Stanford researchers show we’re sending many children to school way too early
Parents wondering whether to wait a year to send their kids to kindergarten, take note: A new study from Stanford University shows that Danish kids who postponed kindergarten for up to one year showed dramatically higher levels of self-control.
“We found that delaying kindergarten for one year reduced inattention and hyperactivity by 73% for an average child at age 11,” Thomas Dee, one of the co-authors and a Stanford Graduate School of Education professor, said in a release.
Dee did his research with Hans Henrik Sievertsen of the Danish National Centre for Social Research, who told Quartz that the impact was strong and lasted a long time: “We were a bit surprised at how persistent the effect was.” The effect of delaying school on hyperactivity and inattention didn’t diminish over time, as they expected, but increased: in fact, waiting one year virtually eliminated the chance that an average kid at age 11 would have higher-than-normal scores on those measures.
Inattention and hyperactivity—the traits of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)—weaken a child’s self-control, and prior research shows that self-control levels in childhood are linked to achievement (recall the marshmallow test). In the Stanford study, kids with lower inattention and hyperactivity ratings had higher school assessment scores.
Countries like Finland and Germany already start school relatively late. Kids do not seem to fare worse later in life for the lost time, otherwise known as childhood: Finland scores well in international tests of 15-year-olds.
American kids used to start kindergarten at five years old. Today, about 20% of US kindergarteners are six, according to the study. While some of the change is due to moving forward birthday cut-off dates, much of it can be attributed to “red-shirting,” or parents holding kids back to give them a leg up. (Older kids are more able, and being more able makes them more confident, which then reinforces itself—or so the theory goes.) Wealthier parents and those of boys are most likely to do this, the study says.
The study was published by the National Bureau of Research last month. Starting kindergarten later has not been directly proven to improve test scores, so the researchers focused their research on mental health instead.
They used the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC), a recent and large-scale survey of Danish children which includes data for children at age 7 and 11 from a widely used and validated mental-health screening tool (54,241 parents responded to the parent-reported mental health survey for 7 year olds; 35,902 responded when the children were about 11 years old).
In Denmark, children are supposed to enter school in the calendar year in which they turn six. The researchers used census and education ministry data to look at children who were born just before and after the cut-off date to study the effects of age (when you are six, a difference of six-to-eight months is huge).
The study has limitations. Kids who delay kindergarten in Denmark have universal access to reasonably good pre-kindergarten, something woefully lacking in the US. If families don’t have access to that, they may benefit from having their children start kindergarten earlier.
One interesting hypothesis is posed: did attending school later allow kids more time to develop through unstructured play? Developmental psychology research emphasizes the importance of imaginative play in aiding children’s emotional and intellectual self-regulation. “Children who delay their school starting age may have an extended (and appropriately timed) exposure to such playful environments,” the study noted. Party time, kids.
Common Core isn’t preparing students very well for college or career, new report says
Student desks in Chandni Langford’s fifth-grade classroom, in Woodbury, N.J., on May 2. Langford wrote inspirational messages directly on the desks before students started four days of Common Core-aligned tests. (Crystal Ramirez via AP)
A new report that surveys curriculum nationally and reaches thousands of K-12 and college instructors as well as workplace supervisors and employees has some bad news about the Common Core State Standards: Many people in education and the workplace don’t think some of the English Language Arts and math standards — which are being used in most states — are what students and workers need to be successful in college and career.
The report, issued by ACT Inc., finds:
• There are gaps between some Core standards and what college instructors consider important for students to succeed — especially in the area of writing. For example, middle- and high-school teachers say that they have been emphasizing analyzing source texts and summarizing other authors’ ideas as required by the Core, but college instructors say they value this much less than the “ability to generate sound ideas — a skill applicable across much broader contexts.”
• Many elementary school teachers continue to teach math concepts that are not included in the Core standards for their grades but that they think are important.
• While some teachers have changed their instruction significantly to align with the Core, many haven’t.
• Though the Core standards were designed to prepare students for college and career, the survey found that many workplace supervisors and employees believe skills necessary for success are not part of the Core. Specifically, they say that the No. 1 skill that ensures success is “conscientiousness.”
