Fixing the Public Schools k-12

[BmorePat87]

(12-01-2016, 03:02 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Still lost on me:
19. Why are so many people against Common Core if it’s purpose is to get kids from all across the US on roughly the same level of education by grade?

Bad PR campaign and poor roll out in math. Back when I was involved with my county's Republican Party in 2010-2012, people were dead set that it was a curriculum and that it was mandated at the national level. Both are incorrect. Even would I told people this, they disagreed. Breitbart had articles about these Marxist lesson provided by Common Core. It was just a lesson created by a random teacher that aligned to the standards. It also wasn't Marxist, it just had students read passages of the Communist Manifesto and analyze it (compare it to other works from around the same time and compare what it says to what the history books say). I said to a guy who posted the story on Facebook "You can go to the website, here's the link. No where on there are there lessons you have to teach, it's just standards". His response was "Well, that's not what I got when I did my research". LOL. People believe a lot of false things about it.

Also, the math roll out wasn't executed very well in many states. The "new math" is good and teaches kids HOW math works instead of just memorizing things. The problem is many teachers were not properly trained, so occasionally you get a teacher who makes a mistake in grading or making an assignment, and then the internet goes crazy over it. It's also  hard for parents who didn't learn it that way or whose brains don't operate that way (because they were only taught to memorize times tables or write things out a certain way), so you got these dumb articles "I'm an engineer and I don't understand Common Core Math". 

I'm the kind of person who adds large numbers in my head by rounding them up to be divisible by 10 or 100 then I subtract what I added at the end. So if it is 3267 + 1254, I'd just add 3300+1254, get 4554 then subtract 33 and have 4521. Or if I multiple a number, I'll break it up. So if it is 324 x 22, I know 324 x 10 is 3240, so x 20 would be 6480. Then I know 324 x 2 is 648, so I add 648+6480 and have 7128. That's how perceive numbers. I wasn't taught that, I just do that. Common Core teaches beginner forms of that kind of thinking. 

(12-02-2016, 09:51 AM)Au165 Wrote: My finance requirement wasn't even really for the kids sake, but for the country. We caused the financial meltdown for a multitude of reasons, but the fact a large number of people didn't realize what you are approved for and what you can afford are vastly different things didn't help. I don't want to start down the road of requirements in cooking, auto, guns, etc. because hours are limited to teach as is, but financial responsibility seems like something that we need as a country to protects us all down the road.

Let them go out to eat, let them take their car to a mechanic, but when they go to get a mortgage and the broker is actually ***** them they need to realize that.

As for a lot of your other points, lots of ideas that will require a ton of money. The idea of a cop at every school sounds nice but that will be a MASSIVE expense. Putting it in perspective there are over 100k schools in the U.S. and roughly 50k have full time SROs right now. To outfit the other half at a conservative rate of 50k a year your talking about $2.5 BILLION to make this one item alone happen.

Maryland decided a few years back that financial literacy should be required for all students. So in my county, we add it to the end of American Government (the class I teach). After we finish with our required assessment in May (need to pass to graduate) for my class, we spend the rest of the year with the Fin Lit unit. I go over goal setting, making a budget, find jobs based on Myers Briggs results, learn about pay/paychecks, insurance, bank accounts, getting student loans, investing, and writing a check. We also do a project where they get an income and have to find a job that has that income, find an apartment, find a used car, make a weekly grocery list, and pay their other monthly expenses. 

We used to have a whole year long financial literature math class, but they stopped offering it. There are all of these requirements from the government for only offering rigorous math courses and it didn't make the cut.