I have had an interesting chat this past week with one of the Pearson curriculum developers in the comment section tied to the post.
Jenny Hatch says:
May 7, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Common core proponents are yelling they are just offering standards to school boards and parents, not curriculum.
When the big progressive corporate powers that be bought out all of the Independent Math Curriculum Companies, they made certain to dumb them all down knowing that when curriculum committees went looking for a “world class” Math book, it really did not matter which one was chosen, because they all stunk.
Working for an Independent Math Curriculum Company, I can assure you that we have not all been bought out, nor have we been dumbed down. Have a look sometime… uh… suckas?
Your claim that “all serious Mathematicians agree, the original SAXON Math curriculum, especially the second edition, has no equal, and is the best in the marketplace” is far from accurate.
Reply
Jenny Hatch says:
May 7, 2013 at 9:53 pm
Hey Bowen,
Does your excellent, world class, bar none the best on the planet Math Curriculum have an accompanying “Remedial” program tied to it?
So that when the younguns’ use your materials approximately 33 1/2 % of the children need a Math Specialist and “Special” curriculum?
#HowTheGameIsPlayed
The thing is all of you specialists need to understand that a group of people are very much aware of the tactics beings used to dumb down American Children and we are not going to sit quietly down and just let this monstrosity percolate in the schools without trying to expose the frauds.
You need to “Simma Down”, taka a chill pill, and decide if you want to be a part of the problem or of the solution…
Jenny Hatch
Homeschooling Mom and General Rabble Rouser about #CommonCore
Reply
Bowen Kerins says:
May 8, 2013 at 8:20 pm
I don’t see myself as a specialist, I see myself as a former high school teacher who started writing books because I thought we could make something better than what existed. (That appears to be the same biography as Mr. Saxon.)
Today I spent the entire day working with math teachers in Lawrence, MA as they begin implementing a schoolwide curriculum at their high school for the first time in many years, and I am proud that they will be using our program, CME Project. We have previously shown success (in student achievement, efficacy, in standardized testing) in many other cities. CME Project is written by teachers with over 100 years of combined classroom experience, funded by the National Science Foundation, and field-tested for five years before publishing. Some of the work in CME Project was incorporated into the Common Core State Standards, particularly the Standards for Mathematical Practice intended to highlight eight deep goals of K-12 mathematics, such as persistent problem-solving, using precise language, and generalizing from repeated reasoning.
Our materials are built with a low-threshold, high-ceiling approach so that all … uhh, younguns’? … can learn and succeed. Our curriculum has very high standards, and students rise to meet those standards. Students learn math by working on math problems — good problems, connected to one another, with both short-term and long-term goals.
Our program comes with support for students who enter our curriculum below grade level, while continuing to ask those students to take on work at level. We have consistently found that students can and will take on challenging mathematical tasks if they are given the opportunity to work on them, gaining self-efficacy and perseverance through work.
None of this happens without high-quality teachers doing their work. I will always be grateful for the great work of these professionals. It’s an honor to work with teachers and students around the country, and a privilege to see our work succeeding in measurable ways.
However, it may instead be true that I am destroying America and am a complete fraud who needs to simmer down. I suggest you read through our curriculum, talk to teachers who use it, and get a sense of what we wrote and why we wrote it. The chance of this happening may be less than “approximately 33 1/2%” — seriously, why didn’t you just say “approximately one-third” — but I’m always glad to defend our work. Thanks for reading!
Reply
Jenny Hatch says:
May 9, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Bowen,
Thanks for explaining what you do.
I appreciate the overview mostly because Pearson has been fingered as the company with the most at stake in the Common Core rollout.
As a parent my biggest issue with the reading and math curriculums is the recidivism of the various companies.
And really, who can blame them with all that lovely money flowing in. Taxpayer money mostly.
My own research and frankly, national test scores, have proven year after year after year that nothing has changed, children are still being taught with materials DESIGNED to ensure that ONE THIRD of them will need remediation in math and reading.
With so many careers on the line and so much cash to be pumped into the glory hole of the cash cow that is American Education, WHO has the will to reform this glutonous system???
I think of the curriculum companies the same way I think of the Pharma companies who run Medicine.
When the business model DEPENDS on a high percentage of sickness and educational failure…well, I just do NOT believe Taxpayers should be funding this madness.