The 2016 ACT National Curriculum Survey® looks at educational practices and college and career expectations, with results taken from surveys completed by thousands of K-12 teachers and college instructors in English and writing, math, reading, and science. This year, ACT asked workforce supervisors and employees to complete the survey too to see what specifically is being taught in these subjects at each grade level and what material is deemed to be important for college and career readiness.
The Common Core standards were designed to prepare students for successful career and college experiences, but the study shows that there are gaps between vision and reality. In a statement, Marten Roorda, chief executive officer of ACT Inc., said that the study’s conclusions are not intended as a “rebuke” of the Core, but that they “highlight the disconnect between what is emphasized in the Common Core and what some college instructors perceive as important to college readiness.”
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In March, more than 100 education researchers in California issued a brief saying that there is no “compelling” evidence that the Common Core State Standards will improve the quality of education for children or close the achievement gap, and that Common Core assessments lack “validity, reliability and fairness.” The researchers, from public and private universities in California — including Stanford University, UCLA, and the University of California at Berkeley — said in a brief that the Core standards do not do academically what supporters said they would and that linking them to high-stakes tests harms students.
Originally created and adopted by almost all states with bipartisan support, the Core has become increasingly controversial, with people at different ends of the political spectrum criticizing the initiative for different reasons. Some educators and researchers questioned the way the standards were written (whether, for example, there was any or enough input from working teachers) while others criticized the content of the standards, especially for young children. Some critics said standards-based education has never been shown to work well to improve academic achievement. Others said the Obama administration’s involvement in the initiative usurped local authority. The subject of the Core even became fodder for comedians, such as Louis C.K., who tweeted that the Core was negatively affecting his daughters in school.
1. There are discrepancies between some state standards and what some educators believe is important for college readiness.
Although standards are developed to help ensure that all students graduate from high school ready for college and career in English language arts and mathematics, some results of the ACT National Curriculum Survey suggest that some state standards may not reflect college readiness in some aspects.
In English Language Arts finding 2, high-school teachers and perhaps some middle-school teachers may be emphasizing certain approaches to writing over others due to a concern for source-based writing in response to the Common Core State Standards. But if so, college instructors appear to value some key features of source-based writing (the ability to analyze source texts and summarize other authors’ ideas) much less than the ability to generate sound ideas — a skill applicable across much broader contexts.
In Mathematics finding 1, some early elementary school teachers report that they are still teaching some of the topics omitted from the Common Core State Standards at certain early grade levels, perhaps in part because the teachers perceive that students are entering their classrooms unprepared for the demands that later mathematics courses will make of them.
Also in finding 1, less than half of middle-school and high-school teachers believe that the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics are aligned “a great deal” or “completely” with college instructors’ expectations for college readiness.
2. Calculator use is quite prevalent in the K-12 mathematics classroom.
According to Mathematics finding 2, most K-12 teachers teach students how to use calculators to perform computations and graph equations, and teachers in later grades commonly allow students to use calculators on classroom exams. This is true even as these teachers also continue to value and teach the skill of executing mathematics processes without the aid of technology.
3. There may be disagreement across K-12, college, and workforce about which mathematics topics are important to success in postsecondary STEM coursework and STEM careers. In K-12, there may also be disagreement about when these topics should be introduced in the mathematics curriculum.
Mathematics finding 4 indicates that although middle-school and high-school teachers generally agree about what mathematics skills are important to success in STEM courses and careers, college instructors or workforce respondents ascribed much less importance to those skills. In addition, many mathematics teachers in grades 4-7 report including certain topics relevant in STEM coursework in their curricula at grades earlier than they appear in the Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards. Perhaps these teachers fear that delaying these topics will prevent their students from success in later STEM coursework, or perhaps there is a lack of cross-content coordination with science to streamline what knowledge and skills are required of students at each grade.
4. Science educators believe that science achievement is best assessed using science assessments.
In Science finding 5, science educators in middle school, high school, and college overwhelmingly prefer a dedicated, standalone test that asks students to engage with authentic scientific scenarios (such as the ACT science test) as the best method of assessing student achievement in science.
5. Overall, workforce respondents appear to value a unique set of knowledge and skills as important to success in the workplace.
Results from both the Workforce portion of the ACT National Curriculum Survey 2016 and the education portions suggest that some of what workforce supervisors and employees value or do not value as important to entry-level success is not easily categorized, and sometimes perhaps unexpected. For example:
— Workforce finding 2 shows that majorities of both supervisors and employees place high value on the somewhat unusual skill of understanding the ethical use of information.
