There has been a flurry of negative news items regarding Common Core State Standards during the past week (who would have thought?).  A few of them so stand out that we want to draw your attention to them here.

Obama Administration Demands Teacher Redistribution for NCLB Waivers

Evidence that the piper must be paid when taking federal money (or even when taking federal waivers for No Child Left Behind) is quite clearly found in the latest demands of the Department of Education.  In moves that heretofore would have been considered way beyond Constitutional limits, the current administration seems determined to co-opt the rights of the States  to manage their own educational programs.  This obnoxious behavior, unfortunately, is becoming the status quo.  We thought that whether or not a state needed to implement unfunded mandates had long been settled.  As is the wont of these people, not only do they ignore Congress but also whatever precedents and rulings they find inconvenient.  Read more here:  NCLB Waivers

Psychologist: Common Core Tests Cognitive Child Abuse

This is disturbing.

What if your child was tested for language abilities and then the results were forwarded to his school?  Not much of a problem there, right?

But what if there were another test within this test that measured your child’s behavioral characteristics and then forwarded these results to the Federal government without your consent or knowledge? One might find a problem or two with that!

Dr. Gary Thompson

Dr. Gary Thompson is Director of Clinical Training & Community Advocacy at the Early Life Child Psychology & Education Center, Inc. in Utah.  He is somewhat upset at the Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) that is used by Common Core and explained his concerns quite succinctly recently in a letter to Utah’s State Superintendent of Education.

It makes for interesting and highly recommended reading.

A summarized report of that letter can be found HERE and the complete letter HERE.

Common Core, Social Media and a Teacher’s Displeasure with Parents.

It seems that some parents in Louisiana were taken to task for questioning what they saw going on the classroom and did so using social media.  One teacher wrote them a letter declaring, in so many words, they had no business talking about it until interviewing the teacher first.  This didn’t fly with the parents but the fur sure did!

Read more HERE.