Does the Education Superintendent Matter?

NOT AS MUCH AS IT SHOULD A recent debate between the two major party candidates vying to become South Carolina’s next Superintendent of Education failed to reveal many substantive policy differences. Both candidates agreed the state’s educational funding system was “outdated,” both expressed support for a limited level of “public school choice,” and neither candidate […]

Common Core: It’s Bigger Than You Think

COMMON CORE IS EVERYWHERE – BY DESIGN. REJECTING IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN A BILL. Across the country, parents and teachers are waking up and forcing their states to reject the nationalized standards system, Common Core. This year in South Carolina, a large grassroots effort forced the General Assembly to pass legislation forcing new standards to […]

Why Common Core Fails Special Needs Students

ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL IS GREAT, UNLESS YOU’RE THE WRONG SIZE Common Core, whatever else may be said about it, is a one-size-fits-all standards regime. Parents of special needs children therefore have every reason to oppose its implementation, whether by name or in some other “Common Core-aligned” form. Although the standards provide for some accommodations for special needs students, […]

Why Teachers Should Hate Common Core

IN A WORD: INFLEXIBILITY “Common Core has nothing to do with curriculum, instruction, or testing.” No matter how many times Common Core’s most prominent supporters make that claim, it’s still false. Like any set of strict academic standards, Common Core standards directly affect these areas – and thus remove the ability of teachers to use […]

The Problem(s) with Common Core

WILL COMMON CORE PREPARE YOUR KID FOR SUCCESS? UNFORTUNATELY, NO. Over the last year, we’ve seen a number of pro-Common Core publications that ask and purport to answer some variation of this question: “Will the Common Core State Standards best prepare students for success in college, career, and life?” The answer is No. Standards themselves can’t […]

Withdrawing from Smarter Balanced: Q&A

SOUTH CAROLINA MAY WITHDRAW FROM THE COMMON CORE-ALIGNED CONSORTIUM KNOWN AS SMARTER BALANCED. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? With the recent move by the South Carolina Department of Education to remove South Carolina from the Smarter Balanced consortium, there’s a lot of understandable confusion about standards and assessments in state schools. What follows is a brief, […]

Stopping Common Core: Is It Too Late?

LAWMAKERS SHOULD  END IT – WITHOUT EQUIVOCATION AND WITHOUT DELAY When it comes to Common Core’s adoption in South Carolina, there is plenty of blame to go around. The federal government could be blamed for bribing states to adopt Common Core through Race to the Top (RTT) grants. At the state level, current and former executive branch officials, […]

Anti-Common Core Legislation: Update

The K-12 The Education Subcommittee met Wednesday to discuss bills related to Common Core, most notably, S.300 that, as originally written, would prohibit the use of Common Core academic standards in South Carolina. The strike and insert amendment proposed by Senator Mike Fair, however, would remove this flat-out prohibition from the bill, while adding several […]

Lawmakers Meet on Common Core – 3.5 Years Too Late

WHY NOW? On Wednesday February 5, the Senate Education K-12 Subcommittee heard six short presentations on Common Core – three for and three against – in a packed room full of mainly Common Core detractors. What was peculiar about the meeting is two-fold, and has nothing to do with what actually happened at the meeting […]

Education Oversight Committee Passes the Buck on Common Core

  COMMITTEE WON’T MAKE DECISION, CITIZENS PAY THE PRICE In February of 2012 the State Board of Education approved the use of SMARTER Balanced assessments – the tests made by a “consortium” of states used to assess Common Core standards. Nearly two years later, the Education Oversight Committee (EOC) has yet to approve the use of these […]