— According to Workforce finding 3, supervisors and employees report that workplace communication relies more heavily on face-to-face communication than on written communication. And, perhaps in keeping with this finding, workforce respondents also place high value on speaking and listening as contributors to positive outcomes for employees on the job. In addition, two of the six most highly rated workplace communication skills relate to the demeanor with which the employee presents information.
— As discussed in English Language Arts finding 1, supervisors indicated that employees in entry-level positions should be able to write narrative texts as well as informational and persuasive texts. Supervisors also value an employee’s ability to tailor communications to enhance understanding and to reconcile gaps in understanding.
— Mathematics finding 2 shows that workforce respondents value facility with certain kinds of technology (e.g., calculators, graphing calculators, equation editors) much less than educators do.
Gates Foundation failures show philanthropists shouldn’t be setting America's public school agenda
Tucked away in a letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last week, along with proud notes about the foundation’s efforts to fight smoking and tropical diseases and its other accomplishments, was a section on education. Its tone was unmistakably chastened.
“We’re facing the fact that it is a real struggle to make systemwide change,” wrote the foundation’s CEO, Sue Desmond-Hellman. And a few lines later: “It is really tough to create more great public schools.”
The Gates Foundation’s first significant foray into education reform, in 1999, revolved around Bill Gates’ conviction that the big problem with high schools was their size. Students would be better off in smaller schools of no more than 500, he believed. The foundation funded the creation of smaller schools, until its own study found that the size of the school didn’t make much difference in student performance. When the foundation moved on, school districts were left with costlier-to-run small schools.
Then the foundation set its sights on improving teaching, specifically through evaluating and rewarding good teaching. But it was not always successful. In 2009, it pledged a gift of up to $100 million to the Hillsborough County, Fla., schools to fund bonuses for high-performing teachers, to revamp teacher evaluations and to fire the lowest-performing 5%. In return, the school district promised to match the funds. But, according to reports in the Tampa Bay Times, the Gates Foundation changed its mind about the value of bonuses and stopped short of giving the last $20 million; costs ballooned beyond expectations, the schools were left with too big a tab and the least-experienced teachers still ended up at low-income schools. The program, evaluation system and all, was dumped.
The Gates Foundation strongly supported the proposed Common Core curriculum standards, helping to bankroll not just their development, but the political effort to have them quickly adopted and implemented by states. Here, Desmond-Hellmann wrote in her May letter, the foundation also stumbled. The too-quick introduction of Common Core, and attempts in many states to hold schools and teachers immediately accountable for a very different form of teaching, led to a public backlash.
“Unfortunately, our foundation underestimated the level of resources and support required for our public education systems to be well-equipped to implement the standards,” Desmond-Hellmann wrote. “We missed an early opportunity to sufficiently engage educators — particularly teachers — but also parents and communities, so that the benefits of the standards could take flight from the beginning.
“This has been a challenging lesson for us to absorb, but we take it to heart. The mission of improving education in America is both vast and complicated, and the Gates Foundation doesn’t have all the answers.”
It was a remarkable admission for a foundation that had often acted as though it did have all the answers. Today, the Gates Foundation is clearly rethinking its bust-the-walls-down strategy on education — as it should. And so should the politicians and policymakers, from the federal level to the local, who have given the educational wishes of Bill and Melinda Gates and other well-meaning philanthropists and foundations too much sway in recent years over how schools are run.
That’s not to say wealthy reformers have nothing to offer public schools. They’ve funded some outstanding charter schools for low-income students. They’ve helped bring healthcare to schools. They’ve funded arts programs.
The Gates Foundation, according to Desmond-Hellmann’s letter, is now working more on providing Common Core-aligned materials to classrooms, including free digital content that could replace costly textbooks, and a website where teachers can review educational materials. That’s great: Financial support for Common Core isn’t a bad thing. When the standards are implemented well, which isn’t easy, they ought to develop better reading, writing and thinking skills.
And foundation money has often been used to fund experimental programs and pilot projects of the sort that regular school districts might not have the time or extra funds to put into place. Those can be extremely informative and even groundbreaking.