If we had a truly competitive private sector in education and medicine, with no taxpayer slush fund, everyone would be amazed to watch how quickly these sick systems of education and medicine reformed themselves.
But when every Johnnie and Susie has ten grand tucked away in their backpack every year to be doled out to whoever is smart enough to GO FOR THE GOLD, and when Johnnie and Susie have twenty grand per year if someone can just manage to get them labeled reading or math challenged…
Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or even a Math specialist, (sorry, teacher) to crunch them numbers…
Happy Trails!
Jenny Hatch
And today over at the Utahns against Common Core Blog a devastating Math Post outlined the stark difference between Common Core approved Math Textbooks and Saxon Math.
Several years ago I was involved in what has been called “The Math Wars”. Alpine School District had quit teaching the times tables, long division, and some other basic math skills, to children under the promise that a constructivist (ie. children need to construct their own knowledge) approach to math would deepen their skills. This was an abominable failure. Even at BYU where 2 math education professors got permission (by someone over the math department’s dead body) to teach a class of honors calculus to freshmen with this method. The result was a disaster. Honors calculus students measuring Dixie Cups with rulers while regular students were learning how to integrate. Predictably to everyone but those 2 professors teaching the constructivist class, their students scored below all 17 sections of non-honors calculus on the final exam. Their final defeat? Blame it on the test writer who had been creating the same test from the same objectives for years…
Now the big lie. Current research says there are NO studies that support constructivism. Dr. Jim Milgram, Stanford math professor who has been and may still currently be the only educator invited to serve on NASA’s advisory board, noted that if constructivist math were a success, NASA would be looking for students that went through that pedagogy. The fact is, BYU’s math education professors’ failure is typical of constructivist programs.
There is only one conclusion. Following the USOE’s math recommendations will kill STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) initiatives. All you business leaders and technology oriented professionals supporting Common Core are going to be in for a rude awakening as this machine destroys love of math, destroys math skills, and destroys any edge Utah has for technology…unless…
Utah must drop Common Core and restore local control. The USOE is hell-bent on constructivism and unless there is a major personnel change at the USOE, it’s going to rest on the shoulders of parents to take their children’s education into their own hands (literally), and leave those who can’t get the support at home to drown in fuzzy math.
In 2006 or so, Brett Moulding, state curriculum director at the USOE invited me to his office to ask a simple question. “Oak, you’re a parent who is very involved in your children’s education. How can we replicate that to other parents?”
“Easy,” I replied. “Just implement Investigations math statewide and you’ll have all the parental involvement you can handle.”
True story. I just had no idea they were going to take my suggestion literally. Parents, you may seriously want to consider The Great Escape…Homeschooling.
This first video is an excellent overview of the whole Common Core Agenda.
Today this clip made the rounds on Twitter. It is a short video taken at a Missouri Common Core Community Meeting on May 2nd 2013.
The video is unique because it shows the Delphi Technique in action. It also depicts the response from the crowd, which was negative. Those who attended were obviously frustrated because the questions they had were not being addressed.
America was built on the principle of open and honest debate. Roberts Rules ruled all townhall meetings for centuries. In the past few decades various tactics have been developed to create the impression that input from the community is being achieved while in truth those who take the time and energy to attend and be involved in the community are being shut out of the process. This has been especially true in Education Circles for many years.
The cool thing is that the Delphi Technique can be diffused with just a little bit of effort. Here is a quick primer:
The Delphi Technique was originally conceived as a way to obtain the opinion of experts without necessarily bringing them together face to face. In recent times, however, it has taken on an all new meaning and purpose. InEducating for the New World Order by B. Eakman, the reader finds reference upon reference for the need to preserve the illusion that there is “…lay, or community, participation (in the decision-making process), while lay citizens were, in fact, being squeezed out.” The Delphi Technique is the method being used to squeeze citizens out of the process, effecting a left-wing take over of the schools.
A specialized use of this technique was developed for teachers, the “Alinsky Method” (ibid, p.123). The setting or group is, however, immaterial; the point is that people in groups tend to share a certain knowledge base and display certain identifiable characteristics (known as group dynamics). This allows for a special application of a basic technique.
