Professor Milgram's Full Review w/ Detailed Grade Level Comments 
Download now or preview on posterous Milgram's_Review_w_Detailed_Comments_on_Common_Core_Math_Standards.pdf (1471 KB)
Friday, July 30, 2010
Review of Common Core Math Standards
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Silenced Dissent
Expertise Lost at Crucial Time
7.29.10 - GOVERNOR PATRICK has purged the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education of the two members who held the deepest suspicions of the newly-adopted national Common Core standards in math and English. On a number of other issues,
Sandra Stotsky and Thomas Fortmann were the two board members who posed the most challenging questions — in public — to state education officials. In declining to reappoint the two, Patrick sacrificed a diversity of opinion that has served the board well.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
National Standards and Assessments Craze
AND an interesting post from Jay P. Greene on Checker Finn's change of mind...
Checker made an excellent case against national standards… in 1997.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
RttT Finalists
A total of 46 states and the District of Columbia applied for either the first or second rounds – or both. The 19 finalists are: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
The Money Question!
As often in education-reform efforts, the procedure has been hijacked by the tar babies.The hijacking takes the form of contracts that are already being signed with neither congressional approval nor independent oversight.
Why was Congressional support essential then (in 1997) but not now?
Monday, July 26, 2010
Good Questions!
Cato@Liberty
Why was it troubling that CCSSO had a central role in 1997, but it’s apparently hunky-dory in 2010?
Why was it a bad thing to blow off critics in 1997, but alright today?
Proposed Math Standards Unteachable
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Fordham's New Report
I don't agree with Fordham's analysis of Common Core Math Standards. I believe that they are much too weak at the high school level to prepare our children for competitiveness in a global economy. With that said, I thought that readers might be interested to see the Fordham Institute's new report comparing each state's mathematics and ELA standards to Common Core.
Room for Debate July 21
New York Times Room for Debate Blog, July 21
Will National Standards Improve Education?
[The answer to this question seems to be "NO"]
Contributors
Friday, July 16, 2010
Ever So Quietly, National Standards Spread
Neal McCluskey of the Cato@Liberty
If you are not familiar with the Cato Institute, their mission is to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace. The Institute will use the most effective means to originate, advocate, promote, and disseminate applicable policy proposals that create free, open, and civil societies in the United States and throughout the world.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
PUBLIC SCRUTINY is A GOOD THING!
If you find it interesting to track the common-standards movement, you might want to
cast your eye toward the West Coast. Things are getting interesting in California.
California Dreamin'or Is It Reality?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Preparing America to Compete through Math Ed
The proposed Common Core standard is similar in earlier grades but has significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries I examined. The Common Core standards document is prepared with less care and is less useful to teachers and math ed administrators than the other standards I examined. I have reservations about the Common Core standards regarding statistics in grades 7 and 8.
Ze'ev Wurman & Bill Evers - The California Academic Content Standards Commission is considering adopting the national Common Core standards in place of the state's existing standards and at the same time also modestly augmenting the Common Core standards in order to maintain the rigor of California's expectations of students.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Categorically Speaking...
I'm not sure how to title this one, but let me just tell you about my personal experiences...
I think my mom gave me an IQ test one time and that it was rather low.
I'm sure she was disappointed because I think her's is in the much higher range on that test.
Anyway, one day more recently I ran across this thing online that was a fluid intelligence test.
This may have been the website, you can try it yourself if you like:
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Keep It Simple - Stupid!
This is something that an old friend often says. I'm not sure if it's directed at me, but I take it personally because it's been a very good thing in my life! When I start over-analyzing things, I remember his words...
The problem is that few things seem "simple" OR maybe they are and I just haven't figured that out yet... I couldn't tell you...
Have a great day!
The Tension. . .
I was listening to a financial show yesterday, while waiting in the car... Anyway, one of the
guys talking saying something that I think may be a common misperception. He said,
Democrats are a party of PASSION and the Republicans are a party of LOGIC
It was such a revelation for me, I had to write it down because I didn't want to forget exactly what he said, and how I felt at the time... It's strange that it happened on Independence day, too. It explains exactly why I haven't been able to identify with either party exclusively. I consider myself an independent.
