Sep

29

I liked the conclusion of this article:

"I predict that if we continue implementing Common Core, average students will drop out of math as early as they are allowed. Even math-bright students will hate math. Tutoring companies will proliferate to serve wealthy families. The educational gap between rich and poor will widen. If we want to destroy math and science education in this country, keep Common Core."

Ed Stewart writes: 

In my opinion a lot of the need for "change" is very likely driven by PC motives, which is why when it is looked at logically from a mathematics perspective it makes no sense. My guess is (using an example from article) it was hoped that allowing calculators for everything and allowing an increased use of "cheat sheets" would open up math for more equal distribution of supposed talent.

In terms of pace when I was in school we did have an accelerated math program but one had to test into it with an IQ test. The notion that a curriculum can be designed that can shuffle through all kids to be "above average" is part of the problem. It is a lack of realism.

I strongly disagree with the author that non-college kids are necessarily sent to dead-end jobs while college kids are not. Reality is working in a cube with a degree is just as much a dead in job as others, particularly in the outsourcing era where such work has been massively devalued. The notion that keeping ones hands clean is always better is just a bias. Guys who get involved in a field that actually builds something or is otherwise productive such as Natural resources will be better off vs. a twin of equal ability shuffled through the "college" program. And clearly many who see that opportunity follow this different track. Charles Murray is right we'd be better off admitting college is useless for all but the relative few - making it more accepted for people of even moderate above-average ability to go right into a job for training.

Stefan Jovanovich writes:

The need for "change" in education is driven by nothing more than the same financial incentives that operate in all markets where the customers are not the actual users of the product. Even military contractors have to deal with the fact that at some point the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have to use the weapons; and, if they don't work or work well, people get hurt, and then the survivors get mad and resolve to get even. Elementary and secondary public education in America has no such feedback mechanism. No school keeps data on the future trades and incomes of their students; in fact, in the name of "privacy" (that Federal Constitutional right that first trimester unborn children lack but the rest of us have), schools are prohibited from collecting and keeping such data. So, in education, "change" happens not because of any customer demand but because of the incentives it offers to the people who manage and create the changes. Every curriculum change means more money for the creators of the curriculum and, far more important, more paid time on and off time for research studies, training and conferences - all of which guarantee time away from the nasty children.

It does not matter whether or not the change works for the customers; indeed, there is a real incentive for the change to fail because that has invariably meant that more money, not less, should be spent on schooling. (Er, sorry, not "spent", "invested")

P.S. There is no evidence that public "job training" works any better than classroom education in the academic subjects; "job training" is another field where the government pays the money and the customers' feedback is completely ignored. The roughnecks who are getting semi-rich in North Dakota right now learned their trade from the informal apprenticing that comes from having an uncle in the oil bidness.


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