The change agent or facilitator goes through the motions of acting as an organizer, getting each person in the target group to elicit expression of their concerns about a program, project, or policy in question. The facilitator listens attentively, forms “task forces,” “urges everyone to make lists,” and so on. While s/he is doing this, the facilitator learns something about each member of the target group. S/He identifies the “leaders,” the “loud mouths,” as well as those who frequently turn sides during the argument — the “weak or noncommittal”.
Suddenly, the amiable facilitator becomes “devil’s advocate.” S/He dons his professional agitator hat. Using the “divide and conquer” technique, s/he manipulates one group opinion against the other. This is accomplished by manipulating those who are out of step to appear “ridiculous, unknowledgeable, inarticulate, or dogmatic.” S/He wants certain members of the group to become angry, thereby forcing tensions to accelerate. The facilitator is well trained in psychological manipulation. S/He is able to predict the reactions of each group member. Individuals in opposition to the policy or program will be shut out of the group.
The method works. It is very effective with parents, teachers, school children, and any community group. The “targets” rarely, if ever, know that they are being manipulated. Or, if they suspect this is happening, do not know how to end the process.
The desired result is for group polarization, and for the facilitator to become accepted as a member of the group and group process. S/He will then throw the desired idea on the table and ask for opinions during discussion. Very soon his/her associates from the divided group begin to adopt the idea as if it were their own, and pressure the entire group to accept the proposition.
This technique is a very unethical method of achieving consensus on a controversial topic in group settings. It requires well-trained professionals who deliberately escalate tension among group members, pitting one faction against the other, so as to make one viewpoint appear ridiculous so the other becomes “sensible” whether such is warranted or not.
The Delphi Technique is based on the Hegelian Principle of achieving Oneness of Mind through a three step process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In thesis and antithesis, all present their opinion or views on a given subject, establishing views and opposing views. In synthesis, opposites are brought together to form the new thesis. All participants are then to accept ownership of the new thesis and support it, changing their own views to align with the new thesis. Through a continual process of evolution, Oneness of Mind will supposedly occur.
The theory of the Delphi and the reality of the Delphi are, obviously, quite different — the reality being that Oneness of Mind does not occur but only the illusion of Oneness of Mind with those who refuse to be Delphi’d being alienated from participating in the process.
While proponents of education reform feel they are quite justified in this, the effect of this unethical manipulation of people is to create polarized camps. In an effort to maintain the process, advocates have marketed a plethora of publications (such as What’s Left After the Right, No Right Turn and If You Don’t, They Will) intended to label, castigate, and alienate anyone who does not go along with them. As a result, parents come to understand that their role in education reform is merely perfunctory; that the outcome is preset, that they are not but the rah-rah team so when opposition does arise, advocates of education reform can say, “we had community input.”
To make sure that the situation is controlled, only those parents who agree with the process are allowed on the restructuring teams. New participants are carefully screened to ensure that education reform goes forward unquestioned.
If measurable opposition persists, advocates are told, get the local ministers on board. Take steps to neutralize, by whatever means necessary, the opposition. In some places, opponents have been harassed, both at home and on the job, personal property has been damaged and vandalized, people have lost their jobs. Anyone who does not go along with the restructuring of our society is susceptible to the totalitarian tactics of those promoting education reform – whether it be parents, teachers, principals, superintendents or board members. The need exists for advocates to maintain an iron grip on the process. They cannot, for instance, withstand open public debate of the issues. Therefore, they do not partake in public forums. They cannot withstand the criticism, so they close every avenue for parents to address the issues. They are rapidly creating, through their divisive tactics, a volatile situation. America is being torn apart.
Parents, citizens, teachers, principals, superintendents who are opposed to the new purpose being given our American education system need tools to withstand the process being used to bring it in — against the Delphi Technique and consensus which, through their basis in the Hegelian Principle, have Marxist connections and purposes.
First, no opportunity must be left untaken to expose this unethical, divisive process. Second, when this process is used, it can be disrupted. To do so, however, one must be able to recognize when the Delphi Technique is being used, and how to disrupt it.
With thanks to Sandy Vanderberg, Peg Luksik and others.
Ground rules for disrupting the consensus process (Delphi Technique) — when facilitators want to steer a group in a specific direction.
1) Always Be Charming. Smile, be pleasant, be courteous, moderate your voice so as not to come across as belligerent or aggressive.
