The Top 40

I work with Common Core. This is not so much a case of an "educational fad" of little substance as it is a superb example of what happens when the powers-that-be hijack what might have been a good idea, swallow it, chew it to bits, and send it down the alimentary canal of both the educational and political systems (now virtually fused solidly together), and excrete it as a steaming pile of you-know-what that bears no resemblance to whatever the original intent was.

It also doesn't help that the originators are clueless boobs who don't know how to protect their original product. They left themselves wide open for depredation by offering "Common Core" up for the whole nation as one standard. Its very intent of "bigness" is what ruined it.

Whatever happened to "reading, writing, arithmetic" and if you don't pass you don't advance?

Whatever happened to "reading, writing, arithmetic" and if you don't pass you don't advance?

That was sorta/kinda the original intent of Common Core. Common Core also assumed that young children are quite capable of absorbing a lot of knowledge. The biggest opposition to Common Core hasn't been from the "right," but from a mass of teachers who are in a panic because Common Core requires their semi-literate students to read a lot more than they're capable of.

Not exactly the narrative you hear about Common Core, including here, is it? But, hey, when the powers-that-be are so corrupt and venal that they'll sabotage anything to make it fit their agenda, it makes no difference anymore what Common Core's original intent was. Scrap it and let local school systems decide for themselves. Oh, and more home-schooling and/or private academies would be a good idea too.

To me, a non-educator who oversaw educating six kids, and helped with grandkids, and soon great-grandkids, the words Common Core herald a welcome return to basics, i.e. "reading, writing, arithmetic" and if you don't pass you don't advance. I suppose the intent in naming it Common Core was to get people like me to support it, or at least not oppose it.