He's Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!! Like your mother in law coming to visit, like that huge blackhead on the back of your neck that is in a horrible spot to squeeze and stays there for years. Or worse, like that old Saturday Night Live skit with John Belushi, "The Thing That Wouldn't Leave," Little Evan Stone just won't go away.Imagine New York City's shock when all 25 people (Myself included, but just for the sports section) that read the New York Post opened up to the op-ed section and saw a supposedly coincidentally timed to John King being in NYC opinion piece about the Common Core written by that "independent" mind of Little Evan's.
Now for those who don't know who Evan is, he has been a comedic source on these pages for years, an average 6th grade teacher, while his babe, Princess Sydney Morris was worse, and has not taught in over 4 years.
After I stopped laughing whilst rolling on the floor I decided to share what Evan blabbered with The Crack Team. They laughed so hard that one member of the team, Throckmorton, died. For those who are interested, the funeral is tomorrow and we will be sitting Shiva through Tuesday.
Little Evan of course had to inject himself immediately; This week’s town halls on the Common Core with State Education Commissioner John King and Regents Chancellor Merryl Tish, which I attended, did little to calm the circus-like atmosphere that has surrounded the implementation of the standards from Day One.
Circus like atmosphere? Where? In Port Chester? In Western New York? Where was the circus like atmosphere. The only two places that turned into a circus was in Poughkeepsie and the so called supporters of the Common Core that showed in Brooklyn on Tuesday night.
By lumping these new standards in with other hot-button issues,
Like the APPR? Race to the Top? Testing? It's all intertwined. One begets the others. One can't survive without its hosts. It's all the same no matter how it is sliced.
What Little Evan is doing is worse. He is throwing up the proverbial red herring to distract the readers into believing that only the Common Core is isolated change and that it has no effect on other deforms.
The new standards are more rigorous and promote the very skills teachers and parents have been calling for — critical thinking and problem-solving — skills that colleges and jobs will require.
I'm a parent and I never called for such skills in the schools and no one ever asked me. I'm also a teacher and no one and none of the teachers (Of course only the cool ones) I know, ever asked for such skills. Don't critical thinking skills and problem solving start in the home by fostering a childs natural ability to learn? That's why I have always expected my son, and my students, to come to their skills on their own. I am just there to facilitate.
But which colleges and which jobs are suddenly now requiring such skills? Haven't these skills always been required in college and the work place?
When I taught sixth grade, I used to have to teach 127 unique math standards or topics. Now I’d be able to focus on 27 standards, giving me the time needed to make sure all of my students understood the underlying concepts.
One hundred and twenty seven math standards?? You don't say! You mean these? This was difficult for you? Yikes! Why memorize? Heck, Massachusetts had the gold standard of standards. Is this too difficult for you?
For example, I used to teach the equation for the area of a square in a 50-minute lesson, simply memorizing the equation and applying it to problems.
You did? Then you sucked as a teacher! You didn't have them take the area of the classroom, the cafeteria, the hallway, the office, their home, Sydney's family's home in East Hampton? Then they could write about how they came about their findings. Simple, eh?
Now I could teach real-world mathematical problems involving area over the course of a week, allowing my students to uncover multiple ways to solve for the answer and truly understand the concept.
Please see my response above.
But parents send their children to school to prepare them for the real world, and we haven’t been doing as well as we can.
Not in Kindergarten. Or 1st grade, or elementary school. We all don't get to prep Choate.
As The Post pointed out recently, just a third of New York City public-school students graduate high school ready for college, thus denying many students the opportunity to succeed.
Yes, the Post, the bastion of journalistic morals and integrity, with no axe to grind on either side of the education debate pointed such a fact out. But wait, what about credit recovery? Does that not prepare students by just letting them graduate and letting them out in the real world? <----sarcasm i="">
For example, in focus groups we have conducted all around the city, Educators for Excellence is hearing positive feedback from reading and writing teachers, many of whom are praising the focus on both fiction and nonfiction reading, as well as the new emphasis on text-based evidence.
Who participates in these surveys? Can we see the surveys? Are only card carrying members of E4E allowed to participate in such surveys? Are these surveys taken at E4E youth rallies? Are these surveys done scientifically?
In a recent poll, the National Education Association found nearly 75 percent of teachers said they support the Common Core.
Sources please.
But what is most disturbing about Little Evan's spew in the Post today is his dishonesty. You see, what Little Evan doesn't want anyone to know is that the face of technological failure, Bill Gates funds Educators4Excellence while at the same time funding Common Core. Again, Little Evan is a liar. And according to the same article, Common Core is a curriculum, though Little Evan claimed it is not. Little Evan also fails to mention that his hero and mentor Bill Gates said that we won't know for ten years if Common Core will work or not. Will this be acceptable for the offspring of Little Evan and Princess Sydney?
What Common Core is just a repackaging of what was being done already for the purpose of creating new profits for corporations. It's all about the money. It's all about who will out whore whom and Little Evan, you are in the top three.
I put it to Evan, let's you and I walk the streets of Harrison, NY together and survey the parents of this great community together.
Let's face it. Little Evan is Bill Gates little b**** boy.
E$E are like a bad case of crabs that just won't go away! I love how he keeps writing, "When I taught....". He was denied tenure If I am not mistaken, so whatever it was that he taught or did not teach, he sure as Hell was not up to par to be dictating the way the rest of us should be doing it. He is a corporate tool, plain and simple. He is actually the worst kind of ed-deformer because he was an actual former teacher who claims to speak up for true teachers while we all know he is full of crap. To top it all off, he gets paid big bucks to write garbage propaganda like his current editorial. Screw him and screw E$E!!!
ReplyDeleteI know how they do their survey because I went to their presentation when they came to our school. They lay out a spread and have a few personable young teachers talk about teaching. Then they ask you if you want to 'join'. There is no discussion of the 25-30 points in the trifold form. When I asked what 'I oppose last hired, first fired' meant, they started talking in hushed tones and even took the form back from me. Their recruitment techniques are like snake oil salesman and their surveys are a result of that recruitment and have no value.
ReplyDelete