2) Stay Focused. If at all possible, write your question down to help you stay focused. Facilitators, when asked questions they don’t want to answer, often digress from the issue raised and try to work the conversation around to where they can make the individual asking the question look foolish, feel foolish, appear belligerent or aggressive. The goal is to put the one asking the question on the defensive. Do not fall for this tactic. Always be charming, thus deflecting any insinuation, innuendo, etc, that may be thrown at you in their attempt to put you on the defensive, but bring them back to the question you asked. If they rephrase your question into an accusatory statement (a favorite tactic) simply state, “that is not what I stated, what I asked was… (repeat your question).” Stay focused on your question.
3) Be Persistent. If putting you on the defensive doesn’t work, facilitators often resort to long drawn out dissertations on some off-the-wall and usually unrelated, or vaguely related, subject that drags on for several minutes – during which time the crowd or group usually loses focus on the question asked (which is the intent). Let them finish with their dissertation/expose, then nicely, with focus and persistence, state, “but you didn’t answer my question. My question was… (repeat your question).”
Remember…
always be charming,
stay focused, and
be persistent.
Never, under any circumstance, become angry. Anger directed at the facilitator will immediately make the facilitator “the victim.” This defeats the purpose which is to make you the victim. The goal of the facilitator is to make those they are facilitating like them, alienating anyone who might pose a threat to the realization of their agenda. [People with fixed belief systems, who know what they believe and stand on what they believe, are obvious threats.] If the participant becomes the victim, the facilitator loses face and favor with the crowd. This is why crowds are broken up into groups of seven or eight, why objections are written on cards, not voiced aloud where they are open to public discussion and public debate. It’s called crowd control. It is always good to have someone else, or two or three others who know the Delphi Technique dispersed through the crowd; who, when the facilitator digresses from the question, will stand up and say nicely, “but you didn’t answer that lady’s/gentleman’s question.” The facilitator, even if suspecting you are together, certainly will not want to alienate the crowd by making that accusation. Sometimes it only takes one occurrence of this type for the crowd to figure out what’s going on, sometimes it takes more than one.
If you have an organized group, meet before the meeting to strategize. Everyone should know their part. Meet after the meeting to analyze what went right, what went wrong and why, and what needs to happen the next time around. Never meet during the meeting. One of the favorite tactics of the facilitator, if the meeting is not going the way he/she wants, if he/she is meeting measurable resistance, is to call a recess. During the recess, the facilitator and his/her “spotters” (people who wander the room during the course of the meeting, watching the crowd) watch the crowd to see who congregates where, especially those who have offered measurable resistance. If the “resistors” congregate in one place, a “spotter” will usually gravitate to that group to “join in the conversation” and will report back to the facilitator. When the meeting resumes, the facilitator will steer clear of those who are “resistors.” Do not congregate. Hang loose and work the crowd. Move to where the facilitator or “spotters” are, listen to what they have to say, but do not gravitate to where another member of your team is.
This strategy also works in a face to face, one on one, meeting with anyone who has been trained in how to use the Delphi Technique.
With thanks to Sandy Vanderberg, Peg Luksik and others
Roberts Rules of Order were designed to be the way that our Republic was supposed to function at every level from local up to the Federal Level. So if you as a Taxpayer attend a Common Core informational meeting and the setup of the room is round tables and note cards with little follow through and even less accountability from those moderating the event, just know that you have been Alinsky’d with the Delphi Technique and DEMAND that the room be reconfigured according to Roberts rules with open microphones for the audience and open and honest debate COVERED BY THE PRESS. If the press does not bother to show up and report, create your own citizen reports and post them on the internet.
This is the way for our Republic to be restored from the ground up.
One of the reasons the un-schooling Teaching Philosophy resonated with me so well back in the day was because I was into Attachment Parenting and I looked at my Natural Mothering as a common sense approach to raising our family. Un-schooling was a natural extension of “child led” parenting because the goal with Attachment Parenting was to follow the child’s lead with breastfeeding and a gentle nurturing of the baby through each developmental stage.
I would have had a much easier time if I had been on a desert island and just able to follow the childrens lead on education issues without any busy bodies stepping in to inform me what a screw up I was a parent and how inadequately trained I was to teach my own.
Because I had near constant blowback from family and friends who were watching my children every step of the way I felt an all consuming need for them to at least be at grade level with their work and perhaps even advanced intellectually. When we made the decision to pull our children out of school the first time, my oldest daughter Michelle was in middle school. She had spent four years with a unique group of students at the local elementary who were all taught using the Core Knowledge curriculum, Open Court Phonics, and “pure” Saxon Math in the classroom.