But the Gates Foundation has spent so much money — more than $3 billion since 1999 — that it took on an unhealthy amount of power in the setting of education policy. Former foundation staff members ended up in high positions in the U.S. Department of Education — and, in the case of John Deasy, at the head of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The foundation’s teacher-evaluation push led to an overemphasis on counting student test scores as a major portion of teachers’ performance ratings — even though Gates himself eventually warned against moving too hastily or carelessly in that direction. Now several of the states that quickly embraced that method of evaluating teachers are backing away from it.
Philanthropists are not generally education experts, and even if they hire scholars and experts, public officials shouldn’t be allowing them to set the policy agenda for the nation’s public schools. The Gates experience teaches once again that educational silver bullets are in short supply and that some educational trends live only a little longer than mayflies.
The results of the 2014-2015 Kentucky testing, Hechinger reports, showed that in the elementary grades, black students lagged behind whites by 25 percentage points in reading proficiency and by 21 percentage points in math. And as Hechinger noted, those gaps have widened since the implementation of Common Core five years ago. Something’s wrong.
But don’t expect Hechinger to challenge the sacred cows of progressive education. It repeats without question the debunked Common Core talking points that the standards have “ramped up academic expectations,” that they are “tougher,” that they require a “deeper level of inquiry.” It quotes approvingly the Kentucky educators who say minority students are especially challenged by these supposedly tougher standards because they more likely come from less privileged backgrounds and so start the academic race behind their white peers. These are the reasons, say the educrats quoted by Hechinger, that black students aren’t keeping up.
So what does the Kentucky education establishment plan to do about it? According to Hechinger, exactly what one would expect them to do when their treasured experiment isn’t working — double down. They will give minority students “extra attention.” They’ll implement programs to “help teachers become more sensitive and culturally attuned to the level of diversity in their classrooms.” With the assistance of private funding, they’ll invest in “kindergarten preparedness.” They’ll pull black kids out of the regular class for more drilling with Common Core methodology.
Regarding this latter point, Hechinger focuses on problems that black students may have with Common Core math. And some of the statements it either makes or repeats about the now-notorious math standards are almost laughable.
Hechinger solemnly reports that the Common Core math standards focus on “cutting out the fluff that bogged down old standards in many states, and focusing instead on learning concepts in a progression that will teach kids what they need to know to master algebra in high school.” Thousands of irate parents might suggest that if Common Core’s requirement that students work math problems with rectangles and lattices isn’t “fluff,” then they don’t know what is. And as for students’ learning algebra in high school, note that high-achieving countries have kids learning algebra in middle school rather than waiting until high school.
The standards were “also intended to add a deeper level of inquiry to math class: making the ability to describe how you arrived at a solution as important as memorizing facts. Teachers are supposed to make children partners in the acquisition of knowledge, helping them to see that math isn’t only — or even mainly — about right answers, it’s about exploration and discovery, and the sort of critical thinking and problem-solving they’ll do in college someday.” This, supposedly, is what makes the math standards “tougher.”
But it apparently never occurs to the “experts” cited by Hechinger that all this “deeper level of inquiry” and “discovery math” nonsense is wrong-headed from the beginning — that this pedagogy actually obstructs students’ development of long-term working memory that would enable the “deeper learning” the experts claim to want.
And as we pointed out in our last piece, Common Core’s progressive pedagogy is especially harmful to disadvantaged students, who start out with less of the academic and cultural resources that form the foundation without which “discovery learning” is dead in the water. This was proven by Project Follow Through, the most extensive government education study in history, which followed 79,000 Head Start participants for years and discovered that they achieved much more, academically, with direct instruction rather than Common Core-type discovery learning.
Another factor that harms disadvantaged students vis-Ã -vis their wealthier classmates is that, as we’ve shown repeatedly, Common Core math locks students into a slowed-down progression that will leave them unprepared for higher education. Middle- or upper-class families can work around this problem by paying for tutors or supplemental courses. Disadvantaged kids are stuck. The result? An expanding achievement gap.
Until the media and the education establishment, in Kentucky and across the country, begin to examine their pedagogical holy writ and ask some hard questions, public education will continue to decline. And minority kids will continue to suffer the most.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in Louisville in 2015/Flickr-Creative Commons
COMMON CORE: YOUR CHILD IS BEING TAUGHT TO BE AN OBEDIENT GLOBALIST
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Ephesians 5:11 (KJV)
By now, most people have heard of “Common Core.” Many students and families have been negatively impacted by this so-called “National Education Initiative.” Kids who were A and B students before Common Core was implemented in their schools, are now struggling and their grades falling.
