A July 21, 2014, Update on Common Core, PARCC, and Smarter Balanced

More Common Core insanity. Who wants to make a bet Governor Markell will be the last one to drop common core?

deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

On Sunday, July 20, 2014, I took the day off from writing. No book editing; no blogging.

I think I have done so only for one other day since May.

Instead, I read a book for the sheer enjoyment of reading. I chose my all-time favorite, a work of fiction by C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.

In the preface, Lewis makes the following statement:

A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.

And so it is with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). CCSS was a train wreck waiting to occur from inception (see here, as well). Thus, to borrow Lewis’ math analogy, the CCSS error occurred in the planning stages. To try to “correct” CCSS at any subsequent point is an utter waste.

When 46…

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Coleman Corps

Common core has no common sense, and this article proves it!

WagTheDog

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities,

but in the expert’s there are few 

~ Shunryu Suzuki

Hard to imagine an applicant for a teaching job explaining to the panel of educators interviewing him/her that he really doesn’t give a shit what his students or their parents think or feel…or joking about the fact that she really isn’t qualified to teach the position she is applying for.

Yet the chief architect of the Common Core which was initially adopted and implemented by 45 states explained at a teacher conference in 2011, “forgive me for saying this so bluntly, is, as you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.”

Coleman admitted during another speech in 2011, “Student Achievement Partners, all you need to know about us are a couple things. One is we’re composed of that collection of unqualified people…

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Meet Kathy Willis, A Delaware Advocate For Children with Special Needs #netde #edude

It’s been over 3 weeks since I first posted this, and I’ve gained a lot of new followers since then. Check out this interview with an amazing woman!

The Season Of Myths

I have the extreme pleasure of posting an interview I recently had with Kathy Willis. Kathy is an advocate for children with special needs and disabilities in the state of Delaware. She has attended several Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings to support parents in helping to get the accommodations their children need in IEP and 504 plans. I met Kathy last month through Kilroys, and I believe she is a great person in our state to help our children. Kathy’s story is below, and she has gone through several of the same struggles many parents have in Delaware. But she turned dark times into something positive that has been truly beneficial for parents. I don’t know if the DOE and the state government realizes how many of us are out there, trying to champion this cause. It can be as an advocate, or a blogger, or as a parent attending a support…

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What’s Coming Up on Exceptional Delaware? #netde #eduDE

It’s been a crazy first month.  Thanks again to all my readers.  You have made this little experiment a grand success.  This blog has gone beyond what my expectations were.  With that, I have some teasers for the future.

I will continue to write about the Delaware DOE and their special education department.  I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface with them, and it seems like there are wheels within wheels turning everything there.  Who really runs the show there?

Charter school debate has been going on for years.  But now that their grand master has revealed she wants to expand in our