"other than the fact that teachers have been forced to spend more of their own money for materials due to the lack of public appropriations. "

-> me sees no substantiation ;) just another "unsupported negative generalization"!

As a parent I am shocked by anyone who would support what this Governor has done to education in MA by adopting the Common Core Standards. The email (in part) below from Jamie Gass of the Pioneer Institute of Boston to Diane Ravitch explains how Deval Patrick sold MA students out.

Thanks for your confidence that little Pioneer Institute could have outdone over $100 million from the Gates Foundation and persuade the bluest state in the Union (and Deval Patrick in an election year) not to follow the lead of Arne Duncan on $250 million in RTTT money. In truth, an easier task would have been to change the directional flow of the Charles River. That said, we did have two-thirds of the authors of the 1993 law (Gov. Weld and Sen. Birmingham), as well as the president of the AFT-MA, two 2010 MA gubernatorial candidates, Sen. Scott Brown, and nearly every editorial board in the state, on our side against MA adopting CCSSI.
Sadly, our good friends at Achieve and Fordham were working hand-in-glove with Gates, US ED, a pro-Deval think tank in MA (MBAE [Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education]), and MA state officials to make sure MA adopted the academically inferior CCSSI standards.
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/22/the-conservative-case-against-the-common-core-standards/

Massachusetts is already spending at the top of spending per Student. So if Teachers need to pay for supplies I would suggest you spend your energy looking at where all the money is going.

http://247wallst.com/2011/05/31/the-states-that-spend-the-most-and-least-on-each-student/

The town's 'public appropriations' have risen very steadily for the last 20 years during the MCAS era. All of this increase has been absorbed by spending for new Teachers' contacts and special ed spending.

Going from first to worst is expensive!

National Cost of Aligning States and Localities to the Common Core Standards
Implementation of the Common Core standards is likely to represent substantial additional expense for most states. In particular, there has been very little attention to the potential technology infrastructure costs that currently cash-strapped districts may face in order to implement the Common Core assessments within a reasonable testing window.
http://pioneerinstitute.org/download/national-cost-of-aligning-states-and-localities-to-the-common-core-standards/

You are shocked? When I was in high school we had 35-40 kids in a class.Now teachers can't have more than a set amount in each class per their contracts.I don't blame the teachers. I blame the parents who have kids that they are too ignorant to support;both fiscally and morally.Our entire society is collapsing thanks to the liberal mindset of "those according to their needs and those according to their means" Communistic attitude.Hard work,service,and self-reliance have been replaced by welfare,sloth and ignorance.Generations of Americans have never even worked for a living.That is pathetic.Throwing money at the problem doesn't help. The nanny-state laws and B.S. rules and regulations are the problem.Time to take down the bird feeder.

@WhoMe, In large part, the money is going towards salaries. If you compare those with the highest per student costs and the lowest per student costs you'll notice that those states with the highest typically have some of the highest costs of living in the country, and those with the lowest typically have some of lowest costs of living. I don't know about you, but I want those that teach my children to be offered a "living wage" and that is not the same amount as it is in Mississippi or Texas. You'll also notice that, we have one of the highest graduation rates in the country.

And how many of our graduates need remedial classes before attending college? In NYC the number is around 80%. In other words, only about 20% of graduates are prepared for college. Some diplomas aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/03/07/officials-most-nyc-high-school-grads-need-remedial-help-before-entering-cuny-community-colleges/

Vincent DiRico: I can substantiate the claim . Do you have any kids in the school system? Ever? Now? Read the flyers that are sent home in their backpacks? Ask any teacher how much they spend on unreimbursed classrooms supplies each year- elementary & middle school especially. Aware that large part textbooks are shared in public schools, not just the poor schools?
Doubt whether it would change your mind anyway.

Shared books, boo hoo, I DOUBT it! show us some PROOF.

I have kid x 3, see/read everything brought home. Send in a bit, buy tickets when I can/want, ... Now the school dept. is after donated $ for a K9 camera, it never ends!

Given the ~ 50 million answers sent to the school dept. each year, parents sending stuff in, parents buying tickets, ... (I will not contribute to the K9 camera) I say ENOUGH at the local, state and national levels, no more taxes, start spending what you get wisely!

TJ: start the Duck, Dodge and Hide routine :O

C'mon Dennis, it's the salaries and benefits eat up budgets. Guess who gets those benefits? Also take a look at all of the "mandates". Guess where they come from and guess who votes for the people who make them. I'll give you hints....The teachers unions and the Democrats, who control everything in the state.

