The Core Knowledge Blog

The RAND Review gives NCLB a mixed midterm. RAND makes a good case for national standards and curriculum, noting that while every state has complied with the law by testing students in required grades in reading and math, “student ‘proficiency’ on these tests has little common meaning across states.” The reports first recommendation: “Congress should require similar yardsticks for all states.” RAND also says “Congress should look beyond math, reading, and science” to determine proficiency. Hear, hear.

Writing in the New Yorker, Caleb Crain wonders what life will be like if people stop reading. In 1982, 57% of Americans had read a work of creative literature in the previous twelve months. Twenty years later it was down to 47%. Last month, the National Endowment of the Arts report “To Read or Not to Read,” showed correlations between the decline of reading and everything from income disparity and exercise to voting. Meanwhile spending on books is at a 20-year low. “More alarming are indications that Americans are losing not just the will to read but even the ability,” writes Crain, who backs it up with this eyebrow-raising statistic: Only 13% of adults are capable of such tasks as comparing viewpoints in two editorials.

Researchers at Oxford University have determined that there’s no such thing as a “cultural elite,” those who love opera and fine arts but wouldn’t stoop to anything as common as prime-time TV. Most people fall into four categories: univores, who only like popular culture; omnivores, who like everything from opera to soap opera; paucivores, who absorb very little culture; and inactives, who absorb practically none.

The Corvallis (Oregon) Gazette Times in a year-end education roundup replays the plans to redraw school attendance boundaries in the district. Franklin School, which is an Official Core Knowledge visitation site, has no attendance boundary and is open to families by lottery. It also has a long waiting list. Unfortunately, it also has the lowest percentage in the district of low-income students, who would benefit the most from Core Knowledge.

The Washington Post notes that teaching elementary math is tough and will get tougher since U.S. 15-year-olds trail peers from 23 industrialized countries in math. (23 is the number between 22 and 24). Math is too hard? Don’t teach it! A University of Pennsylvania professor says fractions are as “obsolete as Roman numerals” and recommends dropping them from the curriculum in favor of decimals. A five-tenths baked idea if ever I heard one.

In the Blogs… New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum adds her voice to the growing chorus of those complaining about standardized tests in the Big Apple. NYC Public School Parents spanks the DOE for its “condescending” response… . Mamacita at Scheiss Weekly lays on a passionate rant about the need to see every child as an individual. Hard to do, she notes, in classrooms that are bursting at the seams… . Check out the education jargon generator. Learn to throw around smart-sounding eduspeak like delivering meaning-centered assessment! Enhance child-centered critical thinking! Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for pointing this one out.