Tag: Education reform

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Eying a White House bid, New Jersey’s Chris Christie faces economic challenges at home

New Jersey Governor Christie gives news conference in Trenton

Eying a White House bid, New Jersey’s Chris Christie faces economic challenges at home

NEWARK, N.J. — As he casts his eye toward a potential presidential bid, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie must also take on some work at home. First up: a statewide address expected to touch on nagging economic issues that could complicate his political plans.

Observers expect Christie to use his fifth State of the State address on Tuesday to define his tenure as governor on his own terms, while not missing the chance to articulate his rationale for a potential run for president. (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

https://www.startribune.com/politics/national/288230971.html

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The average college freshman reads at 7th grade level

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The average college freshman reads at 7th grade level

Maggie LitReporter@MaggieLitCROon Jan 06, 2015 at 10:47 AM EDT

Renaissance Learning found that the average book assigned for summer reading at college has a seventh-grade reading level.

Most college textbooks and reading material written before 1970 require mature reading skills according to Arkansas Prof. Emerita Sandra Stotsky.

The average U.S. college freshman reads at a seventh grade level, according to an educational assessment report.

“We are spending billions of dollars trying to send students to college and maintain them there when, on average, they read at about the grade 6 or 7 level, according toRenaissance Learning’s latest report on what American students in grades 9-12 read, whether assigned or chosen,” said education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky.

Stotsky, a Professor Emerita at the University of Arkansas, served on the Common Core Validation Committee in 2009-10, during which she called the standards “inferior.” She claimed the Common Core left out the very standards needed to prepare students for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers.

“The average reading level for five of the top seven books assigned as summer reading by 341 colleges using Renaissance Learning’s readability formula was rated 7.56 [meaning halfway through seventh grade],” Stotsky told Breitbart Texas.

The study also found that most high school graduates don’t do much with mathematics past eighth-grade compared to students in other high-achieving countries.

In addition, the lack of “difficulty and complexity” found in high school reading material is indicative of what colleges can assign to students once they enter higher education and professors aren’t requiring incoming students read at a college level.

https://campusreform.org/?ID=6174

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The Next Step in School Choice

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The Next Step in School Choice

Education Policy, The Heritage Foundation

In their classic work, Free to Choose, Milton and Rose Friedman described four basic ways of spending money. People can either spend their own money or someone else’s money, and they can either spend it on themselves or on someone else. The Friedmans argued that people generally have a stronger incentive to economize when spending their own money than when spending someone else’s money. Likewise, people generally have a stronger incentive to maximize value when spending money on themselves than when spending on someone else.

The lack of incentive to reduce costs or maximize value is particularly acute when the spender does not know whose money he is spending or on whom he is spending it. For instance, a person is more likely to purchase a lavish dinner with a corporate expense account than when a close friend is paying. Likewise, someone is less likely to maximize value when buying a gift for the office holiday gift exchange than when buying a gift for a significant other. In the latter scenario, the spender’s knowledge of what would provide the greatest value is also considerably higher when he knows the recipient well.

Public-school officials, like all government bureaucrats, primarily engage in the worst kind of spending: They spend other people’s money on children who are not their own. As competent and well-meaning as they may be, their incentives to economize and maximize value are simply not as strong as those of parents spending their own money on their own children…

If traditional public-school systems work by spending someone else’s money on someone else’s children, taxpayer-funded vouchers allow parents to spend taxpayer money on their own children. Parents have a strong incentive to maximize the educational value that their children receive from the voucher, but since a traditional voucher must be spent in a lump sum, there is no incentive to economize below the value of the voucher.

Though Education Savings Accounts are still taxpayer funded, the way they are structured makes for a dynamic closer to the one involved in spending your own money on your own children: Parents still insist on the best quality education but have more incentive to find a bargain. ESAs are not the equivalent of cash because the funds are restricted to approved categories of educational expenses, but they do provide families with much greater flexibility in how to spend (or save) the funds than vouchers do. As a result, parents have the ability and incentive to economize in a manner that more closely resembles their spending of their own money — with both economy and value in mind — which in turn fosters the development of a real education market

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Ridgewood educators prepare for changes

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Ridgewood educators prepare for changes

SEPTEMBER 4, 2014    LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2014, 3:26 PM
BY JODI WEINBERGER
STAFF WRITER

At the annual all-staff convocation event at Benjamin Franklin Middle School on Tuesday, the theme of “Celebrating Change” was given a bittersweet embrace.

