It will cost $800 million for California to implement Common Core Standards, down from an earlier estimate of $1.6 billion, according to the state education department. That includes training, learning materials and testing.
Other states are starting to worry about the cost. Washington state estimates it will take $300 million to prepare teachers and principals and buy new textbooks; updating the state’s testing system will be extra.
Give me a break.“Washington state estimates it will take $300 million to prepare teachers and principals and buy new textbooks; updating the state’s testing system will be extra.”
This is a silly point. Washington will buy new books regardless. They will also spend money in Professional Development to train new teachers (and old) in the current system or they can spend money in Professional Development in Common Core. What would be interesting would be the amount EXTRA needed with Common Core. My guess is zero.
I’ve personally gone through full curriculum rewrites and what seems like dozens of formatting changes in order to to align to old standards, new standards, frameworks, GLEs, etc. This is simply the new fad. The real problem isn't the Common Core. It's "Change the Standards Because We Don't Know What Else to Do".
It's the idea that all students will succeed if we could just find the ONE SINGLE PERFECT WAY TO DO THINGS. Watch Malcolm Gladwell's discussion of finding the perfect spaghetti sauce.
Public schools can never be the perfect solution to all students, all the time, by 2014 or any other date.
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Were we ever to meet in person, I'll tell you the story of the day I spent this past week, working with other math teachers across my district trying to organize topics under these Common Core Standards.
ReplyDeletePainful.