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Title: Common Core Graduates Are The Worst Prepared For College
Source: [None]
URL Source: https://professorconfess.blogspot.c ... -core-graduates-are-worst.html
Published: Nov 11, 2019
Author: staff
Post Date: 2019-11-11 14:34:33 by Horse
Keywords: None
Views: 266
Comments: 12

I feel like plucking some low-hanging fruit today, and so let's take a look at Common Core. I've written of it before, how it ignores science, how it's just another excuse to inject more indoctrination into our schools, and how by changing the approach to how mathematics is learned, will further separate the children from their parents, since the latter won't have a clue how to help their kids with homework using the convoluted new methods.

Predicting the failure of Common Core is about as easy as predicting Epstein's "suicide" in prison, but now we get to see how well the "new ways of knowing" methods of Common Core are working, but it's now been 4 years since this idiotic idea was proposed--enough time for a kid go through all of high school, using Common Core as preparation for college.

My own eyeballs tell me something's gone wrong. Even though the endless cancer treatments make it impossible for me to teach a real class, I still do much free tutoring for the department. The advanced students fresh out of high school can no longer handle fractions unless they have a calculator to do it for them, and the non-advanced students can't handle fractions even with a calculator. This is just one example of how Common Core has gone a full step lower--before Common Core, the advanced students could add fractions without $50 of electronics to help, for example. And of course, as soon as a kind of fraction pops up which the calculator can't handle, it's mental lockdown time for the students. Even arithmetic like "15 divided by 5" has the "A" students needing a calculator now.

But that's my own eyeballs. How about something less anecdotal?

First Common Core High School Grads Worst-Prepared For College In 15 Years

I remind the gentle reader that the whole reason Common Core was slammed down the throats of our kids was because it was going to help them prepare for college, the ultimate goal (or so we're told repeatedly) of our public school system.

Further, the class of 2019, the first to experience all four high school years under Common Core, is the worst-prepared for college in 15 years, according to a new report.

While the above might lead the casual reader to think that things were way better 15 years ago, there's a factor here which causes confusion: how well a student is prepared is determined by "standardized" tests. Every decade or so, the standards on those tests are lowered, or at least dramatically changed. Anyone who compares tests of today to tests of, say, a century ago can quickly see something has gone horribly wrong in our education system, as it's very clear the capabilities of our young humans have dropped off very sharply--top students of today would horribly the older tests.

And so comparing student performance on tests of today to even a mere 15 years ago just isn't an "apples to apples" comparison. Still, just looking at the last few years of steady drops tells the tale. The people pushing Common Core needn't worry much, as I'm sure those standardized tests will change soon, so that Common Core will look better.

The gentle reader's grandchildren, assuming they'll even be capable of reading, will absolutely marvel at material that kids today could do, but I digress.

“Students in the U.S. made significant progress in math and reading achievement on NAEP from 1990 until 2015, when the first major dip in achievement scores occurred,” reported U.S. News and World Report. Perhaps not coincidentally, 2015 is the year states were required by the Obama administration to have fully phased in Common Core.

I can't answer in detail about the NAEP test, but much like with Epstein's "suicide," I predict with confidence that it'll be changed soon and scores will start heading up again.

As Common Core was moving into schools, 69 percent of school principals said they also thought it would improve student achievement. All of these “experts” were wrong, wrong, wrong.

The article lists many of those experts, but much like with the principals listed above, none of the "experts" actually teach human beings. All the experts who teach human beings (which strike me as the ones you should ask about matters involving teaching human beings) that I'm aware of, including myself, determined Common Core would fail, and it's not difficult to specifically identify why (as I discussed in four connected posts).

It's so weird how the people accept lies being poured into their ears, even when those lies harm their children. Granted, I shouldn't throw stones, considering how many lies of cancer doctors I've accepted.

On the same day the NAEP results were released, the college testing organization ACT released a report showing that the high school class of 2019’s college preparedness in English and math is at seniors’ lowest levels in 15 years. These students are the first to have completed all four high school years under Common Core.

Looks like they'll have to change the ACT, too. I should point out, it isn't just high school where we're seeing disaster, it's throughout the system. Again, no surprise, and I again remind we were promised that Common Core would really improve things.

“Readiness levels in English, reading, math, and science have all decreased since 2015, with English and math seeing the largest decline,” the report noted. Student achievement declined on ACT’s measures among U.S. students of all races except for Asian-Americans, whose achievement increased.

It's an interesting result about the Asians, but I suspect there's a reason for this. Recall that one of the main goals for Common Core was to make it impossible, or at least very difficult, for the parents to help their children. Without this help, children will struggle. But the Asians? Children of new immigrants especially have been unable to go to their parents for help, because the parents came from a radically different system already. So their scores weren't going to be as negatively impacted as the "non Asian" students, and the improvement isn't all that much, really.

It is thus still the case, as it was when the Coleman Report was released 53 years ago, that U.S. public schools do not lift children above the conditions of their home lives.

I cite the above to again reinforce the point: if the children can't get help from their parents, they will not get help from the schools. We've known this for at least half a century, and still our government works tirelessly to separate the kids from parents at every opportunity.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

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#1. To: Horse, HAPPY2BME-4UM, All (#0)

Student achievement declined on ACT’s measures among U.S. students of all races except for Asian-Americans, whose achievement increased.

Wonder where jew students come in on all this since they're theoretically the last non-Asian group to succumb to such BS as Common Coring.

Merely curious -- did any of you get parental help with your schoolwork? Didn't occur to me or my siblings and we didn't miss it..... "53 years ago" is precisely, I'm guessing, when they started the 'new math' and 'new spelling'.

