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jcd writes:
"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the primary backer for the inBloom educational grading and service (which also acts as a platform for third-party applications), is catching flak for its role in encouraging the outsourcing of US Education. The article (cited by RMS today) argues that though the Common Core is a scary new concept that takes power away from state and local school governance, the real danger is allowing corporate enterprises to have so much control over our classrooms. The Washington Post also reports a case where Pearson included corporate logos and promotional materials inside its test booklets."
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Backlash for Gates Foundation's Education Plans
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(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:06AM
A set of definitions of what should be taught in grades K-12.
From the math standards, here are the Standards for Mathematical Practice [corestandards.org] that describe the overarching goals, and here is an example of some specific content specification [corestandards.org]. Both aspects are important. You can navigate to the rest of the standards from there.
Such standards are not new. Prior to the CCSS every state would have their own document serving the same purpose as the 'content specifications' which would form the basis for their own compulsory state tests.
The 'Standards for Mathematical Practice' are a departure from typical state standards - and they are anything but standardized-test-friendly!
Standardised testing is not new.
Outsourcing testing to large publishers is not new.
Judging both students and teachers simplistically based on their students' scores in standardized tests is not new.
At worst, the standards create a 'single market' for this sort of thing and allows 'standardization' of tests country-wide rather than state-wide.
NB: most 'standardization' is based on statistical models that assume there exists a 1-dimensional measure of 'ability' in the subject at hand, that all the questions on the test measure. Discuss.