&#x27;m extremely pessimistic on this point. I don&#x27;t think the willpower exists within our current generation of political power brokers (although I do have some hope) to do anything about the common core to all of our problems. Likely spending $1.59m per cruise missile is part of it, and the other part what we seem to value in society....locking people up vs. fixing the core issues (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;infographic&#x2F;economy&#x2F;education-vs-prison-costs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;infographic&#x2F;economy&#x2F;education-vs-prison...</a>). We should not have to eat war to exist (almost quoted disturbed vs. bad religion...but BR fit better).