_____________________________________________________________

USA! USA! USA! Bringing you democracy, or else! there were strains of VD that were incurable, and they were first found in the Philippines and then transmitted to the Korean working girls via US military. The 'incurables' we were told were first taken back to a military hospital in the Philippines to quietly die. – 4um

NeoconsNailed  posted on  2019-11-12   7:52:37 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Horse (#0)

In all government schools (and sadly, in many private schools also) critical thinking is prohibited. Any student bold enough to challenge or even question the Bolshevist BS is severely punished and mercilessly shamed.

And when critical thinking is suppressed, the brain dies. Young people can't think because they've never been allowed to.

StraitGate  posted on  2019-11-12   11:03:56 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: NeoconsNailed (#1)

Never really thought about it before, but no, my parents didn't help me with my schoolwork. But then, I don't remember ever having any homework until high school, and by then who asks his mom for help with anything?

That said, we homeschooled ours so I was quite involved. And I help my grandchildren all the time. Not to boast, but the oldest recently tested in the top 1% (of the USA, I think) for her age in verbal. She's 8 years old and reading Shakespeare. After that, Instauration!

StraitGate  posted on  2019-11-12   11:15:34 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: StraitGate, NeoconsNailed (#3)

In 1962 I had a World Literature class in high school. We stated reading Aristotle's Poetics. We read a couple of the Platonic Dialogues and the passage on the Cave in Plato's Republic. We then did the Oedipus Cycle. We then read Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Doestoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Melville's Billy Budd. Then we did some modern plays. Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, Mourning Becomes Electra. That was a one semester class. I was 16. No Jews in that class. No Latinos.One black girl. Her father was on the SF County School Board. We had a Republican mayor but that was in the days before JFK was assassinated and California voted for Republican Presidential candidates.

For extra credit I did a report on the historical persons who were the basis of the characters in Madame Bovary. I also read a better part of Ludwig's Life of Napoleon.

The Truth of 911 Shall Set You Free From The Lie

Horse  posted on  2019-11-12   11:33:18 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: StraitGate, Horse, NN, 4 (#3)

Harrison Bergeron" is copyrighted by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1961

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen- year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.

"Huh" said George.

"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.

"Yup, " said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts .

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer, " said George .

"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds," said Hazel a little envious. "All the things they think up."

"Urn, " said George.

"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I was Diana Moon Glampers," said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sunday- just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion . "

"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.

"Well-maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good Handicapper General."

"Good as anybody else," said George.

"Who knows better then I do what normal is?" said Hazel.

"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.

"Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?"

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.

"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out on the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch." She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a little while," she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while . "

George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't notice it any more. It's just a part of me."

"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few."

"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," said George. "I don't call that a bargain."

"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said Hazel. "I mean-you don't compete with anybody around here. You just set around."

"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people ' d get away with it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"

"I'd hate it," said Hazel.

"There you are," said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?"

If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.

"Reckon it'd fall all apart," said Hazel.

"What would?" said George blankly.

"Society," said Hazel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said?

"Who knows?" said George.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen."

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.

"That's all right-" Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard."

"Ladies and Gentlemen," said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred pound men.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse me-" she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive .

"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous."

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen-upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds .

And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.

"If you see this boy, " said the ballerina, "do not - I repeat, do not - try to reason with him."

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have - for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My God-" said George, "that must be Harrison!"

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood - in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

"Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become ! "

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering

people. "Let

the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful.

"Now-" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded.

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls."

The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again and was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weights to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.

It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it.

And then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time .

It was then that Diana Moon Clampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Clampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out.

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying" he said to Hazel.

"Yup, " she said.

"What about?" he said.

"I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television."

"What was it?" he said.

"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.

"Forget sad things," said George.

"I always do," said Hazel.

"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting gun in his head.

"Gee - I could tell that one was a doozy, " said Hazel.

"You can say that again," said George.

"Gee-" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."

"Harrison Bergeron" is copyrighted by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1961.

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2019-11-12   11:41:51 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: StraitGate (#3)

HahahaHAAAAA, love that! Just don't give her the Christopher treatment please :-s

And keep the boasting coming.

_____________________________________________________________

USA! USA! USA! Bringing you democracy, or else! there were strains of VD that were incurable, and they were first found in the Philippines and then transmitted to the Korean working girls via US military. The 'incurables' we were told were first taken back to a military hospital in the Philippines to quietly die. – 4um

NeoconsNailed  posted on  2019-11-12   12:33:54 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: Horse (#4)

Sounds great. What decades?

_____________________________________________________________

USA! USA! USA! Bringing you democracy, or else! there were strains of VD that were incurable, and they were first found in the Philippines and then transmitted to the Korean working girls via US military. The 'incurables' we were told were first taken back to a military hospital in the Philippines to quietly die. – 4um

NeoconsNailed  posted on  2019-11-12   12:35:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: NeoconsNailed (#7)

I took the class in 1962 and graduated in 1963. World was different before the Jews were allowed to kill the President and get away with it. No drug dealers in white high schools.

The Truth of 911 Shall Set You Free From The Lie

Horse  posted on  2019-11-12   15:38:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: Horse (#4)

Impressive! I haven't read half of those.

StraitGate  posted on  2019-11-12   18:56:52 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: Horse (#8)

I took the class in 1962 and graduated in 1963.

Graduating in '65, I didn't learn of marijuana 'till coming down here to UT. It was completely unknown in our HS at the time.

The cia hadn't established their importation program, yet.

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2019-11-12   19:19:36 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: Lod (#5)

Well, that's a depressing story.

StraitGate  posted on  2019-11-12   21:52:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: StraitGate (#11)

Both depressing and prescient, I fear.

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2019-11-12   22:06:22 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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