You make it seem that all teachers spend tons of money on construction paper and crayons. Once in a great while a sudden need comes up and the teacher will make a purchase. The same goes in my line of work but I don't make anything out of it, I just get what I need and move on.

They should pull themselves up by their bootstraps! ehhhhhhh

Hey, as long as no funds are being spent on teaching gay indoctrination, AMIRITE

Vincent DiRico: No one's ducking you ,Vincent. If you had something intelligent to say other than you don't want to pay for anything, or you need proof for the obvious as if we're making things up, you would hear from me.

yet you respond and failed the reply button test, priceless!

Listen to Sandra Stotsky's expert testimony here regarding the success of the MCAS. I'm also a supporter of the MCAS "test", not the new Common Core "Assessment". The expert testimony begins around 25:00. Ms. Stotsky speaks 2nd, and then once again at around 57:00 to 1:02 on our vocational schools.

Stop Common Core testimony Michigan House of Representatives 3/20/13:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7Za7x8vbVTo

Ms. Stotsky gives an excellent critique but claim MCAS was a victory. Creating MCAS was a victory; the execution will fail to meet the goal of 100% Proficiency in 2014. It won't be a near miss; it will be an almost universal failure.

Michael Quinlan: provide a reference for your" 99% of Massachusetts schools" quote. Find that hard to believe. I don't want to let it go unchallenged and in the interest of intellectual honesty you should have no problem providing that since you raised the quote.

@Kevin: Your argument on dollars begs the question. What you would need to examine to make a proper comparison is the nature and magnitude of the challenges faced by each of those school districts. For example, which do you think has the greater challenge with students for whom English is a second language? Which one do you think has more students on reduced-cost school lunch?

@ Dennis: I don't want to come across as not wanting to invest in education. My problem is that there is a communication disconnect between the need, the solution, and the political message. I don't want to hear about money=better. I want to invest in programs that solve problems. Lawrence is a great example for the reasons you identify (in addition to some political/beuracrocy issues in Lawrence). You can't use the same model for North Andover as you do in Lawrence. There needs to be an effort to dive deeper and find innovative ways to deal with the problems. And if those solutions need more funding, then let's write the check.

As someone from the technical profession, I deal with statistics and probabilities. With millions of data points gathered year round, we should have a much better understanding of what it takes to achieve performance. How many hours of science? How much access to computers? Student to teacher ratio? Maybe we have that data, but the "message" is lost when the politicians get involved.

My perspective is that people want to spend more money, but a lot of people like myself have lost confidence in the politicians asking. They cried wolf too many times. I personally can't vote for increases until I am convinced of the benefits.

Sorry for off-subject ramble.

When I move to Maine I will take a look and let you know. As I like to say: my town sends ~ 50 million answers over to the school dept each year, how the school dept. chooses to spend it is on them. That is more than ENOUGH!

Here’s just a taste of how bad the new Common Core math is:

Stanford University professor James Milgram, the only mathematician on the validation panel, concluded that the Common Core math scheme would place American students two years behind their peers in other high-achieving countries. In protest, Milgram refused to sign off on the standards. He’s not alone.

Professor Jonathan Goodman of New York University found that the Common Core math standards imposed “significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries.”

Under Common Core, as the American Principles Project and Pioneer Institute point out, algebra I instruction is pushed to 9th grade, instead of 8th grade, as commonly taught. Division is postponed from 5th to 6th grade. Prime factorization, common denominators, conversions of fractions and decimals, and algebraic manipulation are de-emphasized or eschewed.

Traditional Euclidean geometry is replaced with an experimental approach that had not been previously pilot-tested in the U.S.

http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/23/rotten-to-the-core-obamas-war-on-academic-standards-part-1/

Calculators need to go along with the Common Core standards:

Some tidbits from Ze’ev Wurmans official testimony in SB193:

The Common Core starts introducing the concept of money only in the second grade, while Singapore and Indiana suggest starting in the first grade. Common Core forgets to teach prime factorization all together, so it cannot ever teach least common denominators or greatest common factors.

It does not teach about area of a triangle until grade 6 and sum of angles in a triangle until grade 8, topics which ought to be taught in grades 5 and 6, respectively.

Worse yet, even when it comes to fractions, the topic it is most proud of, Common Core completely forgot to teach conversion among fractional forms – fractions, percent, and decimals – that has been identified as a key skill by the National Research Council, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the National Advisory Math Panel.