This has hit our family personally. Our grandson who is 15, and very smart, has been struggling with the new curriculum since it came out. He was an honor roll student up to that point, and has been talking to me for a couple of years about his frustrations. Today, while speaking with my grandson, he told me that it’s all over social media about Common Core.
I have researched Common Core, and my findings, though shocking and despicable, should not really surprise those of us who know what is happening in this incredibly evil world. And as many of my articles have shown, this too is traced back to the United Nations.
“The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquity be found to be hateful. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit: he hath left off to be wise, and to do good.” Psalm 36:1-3 (KJV)
THINGS PARENTS HATE ABOUT COMMON CORE
The senseless infuriating Math. See video on how to add 9 +6:
The Lies
“The American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess recently wrote about Common Core’s “half-truths,” which Greg Forster pointedly demonstrated he should have called “lies.” These include talking points essential to selling governors and other state leaders on the project, such as that Common Core is: “internationally benchmarked” (“well, we sorta looked at what other nations do but that didn’t necessarily change anything we did”); “evidence based” (“we know there is not enough research to undergird any standards, so we just polled some people and that’s our evidence“); “college- and career-ready” (“only if you mean community-college ready“); “rigorous” (as long as rigorous indicates “rigid”); and “high-performing nations nationalize education” (so do low-performing nations).”
Obliterating Parent Rights
“Common Core has revealed the contempt public “servants” have for the people they are supposedly ruled by—that’d be you and me. Indiana firebrand Heather Crossin, a mom whose encounter with Common Core math turned her into a nationally known activist, went with other parents to their private-school principal in an attempt to get their school’s new Common Core textbooks replaced.”
Watch Video:
Dirty Reading Assignments
“A red-haired mother of four kids read to our Indiana legislature selections from a Common Core-recommended book called “The Bluest Eyes,” by Toni Morrison. I’m a grown, married woman who enjoys sex just fine, thank you, but I sincerely wish I hadn’t heard her read those passages. I guess some people don’t find sympathetically portrayed rape scenes offensive, but I do. So I won’t quote them at you. If you have a perv-wish, Google will fill you in. Other objectionable books on the Common Core-recommended list include “Make Lemonade” by Virginia Euwer Wolff, “Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell, and “Dreaming in Cuban” by Cristina Garcia.”
Distancing Parents and Children
“A recent study found that the Common Core model of education results in parents who are less engaged in their kids’ education and express more negative attitudes about schools and government. Does it need to be noted that kids desperately need their pre-existing, natural bond with their parents to get a good start in life, and anything that attacks this is bad for both the kids and society?” [1] – source
Much of the findings about Common Core in this article, come from a very gifted and faithful journalist, Alex Newman of newamerican.com. The title of his piece is:
“UN, Obama, and Gates Are Globalizing Education Via Common Core”
“For over a year now, Americans have been up in arms over the Obama administration’s unconstitutional efforts to bribe and bludgeon state governments into surrendering control over K-12 education through the controversial so-called “Common Core” national standards — and the outrage is still growing. A peek beneath the surface, however, reveals that the nationalization of American schools is actually just one component of a much broader global agenda being pushed by the Obama administration, the United Nations, Bill Gates, and others: the globalization of education.”
In fact, just this week, an invitation-only conference hosted by former Florida Governor and pro-Common Core ringleader Jeb Bush entitled “Globalization of Higher Education” took place in Texas. Among the attendees: Hillary Clinton, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, former World Bank President Robert Zoellick, UNESCO officials, university presidents, and more. While higher education appears to be the next target of reformers, the globalization of K-12 schooling is on the verge of completion — at least if the American people do not rise up and stop it.” [2] – source
Are you surprised that Jeb Bush is promoting Common Core at every turn? I’m certainly not. I believe that he is following in the footsteps of his father, as an eager participant in ushering in the New World Order. Do NOT let this man fool you.
The globalists at the UN have been very busy, openly plotting to impose what many call the “World Core Curriculum” and at the same time, eugenicists are working to drastically reduce the world’s population. Don’t you find it interesting that these globalists, and their plans for our world, are not exposed by the National news media? I think it’s time for those of us who do care about these NWO initiatives, to state the truth – that the people who report the news are TOLD what to say. They are given the narrative, and commanded to stick to it.