During those years I was able to refortify my position as a mother and read a few more books to strengthen my resolve. The Homeschool Essays by Dr. Art Robinson proved to be the deciding factor in me having the courage to jump back into the cesspool of Homeschool Mom Rejection. When I say cesspool, I mean that most parents struggle with busybodies in one form or another, but when a parent takes on the task of being teacher and mother the level of harassment can reach supremely uncomfortable levels that will leave the mother ill and defensive. The human body can only take so much rejection.
I also mothered Andy through his baby hood and weaned him on his third birthday.
I was amazed to feel the rejuvenation of mind, body, and spirit that smacked once I weaned that child. I began nursing Allison eight years before and had one or two children on the breast during the ensuing eight years. I was unaware how much of my creative energy and essence was being invested in my little ones during those years.
I am very grateful that for the four years our children were in school during that time that it was in an intimate setting with a group of like minded parents using a curriculum completely different to the BVSD curriculum cult of Whole Language Reading and Fuzzy Math.
During these years our Charter was also being put together by a dynamic and focused group of parents who were using new laws passed by Conservatives in the Colorado State Legislature to set up one of the best Charter Schools in the nation. Peak to Peak was a gift for our family and I will always be grateful to those parents who spent two full years planning, dreaming, and then making the school a reality. I felt a little guilty not participating as a founding family member, but I was overwhelmed with life and had zero time or energy to help found a school. I attended the Moms in Touch Prayer group for our local elementary, which was made up of many of the parents who were working so diligently to set up the charter, during the years that our children were in school. So I heard much of the back story and was kept in the loop as various milestones were reached and the dream became a reality.
We even had one of our children accepted into the initial group of students for Peak to Peak. But that year I potentially would have had a child in middle school, a child out at the charter in another town, and a child at the local elementary. The idea of driving all of them to various places and getting them there on time was daunting and I wanted to try to Home school just to see if we could have any success with it. So that year we spent six hundred dollars, bought curriculum for everyone (including Art Robinsons Curriculum) and I buckled up and dove in.
I was so blessed that Paul agreed to teach American History every morning before he left for work. We would gather the children around the kitchen table and while I made breakfast he would teach them from a history book he purchased that was a high school level textbook. As he taught, he wove American History around our families geneology and LDS church history. For example, while he was teaching about the American Revolution he would open the biography of Benjamin Franklin Johnson who was an ancestor and Bens namesake and tell stories from his life that paralleled what was happening with the founding of the government as well as what was happening with the restoration of the church. We also read the Book of Mormon together faithfully every morning and said Family Prayer together. It was so much easier to engage in these important daily practices during the year of Homeschool than it had ever been when the children were in school.
This year remains an epoch in our lives because it was such a joyful one.
The next year we did an inventory to see if the children were happy and if everyone was on board with Home school. Allison had started gymnastics and as my most social child, that combined with the regular church activities for young girls seemed to be all of the socializing she needed. So we jumped into our second year of me teaching. I only had to spend enough to get the new Math and Language Arts Books, which was about three hundred dollars. Andrew was four and as he did with all of his physical developments (he walked at seven months of age), he proved to be quite advanced with his intellectual abilities and picked up reading without me hardly even trying to teach him by the time he was five. He was reading large chapter books a couple months later and as my confirmed bookworm, he has never looked back.
I feel like I should insert here that although I started Ben on the same road with early teaching of his letters, sounds, writing skills etc… he has proved extremely resistant to learning how to read for the “joy” of it. This example in my own family has proven to me that children develop at completely different levels and different learning styles are required when teaching them. Ben is a perfect example of the better late than early type of child, who often tends to be male and much more interested in playing with legos than doing school.
When Ben was little we spent many hours playing chess, monopoly, uno, and a variety of other games that I knew would eventually help him with math and logic. He loved spending his time one on one with Mom in these pursuits but doing a Saxon Math lesson was as painful as cleaning his room. I still made him do the math, but we took it very very slowly, and I continually followed his lead. When he was absolutely resistant to learning Division when he was seven, I tucked it away for a couple years, and it has only been this year that he has shown any interest in learning it. He is now ten and division to him seems really cool, especially when we use fake money and I allow him to actually make piles of money as it is divided up evenly. I will show him a flashcard and he will make the pile of money and then divide it up and give me his answer. It is slow, but he immediately gets the purpose of mastering those flashcards and his math facts.