Even in its core focus, basic arithmetic, the Common Core opens the way for the pernicious “fuzzy math” to creep back into the curriculum.

But you don’t have to believe me: Jason Zimba, one of the main authors of the mathematics standards, testified in front of the Massachusetts Board of Education4 that Common Core’s ”concept of college readiness is minimal and focuses on non-selective colleges.”

http://hoosiersagainstcommoncore.com/zeev-wurman-official-testimony-in-sb193/

I know exactly what you mean - Just the other day I was trying to generate the trajectory for a stochastic simulation Gillespie algorithm. I'm the same way as you, I don't need no fancy calculators or adding machine that these spoiled brats use. Nope, just a plain ol' yellow notepad for me.

Anyway, it took me about 120 hours, but I solved it despite severe hand, neck and eye strain (some of which might be irreversible but what the heck, I do this all the time), malnutrition, and an increased social retardation.

But dagummit, one of those kids with their fancy computer thingies figured it out in 1 hour. I didn't get the job.

Would you like fries with that or not, sir?

Doesn't machine design use CAD? Doesn't the "C" stand for "Computer"?

Mike G. - Everything I learned in mechanical drafting, from a 10th grade course (I had to fight to be allowed to take because it wasn't 'academic'- whole 'nother story) thru from what I learned from old timers at work in the early 80's - applies to CAD today. From layouts, to tolerances, to orthographic projection, isometrics, etc, - they ALL need to be understood to COMMUNICATE what a part or assembly IS. I started using 3D wireframe for machine design in 1987 then switched to solids in 1994.

If you asked me why I needed my first calculator back when I was taking Surveying in college (a CE course), I would have told you how much time it saved like for computing a traverse. Ask any high school kid today why they have a calculator and they'll say , "Well DUH! I have to have it for class!"

Another example, I can't tell you how much I have applied the concept of 'interpolation' that I was taught in high school trig to other areas of engineering data - it is a minor yet invaluable tool lost to the calculator.

Mike G. - " ...I was trying to generate the trajectory for a stochastic simulation Gillespie algorithm. "

I never stated machines shouldn't be used in practice.. LATER...but when you only show a kid how to push some buttons to make a calculation will he EVER understand what the calculation is actually about?

These kids have no idea what's going on inside a calculator so, can we expect them to ever design better ones?

Mike Mitchell - fair point, and I don't totally disagree with you. Concepts need to be taught, and not just "press this button and it works".

However, taking computers out of schools completely, I just can't agree with that. Computers are everywhere - knowing how to use one, and how to use business applications is absolutely critical.

Calculators have their place, yes, but you have to know enough about what you are doing on your own to recognize when a typing error has put you way off the mark. Spell check, for example, doesn't fix the people who still can't tell the difference between your/you're and there/their/they're. <-- I'm sure there's a mathematical equivalent.

The two female mathematicians in the house (not me, obviously!) are both having their aptitude for math slowly killed off by constructivism in the classroom. Common Core will just further the damage. Thank God for my ability to purchase traditional instructional materials online to use at home. I care less about their standardized test scores and more about their actual real world ability.

The lessons learned by the teacher constantly rewarding mediocrity and failure by "giving out prizes for wrong answers" is not something I am sure I can effectively combat at home. :-(

Mike G. - "Computers are everywhere - knowing how to use one, and how to use business applications is absolutely critical."

I took exactly one computer course in the early 70's to learn Fortran, (CDC 3600, batch, punch cards, etc.). Well written high level applications doesn't require instruction; I don't know any of my peers in college or in engineering circles today who ever took a class for Word or Excel and, for low level stuff like PLC's and vision systems - figuring out how it works is half the fun. I'm all in favor of teaching ONLY children leaning towards science and math the basics of computer hardware and various software development environments at various levels starting in middle school. And if public schools refuse to catapult the brightest kids then parents need to do it. An example of something a parent can provide http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/products/8547.aspx

If there is a need to teach the rest how to use various computer applications I suggest it be done in a vocational setting, I'd be all for it.

MO - {Common Core’s ”concept of college readiness is minimal and focuses on non-selective colleges.” }

You just know what will be next if they have their vey with us on Common Core - dumbing down college entrance requirements. They'll start with state colleges then extort private schools by making grant money contingent upon obedience.

If we don't fight this crap we all might as well just install the chip in our forehead now and become part of their collective.