We hear people say that George Soros controls the news. That is not here say – it’s TRUTH! The billionaires DO control what is divulged to the public. The useful idiots are there to do the bidding for those who own them. If you are not using the Internet, and credible websites to get the REAL news — you are deluded.
COMMON CORE WAS PUT IN PLACE FOR KIDS TO FAIL
That’s a pretty strong statement, right? I will prove this to be true.
On January 22 of this year, the Washington Post ran a story on a teacher who is finally speaking out about Common Core. Jennifer Rickert is a 6th grade teacher of 22 years in NY State. She has had it with the curriculum, and she is speaking her mind. She may very well pay a high price for doing so. I have the utmost respect for this woman.
The title of the article in the Washington Post is:
TEACHER: COMMON CORE TEST SET KIDS UP TO FAIL
“Clearly, this is a set-up for the kids to fail. As students learn, they make sense out of new information through schema. Schemata are cognitive frameworks to which they can add to, or modify, as they learn new information. One could compare the requirement for children to understand these passages to expecting them to master algebra before establishing number sense; there is no foundation to build knowledge upon.”
Over the last few years, I have seen many parents cry about their child’s New York State test scores, and I have seen students cry because they can’t complete the tests. I began to question the validity of the assessments as they became more and more daunting for my students, but I believed that if I continued to incorporate the Common Core Learning Standards and provide the highest quality instruction, my students would be evaluated fairly. During this period, I kept the faith in our great state of New York and our educational leaders, hoping that there would be a fair resolution for the children.
Optimistically, I thought that if I remained professional, continuing to comply with the mandates, eventually things would change. So, I remained quiet. Today, I am a broken woman.” [3] – source
SEE VIDEO OF TEACHER HERE:
COMMON CORE – GREEN, GLOBAL AND SO POLITICALLY CORRECT
“As the Obama administration, Bill Gates, the United Nations,…and other forces seek to finalize the decades-old effort to nationalize – and even globalize – education by bribing and bludgeoning state governments to impose Common Core, one of the key agendas behind the deeply controversial standards has been largely overlooked.
In essence, official UN documents and statements by top administration officials reveal a plan to transform American children, and students around the globe, into what globalists refer to as “global citizens” ready for the coming “green” and “sustainable” world order.” [4] – source (Emphasis mine)
MOLDING THE CHILDREN OF AMERICA TO BE GLOBALISTS
You see, Common Core is all about molding and re-shaping the children of America to be “obedient globalists.” The rights and interests of the individual are pushed aside, and the students are being indoctrinated and brainwashed to believe that they must only consider themselves part of the greater good.
We know that this “greater good” is the coming New World Order. Global warming and Green energy are merely a means to an end. The “end” here refers to the sustainable world order; a world where the population is controlled (under 500 million) and the minds of the people are also controlled by the coming One World Government.
This is why faith in God is in direct conflict with Agenda 21 and Common Core Initiative. Why would a government which plans to control the people, want to compete with a belief in, and allegiance to God? That is why all communist governments demand that their people be atheists. They want complete CONTROL over the masses.
“To prepare humanity for their vision, however, requires a new form of “education,” globalists admit. UNESCO calls it “Education for Sustainable Development.”
On its website, UNESCO, the self-styled global education agency, actually boasts of its plans. “The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) seeks to mobilize the educational resources of the world to help create a more sustainable future,” the UN outfit explains.
“Many paths to sustainability… exist and are mentioned in the 40 chapters of Agenda 21, the official document of the 1992 Earth Summit. Education is one of these paths. Education alone cannot achieve a more sustainable future; however, without education and learning for sustainable development, we will not be able to reach that goal.” Before the term “sustainability” was in vogue, the late UN Deputy Secretary General Robert Muller, the architect of UNESCO’s “World Core Curriculum,” also offered some insight into the purpose of UN-led, globalized pseudo-education.
The goals: “Assisting the child in becoming an integrated individual who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of ‘the greater whole.”
In other words, promote growth of the group idea, so that group good, group understanding, group interrelations and group goodwill replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group consciousness.” Put another way, smash individualism and notions of individual rights, replacing them with collectivism.” [5] – source
WHY WOULD THE U.N. WANT CHILDREN TO FAIL?