To go back to our story, after Paul led the children in history and religion he would take off for work while I cleaned up the kitchen and the children did a few chores and dressed. At about nine we would head over to the local park for PE. We lived at Cottonwood Park in Louisville Colorado those years and some of my happiest moments as a Mom were spent in that beautiful space. We almost always had the park to ourselves at that hour of the day and after running around the pond twice we would head back to the play structure where the children were required to do ten pullups, situps, pushups and then we would play a game of basketball, kickball, or some other group sport as a family. One day Jeff was running around the pond while I sat on the bench with a stopwatch timing everyone and a local police man saw him alone running and assumed he was ditching school. It was really funny watching this officer chase after him in his car. I saw Jeff point to me and explain that his “teacher”/Mom was over on the bench.
Most of the playgroups and preschools who used that park would show up about ten am and we would head home to do Math and Language Arts. Paul worked at a building next door to our church less than a mile from home, so he came home for lunch every day and we enjoyed eating together while he corrected math lessons and I cleaned up. By 1:00 PM the most important tasks of our day were over and I settled into nap time with a good book. I required all of the children to be on their beds in what we termed “quiet time” and they were free to read whatever they wanted, but they had to be respectful of everyone else who wanted to nap. Sometimes I was the only one who slept during that time, but I quickly learned that I had to lay down for a couple hours every day. I was very disciplined about this and in looking back, while I made that decision out of sheer survival as a homeschooling Mom, I believe it is the number one factor that contributed to all of our children being readers. We would check stacks of books out of the library and after a time the children started asking for books for birthday gifts etc..
Since one of the main goals for me as a Mom was to have a family of readers, accomplishing this goal has given me a total sense of self worth, that despite the many sacrifices of my own time and developing my own talents etc… making certain that my children were readers was priority one and we have largely accomplished that goal. I wish I had had more confidence back in the day when I felt so defensive. It would have been so much easier if I had been able to see my childrens test scores on the ACT and various AP classes they have taken as well as the work ethic they have shown doing college and university work. I would have been able to fend off the dogs nipping at my heels so much more effectively if I had known our little homeschool experiment would be a success.
Hatch Family one week after Bens Birth
But a leap of faith is often just that…a leap into the unknown. And I had enough spiritual encouragement from my Heavenly Father that I knew our efforts as a mother and a father would one day bring much happiness and joy, both intellectually and as a family unit. Seeing the great love my children have for each other also has taught me that homeschool bonds siblings together like few things going in society today.
Our homeschool experiment was aided by a wonderful group of maverick mormon moms who formed the Liahona Home Educators association. Families from all over the front range of Colorado gathered every friday at the Arvada Stake Center to socialize and do important things together. We did science fairs, classes on topics ranging from Spanish to Poetry. We went all over Denver to various museums and had many field trips and parties.
Paul and I hosted a field day at our local park, and we had a series of running and athletic events. I also directed the musical My Servant Joseph, and we had a blast taking all of our families up to Golden Gate State Park for a week of camping and outdoor education together. The memories created and the friendships forged will last forever.
The final year of homeschool was the 2001-2002 school year. My life took a twist after the death of my older brother Dave and as I descended into a deep and overwhelming suicidal depression, I found myself back in psychiatric care for the first time in ten years. I was hospitalized for three days and during that time we made the decision to enroll all of the three youngest children in our local elementary. Michelle tried 8th grade for two days, but she really wanted to continue at home, so we let her.
As I recovered from the initial shock of sexual abuse memories surfacing after my brothers death, I began to really question my capacity as a homeschooling parent. I felt like a total basket case. Then 9-11 happened on September 11th and I found myself thrust into an even deeper spiritual crisis. I did not use meds during this depression, my essential oils, prayer, and priesthood blessings were my lifeline, but I did go to therapy with two excellent therapists who specialized in sexual abuse.
