Should Georgia Eliminate “Common Core” In Schools?

Today’s local news topic deals with the state of Florida announcing that it will be removing “common core” from its school systems.  Our local Fox 5 Atlanta news station is asking viewers if Georgia should do the same.

Absolutely.  The “common core” system is incredibly damaging to our youth, and it needs to be removed immediately.

Without going into too much detail right now, common core is basically a way of simplifying math equations (namely simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) so that students can have an “easier” way to reach the answer.  The steps even go as far as teaching children how to draw boxes and number lines to help them reach the final answer.  The biggest problem is that common core unnecessarily complicates the process severely, adding many additional steps that not only confuse a lot of students, but it leaves many more places for them to make errors.

Right now this is still a huge push in Georgia’s elementary schools.  Guess what happens though when the students reach math class in middle school!  There’s NO COMMON CORE in middle school!  The middle school teachers have to basically re-teach elementary school math all over again, going back several years.

This is not a joke or an exaggeration.  I have several close contacts within the school system.  At the start of the school year a teacher had to teach her 7th grade middle school students how to do the very same addition and subtraction that we mastered back in 3rd grade.  Third grade!  These 7th grade students had to spend over a month learning extremely basic math skills as a crash course to bring them up to a beginner’s level in middle school.

And you know what happened when the students were taught the traditional way of completing math problems?  They understood it!  The vast majority of them agreed that it was not only faster and easier to understand, but simpler as well.  Imagine that!  Now, now, don’t get too excited just yet.  These middle school kids are still years behind of where they should be, and it’s not uncommon to see them counting numbers on their fingers.  Take away their calculators and they’ll panic.  Almost none of them know their multiplication table (again, something we knew and mastered back in third and fourth grade), and when asking them simple questions like, “What’s 5 x 5?  What’s 8 x 3?,” you’ll receive blank stares.

These are the “regular” students we’re talking about, the majority of the student body.

Here are a few simple steps that’ll greatly help the school system:

• Focus on basic instruction instead of making things easier.
• Stop the teachers who “teach the test” instead of teaching the material as a whole.
• Eliminate the No Child Left Behind Act.
• Hold students accountable for their bad behavior (from disrupting class to cheating on tests to not completing assignments).

Stick with those steps and you’ll see a vast improvement in the education system.  It’s easy to just make things easier and sweep the kids on to the next level, but you’re just hurting them in the end.  Schools are not daycare centers.  Nor are they playgrounds.  Today’s students are far behind where they should be, both academically and socially, and the trends are only worsening.  Fix the schools now!

If parents truly knew just how badly their kids are being cheated out of an education, and just blindly tossed to the next grade by teachers and administrators more worried about their comfy jobs and paychecks, they’d form angry mobs and take matters into their own hands.

Just kidding.

Kinda.

In today’s society, it’s painfully obvious that too many parents would rather be friends with their kids rather than actually being parents.  As long as their kids are passing their classes, many parents really don’t care about what’s really happening in the schools.  So many of them think that the schools are basically the same as when they attended them however many years ago.  And you know what?  It seems like most of them really don’t care, either.

Such a high number of today’s middle school students are little shits who gladly take every opportunity to lie, cheat, whine, and *nearly* cry like babies when things don’t go their way.  They backtalk, make a scene, and show incredible disrespect to teachers and faculty on an almost daily basis.  Many are also very irresponsible and commonly lose important paperwork simply because they don’t care and they haven’t had to care about things like that before.  Why start now?  At the end of the school year, they’ll still be advanced to the next level.  And they know it, too.

Handwriting is atrocious, their spelling and grammar is even worse, and too many have a hard enough time writing their damn name on assignments.  I’m not kidding.  One of my 8th grade teacher friends likes to show me these assignments.  While most students will write their first name on the assignment (normally scribbled somewhere on the top of the paper), that’s usually it.  No last name, no date, no class period, nothing.  And of course, at least two or three students in each class won’t even write their name on the paper, and they won’t bother trying to identify and claim it later, even if it’s a decent grade.

Yes, students are that lazy these days.

You wouldn’t believe how many middle school students don’t come prepared for tests.  By unprepared I’m not only talking about not studying, but rather not bringing things like a damn pencil so they can take the test!  And as far as studying, that seems to rarely occur, especially when you look at the raw test scores.  Too many of these students are so stupid and simply unfocused that you can literally give them every test and answer that very day, and most will still fail the test or quiz.  Yes, I heard of that exact scenario happening recently for a quiz.

Let’s not forget about actually turning in assignments on time, or at all.

When assignments are due, about 65-70% of the class will turn it in on time.  More will turn it in the next day, and others will keep turning it in over the next few days.  Keep in mind that each day the assignment is late, they lose 10 points.  The students whine and complain when you take off the late points, but they’ll just turn it in late again next time and then complain again.  To add insult to injury, many of the students, even those who took extra time to turn it in several days late, won’t follow the instructions and fully complete the assignments, and they’ll lose a number of points.

At the end of last semester, students in a particular class had to turn in a project for a major grade.  Most turned it in on time though several turned it in the next day.  The shocking part was that about 20-25% of the students as a whole did not even bother turning in the assignment.  They just sat back and took a zero for the assignment.  They.  Do.  Not.  Care.

What does that teach them?  More importantly, what does that teach the good students, the ones who worked for their grades?

What’s going to happen after school when those same students have to pay their bills on time?  Do you think the credit card companies are going to give them a free pass if they’re late with their payment?  What happens when you’re late for a flight at the airport?  How about if you’re late completing required assignments at work, such as truck orders and submitting the employees’ payroll?  That’s an easy way to get fired.

So if many students are so bad, why are they still being passed to the next grade level?

There are a few reasons why that happens.

• First, schools are under incredible pressure to look good and have a high number of students pass their classes.  Even when students fail, administrators will allow them to advance.  Just sweep them on to the next level, even if they’re unprepared.
• Second, many teachers are extremely lenient with the grading.
• Third, test grades are curved.  The students even know about it.  When they see their test results, they’ll ask if it was the raw score or the curved one.  Do you think they care if they actually earned that “C” on the test, rather than it being curved up from an “F”?  Nope.
• Fourth, No Child Left Behind.  Almost everybody gets passed.  You have to severely fail and screw up to be held back a year in school.

Throw all of that together, add in a heaping amount of other bullshit, and there you go.  Our school system is in critical need of fixing, starting at the top of the schools and going upward from there.  Drain the “swampy” schools of the corruption and lackadaisical standards, and actually focus on real education.  And for the love of God, when a student (especially middle school level) is caught cheating on a test, don’t simply give them a day in ISS (in-school suspension) and allow them to take the test again.  Cheat on a test in college.  I dare you!  Watch what happens when you get caught.  Grow a backbone and actually hold the students accountable for their behavior!

What good are schools if they don’t prepare kids for real life?