“In a stunning admission posted directly on UNESCO’s website in a document about the agency’s “Education for Sustainable Development” machinations, the outfit makes that abundantly clear.
“Generally, more highly educated people, who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people, who tend to have lower incomes,” the UN “toolkit” for global “sustainable” education explains.
“In this case, more education increases the threat to sustainability.”
Read that sentence again, and again. More education threatens their vision of “sustainability” (as do freedom, prosperity, humans, and more).” [2] – source
Are you beginning to see the vision of the U.N. and the horrific impact it is already having on children in our public schools??
Brethren, the evil of this shakes me to my core – no pun intended. I wrote this article, in hopes that people wake up! GO to your PTA meeting and open up a dialogue about Common Core. Write letters to the Board of Education of your school district. Write to your State Senators!! Write letters to the editor of your town newspapers!
I want to give a special thanks to Alex Newman. He has become a friend and provided me with additional information for this article. He is also a brother in Christ! Alex co-wrote a book which is called “Crimes of the Educators” published by WND Books, and is available now in your local Christian bookstores and on Amazon. It is a MUST read for all parents who have their children in public schools.
Stunning assessment of the data reveals Common Core test not a successful predictor of college success.
What does this mean for Connecticut and other SBAC states?
Common Core PARCC tests gets an “F” for Failure – By Wendy Lecker and Jonathan Pelto
The entire premise behind the Common Core and the related Common Core PARCC and SBAC testing programs was that it would provide a clear cut assessment of whether children were “college and career ready.”
In the most significant academic study to date, the answer appears to be that the PARCC version the massive and expensive test is that it is an utter failure.
William Mathis, Managing Director of the National Education Policy Center and member of the Vermont State Board of Education, has just published an astonishing piece in the Washington Post. (Alice in PARCCland: Does ‘validity study’ really prove the Common Core test is valid? In it, Mathis demonstrates that the PARCC test, one of two national common core tests (the other being the SBAC), cannot predict college readiness; and that a study commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Education demonstrated the PARCC’s lack of validity.
This revelation is huge and needs to be repeated. PARCC, the common core standardized test sold as predicting college-readiness, cannot predict college readiness. The foundation upon which the Common Core and its standardized tests were imposed on this nation has just been revealed to be an artifice.
As Mathis wrote, the Massachusetts study found the following: the correlations between PARCC ELA tests and freshman GPA ranges from 0.13-0.26, and for PARCC Math tests, the range is between 0.37 and 0.40. Mathis explains that the correlation coefficients “run from zero (no relationship) to 1.0 (perfect relationship). How much one measure predicts another is the square of the correlation coefficient. For instance, taking the highest coefficient (0.40), and squaring it gives us .16. “
This means the variance in PARCC test scores, at their best, predicts only 16% of the variance in first year college GPA. SIXTEEN PERCENT! And that was the most highly correlated aspect of PARCC. PARCC’s ELA tests have a correlation coefficient of 0.17, which squared is .02. This number means that the variance in PARCC ELA scores can predict only 2% of the variance in freshman GPA!
Dr. Mathis is not an anti-testing advocate. He was Deputy Assistant Commissioner for the state of New Jersey, Director of its Educational Assessment program, a design consultant for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and for six states. As managing director for NEPC, Dr. Mathis produces and reviews research on a wide variety of educational policy issues. Previously, he was Vermont Superintendent of the Year and a National Superintendent of the Year finalist before being appointed to the state board of education. He brings expertise to the topic.
As Mathis points out, these invalid tests have human costs:
“With such low predictability, you have huge numbers of false positives and false negatives. When connected to consequences, these misses have a human price. This goes further than being a validity question. It misleads young adults, wastes resources and misjudges schools. It’s not just a technical issue, it is a moral question. Until proven to be valid for the intended purpose, using these tests in a high stakes context should not be done.”
PARCC is used in New Jersey, Maryland and other states, not Connecticut. So why write about this here, where we use the SBAC?
The SBAC has yet to be subjected to a similar validity study. This raises several questions. First and most important, why has the SBAC not be subjected to a similar study? Why are our children being told to take an unvalidated test?
Second, do we have any doubt that the correlations between SBAC and freshman college GPA will be similarly low? No- it is more than likely that the SBAC is also a poor predictor of college readiness.