A few weeks into the school year Coal Creek Elementary was looking for aides for the classrooms of various teachers. I was interested in being around my children more and keeping a close eye on what was happening at the school. So I applied for the job. I was hired to spend time in a special needs classroom with children who had a variety of developmental disabilities. I spent several hours every week helping on the playground, escorting the children to therapy and in the lunch room collecting money etc… I was surprised to feel the strong whole language cult atmosphere at this school. When I would accompany various children to reading specialists I would just sit quietly while the highly paid professional worked with them on varioud letters. They gave those kids sounds and letters like they were this hidden code that the children were too dumb to figure out.
I was half tempted to bring my phonics materials into the classroom and begin working with them myself, but I did not want to get fired. I was also amazed at the amount of toxic cleaning products that were used around these children. The school and the teachers were obviously unaware of the pioneering work by Dr. Doris Rapp, author of the book, Is This Your Child’s World? I would watch the teacher cleanse the table the children sat at the do their work and the toxic fumes would rise right up into their faces while seated around the table. These children would visibly react to the chemical saturation from permanent markers, glues, and air freshener and I sat back marveling. Did I still live in environmentally concious Boulder Colorado???
When Ben made the case to come home from 4th grade last year one of his major beefs with being back in a classroom was the constant exposure to toxic smells and fumes. He has been raised in a home where we almost exclusively use Environmentally safe soaps, have an air purifier on every floor of our home and use a reverse osmosis water purifier for drinking water. He was really annoyed by the fabric softener scents on his seat mates clothing and all of the glues, cleaners, and dry erase markers. As he explained it, I was forced to recall my months in the special needs classroom and it was a factor in my agreeing to let him be homeschooled again.
After a few months at Coal Creek I realized that my children had been pulled out of the classroom and taken to a special assembly on diversity, which we all know is code for gay indoctrination. I had specifically requested that if anything like this happened that I be given the option to keep them home for the day when the assembly was planned. Since no one at the school was mindful of my request I felt that I could not allow our children to stay at the school, so about christmas time we pulled Allison, Jeff, and Andy back out and went back to our homeschool books.
I am grateful we had a few months at Coal Creek in their classrooms and me standing back and just taking it all in as a quiet observer. My time at the school as an employee was extremely valuable in helping to shape decisions that have been made in the intervening years.
It was my mother in law, a college professor of English and Communications who had the most concern about me homeschooling right around the time I was so emotionally ill. While I was grateful for her insight and concern, we unhesitatingly pulled our children back home when the boundary we had set was breached by the school.
In January of 2002 we conceived Ben and I was once more back in the role of Pregnant Homeschooling Mother. (I had unschooled Michelle for two years and during that time Jeffrey and Andrew were born).
I will share the rest of our educational evolution for another day, but in titling this essay, How can I teach my seven year old son Math and Reading when I cannot get him to take a bath, my message to any young Mother who is pregnant and nursing while teaching her own is to set up some simple expectations in terms of daily curriculum and schedule and then STICK TO IT! Eventually your children will stop complaining and settle into this new life.
Jeff was especially vehement in his opposition to being forced to lie in bed for two hours reading when all of the other seven year old boys he knew were up at the school running around the playground and doing PE. It would be an interesting research project to see today how many of those same seven year olds who were taught using Whole Language Crapola Curriculums are readers today compared to my little bookworm of a son.
I do not have that evidence, but I do know that my determination to continue on despite deep and lasting emotional illness and tons of judgement and concern from those around me has been justified by the fact that all four of my oldest children are GREAT readers! And when you wrap your head around the idea that progressives back in the late 1800’s like John Dewey wanted a population of illiterates in America, well then you can see that teaching children to read with true phonics and then setting up a schedule where they have loads of time to do nothing else will ensure a family of readers and be a complete refutation of that socialist agenda.
Sam Blumenfeld has made the case that even SIX MONTHS of whole language reading can disable a child for life. Please purchase his Alpha Phonics and use it to teach your children!
Jenny Hatch
This video contains many photos of my children taken during the years just described.
#StopCommonCore was the top trending hashtag on Twitter last night for hours and hours.
As a Mom interested in Education Issues, I found myself getting weepy several times as I participated in the rally. The whole exercise was a testimony to the power of social media, the focus and determination of parents all over the country, and the willingness of families to carve a few hours out of a busy day to engage in a way that sends a powerful message to the elites in our society.
Message being: Our Children’s minds are NOT for sale.
I feel compelled this morning to write the fifth essay in my Uncommon Lore Series, simply because of what I experienced last night.
