Post by Chris_Wendt on Dec 10, 2014 12:48:28 GMT -5
Yesterday I ranted on about the Presidential education initiative wherein the School-Marm-in-Chief enlisted the agreement of the nation's Five Largest School District to offer Computer Science to their general education population, with the intend to develop among their graduates people who could write Apps for Smart Phones.(See Presidential Computer Science Initiave (link). This percolated in my mind since writing and posting it, with the following pearls resulting from that process:
- Public Education is still at State Responsibility...
- In most (all?) states, the State Board of Education sets policy for all school districts in that state.
- How do the State Education Commissioners of New York, Illinois, California, Texas and Florida reconcile having their state's LARGEST SCHOOL DISTRICT cutting deals with the President, which are completely asynchronous with the entire rest of their state's school districts?
- What force of law would these "Agreements" have, if any state decided, totally within their authority, that any of these BIG school districts should not offer the courses, perhaps because doing so would run contrary to that states' own educational priorities...especially when all of those BIG districts have huge performance issues in Common Core Curriculum performance, and 4-year cohort graduation rates?
- Hundreds of Millions of federal dollars are subsidizing the two multi-state consortia developing Common Core Curriculum Assessments (PARCC and SBA); four of the five BIG districts are in states participating in one or the other consortium (Texas has not adopted the Common Core)(New York in a member of PARCC, but has bolted and made their own misguided Assessments). Conceptually, at least, having one-off Presidential Agreements that are not aligned with any elements of the Common Core (concept, curriculum...etc.) seems to place at risk the very core of the concept: that it is a COMMON learning platform.
- Oh, there is also a Common Core work group developing a Common Core SCIENCE curriculum. I imagine that it would suck to be a member of that working group, reading about the President undermining your group's study and work products. Think about 699 NY School Districts being handed a Common Core Science Curriculum that does not contain, or which significantly diminishes any emphasis on the teaching of "coding" in the name of "science", while one BIG district, New York City, is bound by its Agreement with Obama to teach this stuff...in lieu of, or in competition with actual Common Core Science courses.
End of today's...
...diatribe.
Chris Wendt