A backdrop on the stage used the metaphor of a caterpillar transitioning to a butterfly to highlight the theme, but those at the event seemed less convinced that the transformation of curriculum to meet the new state standards would end as beautifully.

Each person who spoke had something to say about the three biggest changes in the district: the one-to-one Chromebook initiative, Common Core and standardized tests.

“This year’s convocation theme is ‘Celebrating Change,’ and to be perfectly frank, this is not something that comes naturally to me,” said Michael Yannone, president of the Ridgewood Education Association (REA). “I am a bit of a traditionalist; I am a history teacher after all. If it has worked successfully in the past, why change?”

His speech gave a scathing criticism of the way education reform happens in America.

“The current educational reform movement is not about spending money to address the needs of schools and students, it is about making money,” Yannone said. “Perhaps I am too cynical, but the playbook seems obvious to me. Step one: Make Americans believe that their public schools are bad by bashing teachers and cherry picking faulty data. Politicians then get involved and support costly one-size-fits-all solutions that their donors stand to make a nice profit from.”

Yannone said the REA plans to partner with a new parent-led advocacy group, Ridgewood Cares About Schools, whose members have urged the district not to adopt the Common Core curriculum and oppose the increase in standardized testing for students.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/education/ridgewood-educators-prepare-for-changes-1.1081319#sthash.mulwngrP.dpuf

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Common Core money man Bill Gates defends K-12 experiment in ABC News interview

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Common Core money man Bill Gates defends K-12 experiment in ABC News interview
March 17, 2014
Ben Velderman

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Microsoft founder Bill Gates appeared on a Sunday talk show to respond to criticism of Common Core, the one-size-fits-all math and English learning standards that are being used in schools in 45 states.

In a softball interview with ABC “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos, Gates addressed concerns that Common Core will undermine local and state control over public education.

“The Common Core is not a curriculum. It doesn’t tell you how to teach. It’s not a federal takeover. Nobody’s pushing for that,” Gates said.

Gates – whose personal foundation has reportedly spent nearly $200 million to get the Common Core experiment off the ground – said the nationalized learning standards are better than states’ previous learning expectations because they emphasize genuine understanding of the material, instead of rote memorization.

“I believe 10 years from now, kids’ competence in math, kids’ scores in math, can be improved a lot,” Gates predicted.

“I think this is going to be a big win for education.”

There are a couple of major problems with Gates’ answers. We’ll start with his predictions that Common Core will help America compete in the global marketplace.

The Common Core standards were not piloted on actual students before they were adopted and implemented back in 2010 and 2011. The fact is no one can say with certainty if Common Core’s approach to math – which emphasizes “critical thinking” over memorizing basic information – is going to produce a generation of more and better mathematicians.

In fact, there are a number of thoughtful scholars who expect Common Core will have a disastrous effect on the national goal of preparing students for a career in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

That same uncertainty applies to Common Core’s English standards which focus on non-fiction, “informational texts” at the expense of classic literature.

Gates and company believe more practical reading assignments will better prepare students for the ever-changing economy. Critics say the standards will produce an ignorant citizenry that won’t be prepared to think seriously about history, culture and politics.

This means Gates’ prediction that the “higher standards” will yield great academic fruit is just a wild guess. The opposite could just as easily turn out to be true.

But Gates’’ biggest misstatement was his assertion that Common Core doesn’t represent a “federal takeover” of America’s public education system.

While we agree that Common Core isn’t an outright takeover of the nation’s public schools, we believe it does give D.C. bureaucrats backdoor access to the nation’s classrooms.

https://eagnews.org/common-core-money-man-bill-gates-defends-k-12-experiment-in-abc-news-interview/

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Cerf’s Out, Activists and Parents Look to Sink Common Core

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Cerf’s Out, Activists and Parents Look to Sink Common Core
NJTP

New Jersey Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf, who was a major proponent of Common Core curriculum is stepping down at the end of the month, according to a published report in the Bergen Record.

Carolee Adams, Eagle Forum President NJ, attributes the about-face to a concerted effort across the state to educate legislators, parents and NJ taxpayers on the perils of implementing the untested curriculum that violates traditional American values and privacy of students and their families with invasive data mining techniques.

Carolee and Tea Party activists across the state worked hard to turn back the progressive tide inherent in Common Core curriculum.

Thanks to those efforts, radical education activists lost their beach-head in NJ schools. No small accomplishment.