Post Common Core, still problems

When I was a HS junior I transferred to a Lutheran High School and one of my favorite courses was Christian History.  The instructor was Gil Holstein and one of his quiz questions might go like this.

John Calvin,

1. Rejected Transubstantiation
2. Accepted Consubstantiation
3. Thought that faith and reason led to a Memorial Feast
4. A & C
5. A & B
6. All of these
7. None of these
   To get a 40 on one of his quizzes was passing and a 67 would make you high grade.  Frustrated students confronted him one day about his ‘infinite choices’ multiple choice tests.  But he defended it.  “Why this is how life is.  Many choices, some of them multiple combinations.  If a Mack truck swerves over in your lane, will you swerve out of the way or put on the brakes or some combination?”  What Gil was trying to get us to do was to dig and claw and scratch (DCS)what we had read for Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth. (answer above is D)
               It has ever been this way as fathers taught their sons their skills.  Instill discipline to get a job done right.  Critically evaluate your work.  Learn to love the DCS.  Make it your lifelong habit.
               USA ranks #28 in science today and Oklahoma ranks #39 among the states.  How will we compete globally?  Thus the idea is born to set up Standards by which to judge our education and make our schools teach to the Standards. 
               Comes now the Common Core Controversy.  People on the right are saying that it is full of political correctness and so they reject it.  People on the left say it has too much testing and they reject it too.  Parents in the vast middle are rejecting it because little Leroy is stressing out over taking achievement tests.  And this is the era when parents go into principal’s offices and bang their fists on the desk.  Little Leroy flunked.  There must be something wrong with the school! Write your legislator and demand that he repeal Common Core usage.
               We can remove the general standards but standards of excellence must exist in the minds of the teachers.  Education continues to be an involvement between teacher and student and the student has no knowledge of the standards.  That is what happened at my old Lutheran HS.  Gil knew his standards and refused to compromise them.  The teacher in this case is free to teach.   But what happens when the NEA represents the teachers and the administrators are hounded by the public?  The NEA wants a Fur Lined Nest (FLN) for its members.  The public wants Bread and Circuses (B&C) in the form of a good football team and band concerts, etc. The administrators want funding and peace ($P).  Put these forces together and see if you get any high standards.  The B&Cs crab at the $Ps who bring their concerns to the school board, while the FLNs ask that we remove competition and make it all fun.  Clearly the idea is to quell the gripes and lower the bar.  DCS dies without making any noise.  Add to this the effect of federal programs and grants that tickle the $Ps with temptation to lower the bar even further.  The net result is #39 in a nation that is #28. 
               Solution?  One possibility is to remove public education and make a voucher system.  The private schools will compete and use their product as proof of their superiority over competitors.  But this horrifies the people in Binger and Gotebo and Wappanucka and all those small towns where there is just one school and if they lose that precious school the whole town falls into rubble.  Besides the football game on Friday night is the only entertainment at hand.  Charter school conversions of the rural schools—where state regulations are left aside provided the school has superior results—work about half the time.  What if they fail? 
               Radical surgery of public schools could be done if we were to ban unions for public employees while cutting back on government regulations and administrators (back to the 50’s). Trouble is, they didn’t have expensive Astroturf football fields with Tartan surface tracks and buses worthy of rock stars in the 50’s.  They didn’t travel over 30 miles for a game in 1958.  Another version of this fix is to banish athletics and most extra-curriculars as the rest of the civilized world does it.  The local Y or athletic club could sponsor the teams and the debate team can form around a citizens support group.  Good luck selling any of this to the public. Or to the Democrats.
               So here I sit typing like an old Version 1.0. The guy who still reads instruction manuals like he was taught to read his textbooks for detail and question the author’s veracity.  The guy who still figures business deals backwards first to see if it has benefit then forwards to see if the other guy is benefitted, the way I was made to do math and check my work.  The guy who enjoys a DIY repair project by logically eliminating causes the way we did on the farm. Dig and Claw and Scratch.  Anachronism?  Maybe.  But there’s a world at our doorsteps waiting to take our business and eat our lunch.  They are learning DCS.