How do we know this? The authors of the PARCC study shrugged off the almost non-existent correlation between PARCC and college GPA by saying the literature shows that most standardized tests have low predictive validity.
This also bears repeating: it is common knowledge that most standardized tests cannot predict academic performance in college. Why , then, is our nation spending billions developing and administering new tests, replacing curricula, buying technology, text books and test materials, retraining teachers and administrators, and misleading the public by claiming that these changes will assure us that we are preparing our children for college?
And where is the accountability of these test makers, who have been raking in billions, knowing all the while that their “product” would never deliver what they promised, because they knew ahead of time that the tests would not be able to predict college-readiness?
When then-Secretary Arne Duncan was pushing the Common Core State Standards and their tests on the American public, he maligned our public schools by declaring: “For far too long,” our school systems lied to kids, to families, and to communities. They said the kids were all right — that they were on track to being successful — when in reality they were not even close.” He proclaimed that with Common Core and the accompanying standardized tests, “Finally, we are holding ourselves accountable to giving our children a true college and career-ready education.”
Mr. Duncan made this accusation even though there was a mountain of evidence proving that the best predictor of college success, before the Common Core, was an American high school GPA. In other words, high schools were already preparing kids for college quite well.
With the revelations in this PARCC study and the admissions of its authors, we know now that it was Mr. Duncan and his administration who were lying to parents, educators, children and taxpayers. Politicians shoved the Common Core down the throat of public schools with the false claim that this regime would improve education. They forced teachers and schools to be judged and punished based on these tests. They told millions of children they were academically unfit based on these tests. And now we have proof positive that these standardized tests are just as weak as their predecessors, and cannot in any way measure whether our children are “college-ready.”
The time is now for policymakers to stop wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, and thousands of school hours, on a useless standardized testing scheme; and to instead invest our scarce public dollars in programs that actually ensure that public schools are have the capacity to support and prepare students to have more fulfilling and successful lives.
Gates Foundation Admits Bungling Common Core, But Vows To ‘Double Down’
The head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has admitted in the organization’s annual letter that the roll-out of Common Core, which it heavily promoted, has been bungled in a way that created major difficulties.
Sue Desmond-Hellman is the CEO of the Gates Foundation and wrote the organization’s annual letter, published Monday. The letter touches upon a wide array of the massive foundation’s activities, from anti-smoking efforts to a campaign against sleeping sickness in Africa, but one area that receives significant attention is Common Core. The Gates Foundation played a major role in the creation of Common Core several years ago, donating tens of millions of dollars both to finance the creation of the standards and to promote their adoption across the United States.
Now, over half a decade later, Common Core remains in place across most of the country, but in a beleaguered position. Repeal efforts continue around the country, and states like New York are still seeing major boycotts of Common Core-aligned standardized tests.
In her Monday letter, Desmond-Hellman issues a mea culpa for Common Core’s difficulties, saying the Gates Foundation badly underestimated how difficult implementing Common Core would be, leading to substantial difficulties for teachers. She also admits the Gates Foundation failed to properly win over parents early on, implying this failure contributed to an ongoing grassroots backlash against the Core.
“Unfortunately, our foundation underestimated the level of resources and support required for our public education systems to be well-equipped to implement [Common Core,]” Desmond-Hellman says in the letter. “We missed an early opportunity to sufficiently engage educators – particularly teachers – but also parents and communities so that the benefits of the standards could take flight from the beginning.”
But Desmond-Hellman says this “tough lesson” only makes the Foundation more determined to stay behind Common Core and try to ensure ultimate success. She argues in Kentucky, one of the first states to adopt Common Core, there is evidence the standards are increasing college readiness among high schoolers. To reap these benefits, she says, schools and teachers just have to make it through the challenging years of implementation.
“Far too many districts report that identifying or developing Common Core-aligned materials is a challenge, meaning that teachers spend their time adapting or creating curriculum, developing lessons, and searching for supplemental materials,” she says. “So, we’re doubling down on our efforts to make sure teachers have what they need to make the most of their unique capabilities.”
To that end, Desmond-Hellman says the Gates Foundation was dedicating a portion of its vast resources to facilitating the development of Common Core-aligned curricula and instructional materials, in the hopes teachers will have an easier time teaching Common Core.
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