I don't believe that passion and logic have to be exclusive in our lives (or our politics) In fact, I'd say that when I have been able to make a good decision, it has been a result of both - not in equal parts necessarily, but applied appropriately for the circumstance...
Friday, July 2, 2010
House Passes Edujobs with RttT Cut
With Race to the Top Cut
But Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis), the House Appropriations Chairman and the author of the bill, made no apologies for the education offsets he chose, which were part of a broader package of $16 billion in cuts to pay for the jobs fund, and other new domestic spending.
"The secretary of education is somewhat unhappy," Obey acknowledged. "One of the secretary's objections, evidently, is the fact that last year in the stimulus we provided him with a $4.3 billion pot of money to use virtually any way he wanted to stimulate educational progress--$4.3 billion. He has spent a small amount of that." Even if this legislation cuts $500 million, "that still leaves him with $3.2 billion that he can spend any way his department wants. ... The secretary is somehow offended because he only has $3.2 billion to pass around," Obey said. "To suggest that we're being unduly harsh is a joke."
Here are a couple of FACT SHEETS from the Committee on Appropriations that you might find useful:
Thursday, July 1, 2010
What Are We Doing?$?$?
The last post raises the question for me... seems ironic...
With all of the money that's going into education right now, through RttT and the Investing in Innovation Fund, can't someone/something somewhere provide the funds to preserve these valuable and authentic historical documents?
Beginnings and Ends of Our Bloodstained Century
Claire Berlinski is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul and is a contributing editor of City Journal,
She is the author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.
This is the first time I've read Claire Berlinski's writing.
It caught my eye, and I couldn't stop cutting and pasting!
For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all.
[Vladimir Bukovsky] possesses a massive collection of stolen and smuggled papers from the archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which, as he writes, “contain the beginnings and the ends of all the tragedies of our bloodstained century.” These documents are available online at bukovsky-archives.net, but most are not translated. They are unorganized; there are no summaries; there is no search or index function. “I offer them free of charge to the most influential newspapers and journals in the world, but nobody wants to print them,” Bukovsky writes. “Editors shrug indifferently: So what? Who cares?”
When I first heard about Stroilov’s documents, I wondered if they were forgeries. But in 2006, having assessed the documents with the cooperation of prominent Soviet dissidents and Cold War spies, British judges concluded that Stroilov was credible and granted his asylum request. The Gorbachev Foundation itself has since acknowledged the documents’ authenticity.
There are other ways in which the story that Stroilov’s and Bukovsky’s papers tell isn’t over. They suggest, for example, that the architects of the European integration project, as well as many of today’s senior leaders in the European Union, were far too close to the USSR for comfort. This raises important questions about the nature of contemporary Europe—questions that might be asked when Americans consider Europe as a model for social policy, or when they seek European diplomatic cooperation on key issues of national security.
Stroilov says that he and Bukovsky approached Jonathan Brent of Yale University Press, which is leading a publishing project on the history of the Cold War. He claims that initially Brent was enthusiastic and asked him to write a book, based on the documents, about the first Gulf War. Stroilov says that he wrote the first six chapters, sent them off, and never heard from Brent again, despite sending him e-mail after e-mail. “I can only speculate what so much frightened him in that book,” Stroilov wrote to me.
Stroilov says that he and Bukovsky approached Jonathan Brent of Yale University Press, which is leading a publishing project on the history of the Cold War. He claims that initially Brent was enthusiastic and asked him to write a book, based on the documents, about the first Gulf War. Stroilov says that he wrote the first six chapters, sent them off, and never heard from Brent again, despite sending him e-mail after e-mail. “I can only speculate what so much frightened him in that book,” Stroilov wrote to me.
“I know the time will come,” Stroilov says, “when the world has to look at those documents very carefully. We just cannot escape this. We have no way forward until we face the truth about what happened to us in the twentieth century. Even now, no matter how hard we try to ignore history, all these questions come back to us time and again.”
And In summary:
Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead.
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