Right on Mike. First thing I thought when they brought calculators into schools. Object is to get the kids to think and their mind working. Watching my kids sit there trying to do homework and can't because the calculator is broken. Trying to teach him how to do it without it, make his brain work. When I use t hire help and we had to square off partitions I would use hypotenuse, I had to teach high school and college kids how to use it for daily work without haveing to run to a computer. All day long you need these tools and can't sit there all day trying to figure out what one should already know, the basics. Years ago when the electricity went out the stores kept going. Doing the math in their head or paper and pencil. They didn't stand there waiting for the electricity to go back on. Should get back to basics.

"Personalized learning". Sounds expensive.

Touche!

Aron Levy: older, mostly retired conservatives have always been anti school/education. Rationalize that it is unions, teachers, curriculum, politicians, liberals, anything will do.

MO, now tell me what's wrong with internationalism? We live in an entirely interconnected world.

As much as you (presumptive) libertarians wish we could withdraw from the rest of the world, we can't. We tried that in 1939. And look how well that worked out for everyone.

Go and spout your love for Ayn Rand elsewhere. You can't pull the wool over our eyes.

@Aron Levy
How about you first defend your strawman by explaining exactly how FDR was forced to sacrifice US sovereignty on Dec 8 , 1941?

Mike, can you rephrase that question? It made exactly NO sense.

@Aron Levy: " ....withdraw from the rest of the world, we can't. We tried that in 1939. ..."

Your strawman is the implication that we entered WW2 on the basis of "internationalism" ... NO! FDR and Congress declared war for the exact opposite reason, we were attacked which was a direct assault on our sovereignty.

"Globalization" means sacrificing our sovereignty and exposing our rights to the whims of the UN. Ain't gonna happen.

"latitude and longitude" = GPS targeting for -

{In Congress, Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) introduced privacy legislation Thursday that would require police to get a warrant or a court order before operating a drone to collect information on individuals.

"We need to protect against obtrusive search and surveillance by government and civilian use," Poe said in a telephone interview. A similar bill failed last year.}

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-domestic-drones-20130216,0,3374671.story

If had happened under G W Bush "liberals" would be absolutely HOWLING! Remember how they howled at recording ONLY the phone numbers of ONLY international phone calls to establish potential terrorist links? Just look at what these stinking hypocrites think is okay now that their commie socialist is in the WH?

Mike Mitchell:"exposing our rights to the whims of the UN." This is a discussion about local school deficiencies.
Been reading those extreme right wing blogs again? Don't you want to interject " New World Order" somewhere in the discussion about education deficiencies at the local level, to round out the right wing nut talk?

Tyler - tell that to Aron Levy, he brought it up and I was replying to him. (And, next time, try to respond in the same reply sub-thread.)

Here we go! staring the right wing extremist nutty talk.

How do you stare at talk? Is this philosophy?

Michael Guinlan: "starting". 't" missing but you could figure that out.
Let's concentrate on typos rather than the right wing nut talk. Topic is ' education deficiencies' and the right wingnuts want to bring in - Patriots Act, socialism , UN, New World Order , Obama, 2A Rights, Federalist Papers, liberals, Stalin and Hitler.

Yet another reason to homeschool.

The Patch should respond with a declaration that they don't censor (unless you swear or are mean). It's their forum; they can do what they want.

From Huff Post

"Once this information gets out there, it's going to be abused. There's no doubt in my mind," said Jason France, a father of two in Louisiana.

While inBloom pledges to guard the data tightly, its own privacy policy states that it "cannot guarantee the security of the information stored ... or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted."

Parents from New York and Louisiana have written state officials in protest. So have the Massachusetts chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and Parent-Teacher Association. If student records leak, are hacked or abused, "What are the remedies for parents?" asked Norman Siegel, a civil liberties attorney in New York who has been working with the protestors. "It's very troubling."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/student-database-gates-foundation_n_2800684.html

Avon, The Patch is owned by AOL which also owns the Huffington Post. You'd be hard-pressed to find any right-wingers at AOL/Huffington Post/Patch.

http://gigaom.com/2011/06/09/which-will-save-aol-huffington-post-or-patch/

Michael Q, you're kind of missing the point. Amazing, I know.

AB, I wonder how many will pick up that StormFront allusion--before a Google search, of course....

OMG ! All these crazy educated people threatning and cussin,callin names. This is terrible. Im surprised here.

You mean back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, providing transportation to Jesus?

We need to defund the DOE and its Big Brother Common Core Curriculum and give local control back to the parents and taxpayers.

I truly don't understand how a person could read here and think that. Parents need to be in charge of education? So a bunch of halfwits can teach their children about the six thousand year old earth and how MLK was a Republican and How To Provide Emphasis In Writing Through CAPTITALIZATION and random strings of commas,,,,?

Awesome.

Mike, It was better.

I'll bet Bonnie does not know that the DOE is expressly forbidden by law to dictate a national curriculum. That's where Common Core comes in; to get around that restriction by endorsing a surrogate entity to do it in their stead.

She probably even thinks a unified national curriculum of students all marching to the beat of the slowest drummer is somehow even good for her precious 'diversity'!

Bonnie: "So a bunch of halfwits can teach their children about the six thousand year old earth..."

(I can only assume that you are describing me as a 'half-wit'.)

No Bonnie, so we can return to teaching children the things people like you abhor like pesky FACTS in US history such as that patriots of the American Revolution used the same kind of guns that the British had to win our LIBERTY or, that prior to then people came here not just for economic opportunity but to escape religious persecution that you seem bent on establishing here - OR - that they really are free to use capitalization and quotation marks as a form of grammatical emphasis on comment boards no matter WHAT someone named Bonnie might 'think'.

oh boy, 5 4 3 2 1 .....

ha ha ha, all I got for you are the ZEROs you collected this year, Einstein :O

Folks, this is one of the few educators from WPS that cries all over the patch threads, accuses high school students of taking drugs, accuses WPS admin of not being fair, ... all while hiding behind false names.

If I were granted 3 wishes they would be:
The ability to trace the drive-by comments like "hard drugs all over the high school", wait the patch can do that, warn and disable accounts, priceless!
Second I would cross check the list of drive-by commenters with the list of WPS employees.
Third each WPS employee caught making drive-by comments would be terminated, no paid administrative leave, ... GONE, DONE, ... They are a cancer and do not belong in front of our children.
Buzzzz that!

Sound fair?

this year, last year, you got the point and still CRY about it at every turn.

How many of you voted to reduce the school budget by $550,000 at town meeting? I was there and I bet you can guess how many did!

No, Tim; the higher taxes will be IMPOSED on the people because the re-election rate for state reps & senators is 97%. And 83+% of them are Dems. What motivation do they have to change their "make goverment forever bigger" mentality?

Lech Walesa proved that not all unions are formed to insure their place at the government trough; some realize it's time to stick it to the government when the number of people enjoying a free ride is greater than the number pulling the cart.

Progressivism is like a cancer eating us from the inside out.

You should just donate your money to the government.

So you're suggesting what? Let it slip down a few notches to be fair and let the other states catch up?

MM: seems like that is inevitable now, did you listen to Stotsky's testimony on the 85% watered down standards (15% can be tailored)? I'll have to see if I can dig-up why she left, ...

The California public schools are awful. I don't know who considers them to be good or what standards they use. Most, if not about all, of California kids wind up in remedial reading and writing courses in college. MA is MUCH better than that!

Massachusetts won't be ranked #1 for much longer.

Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards by Diane Ravitch

In fact, it was well understood by states that they would not be eligible for Race to the Top funding ($4.35 billion) unless they adopted the Common Core standards. Federal law prohibits the U.S. Department of Education from prescribing any curriculum, but in this case the Department figured out a clever way to evade the letter of the law.

Forty-six states and the District of Columbia signed on, not because the Common Core standards were better than their own, but because they wanted a share of the federal cash. In some cases, the Common Core standards really were better than the state standards, but in Massachusetts, for example, the state standards were superior and well tested but were ditched anyway and replaced with the Common Core.

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/26/why-i-cannot-support-the-common-core-standards/

the number of weasel words/statements is astounding, this from the man who exposed us to pc viruses/... https://www.inbloom.org/faq

Attention, parents: Common Core opt-out form now available

http://michellemalkin.com/2013/03/11/attention-parents-common-core-opt-out-form-now-available/

It’s a start to make our voices heard.

You'll be heading to the gulag, alas.

This is a MUST read for everyone! This Common Core experiment on our children is unconstitutional and ILLEGAL. Thank you Janet.

In our report, The Road to a National Curriculum, Kent Talbert and Bob Eitel summarize how Arne Duncan’s US DOE used Gates money and DC trade groups to circumvent federal laws that prohibit national standards:

The Department has simply paid others to do that which it is forbidden to do. This tactic should not inoculate the Department against the curriculum prohibitions imposed by Congress.