Here are the previous essays if you want to give them a look:
A few weeks ago I watched the Glenn Beck program outlining what was happening with Common Core and I again found myself getting weepy.
Glenn had a couple of Mom/Teachers on the show from Utah. As they described what was going on with the Common Core Agenda I felt once again backed into a corner as a Parent. Then over the following days I spent hours watching You Tube Videos, Reading Blog Entries and the excellent
expose articles by various Parents, Michelle Malkin, and a few educators who had backed away from the whole bloated, toxic, stinking mess after learning more about it.
As I learned what was going on, I found myself hitting the computer monitor a few times in frustration. See, I am a reluctant Homeschooling Parent. A Reactionary Homeschooling Mom. Meaning, I would prefer for my children to attend school, but my conscious has made it impossible for me to allow that at various times and seasons. And because we don’t have the cash to send our five children to private school, the public school system is the only one we have to work in.
Depending on the books I would read at various times I would waffle back and forth from Unschooler to Homeschooler to Charter Schooler to Public Schooler. I have been the parent of just about every type of student except for Private School.
My oldest daughter Michelle, who is now 24 would have started Kindergarten back in 1993, but I kept her home for two years. Then under the weight of intense scrutiny from those around me for this choice and because I felt that the watchful busybody focus was damaging to her, I sent her to school for the final four years of elementary school. She attended a public school where they had a Core Knowledge Strand. Meaning they had one class per grade that was using the Core Knowledge Curriculum, Saxon Math, and Open Court Phonics Reading.
As I observed her joy in making new friends, staying in the same class with a wonderful group of students (ten of whom were fellow Mormons), and the love she had for various teachers and classes, I decided that maybe something good was happening in Public Education after all.
When she hit the Middle School years she was very clear that she wanted to be home. She lasted two days at the local middle school. So she came home for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. We enjoyed a wonderful time together as Mother and Daughter and she never went through any of that middle school drama that so many of her peers were struggling with. She also scored a perfect 100% on her 8th grade math test after using Saxon Second edition books for her middle school Math.
By the time she was high school age she was comfortable continuing with homeschool, but we were not. I had just given birth to her baby brother and was struggling emotionally. I had really enjoyed various experiences in my own high school, especially around Music and Drama, and wanted her to have the joy of friends, community, school spirit, and wonderful memories and relationships. Fortunately a charter school had just opened up in our community that was a college prep school and she was accepted for enrollment for her 9th grade year. We had to really push her to get out of her comfort zone and attend this school.
She enjoyed a wonderful high school experience with a unique and dedicated group of educators. We also felt very connected to the Peak to Peak community as part of a wonderful group of families focused on preparing our students for University.
Michelle decided to stay home and work as a nanny for the four years after high school when she would have been getting a college degree. She deferred her scholarship to SUU and began attending two years ago. She is now halfway through her College experience.
Ironically she has spent the past year working a couple hours every day in a work environment tied to her major at the local elementary school. As she has shared with me various stories of her experience, it has been interesting to hear what is happening right now in education. I will not take the time to share what she has observed, as I do not have her permission, but the bottom line is that she has zero interest in working in a school, especially after her year of observation, and has pretty much decided to homeschool her own children someday.
When I think of the countless hours I have spent over these past twenty five years reading hundreds of articles, books, blog posts, and time spent in chat rooms talking with various parents about what the best education “looks like”, I just get angry that we have a group of billionaire education boobs who believe they can circumvent the political process and use taxpayer dollars to bribe each state to put in place a top down federal education system that is much more about tracking and testing than it is about knowledge and individual growth.
I took some serious heat for my activism in 1998-99 when I decided to attend some school board meetings and make a stink about changes in the BVSD Diversity Policy. I had harassing phone calls on my answering machine, a nasty article in the local paper that made me seem like a nut job reactionary, and was heckled and hated for my views on teaching homosexuality to elementary children.
I have gone back and forth over and over again wondering how best to teach, train, protect, help, and educate these five souls entrusted to our care.
My anger at the Common Core mess is that I was planning to send Benjamin back to public school at some point so he could more easily participate in Sports, Music, and High School Life without feeling like the Home Schooled Oddball of the community. Nonconformity comes with a price, and I learned years ago that there are some very large benefits to our children when they are able to be a part of a school community. Our Charter was about as ideal of a situation as could be imagined in terms of extracurricular activities and the intellectual climate at the school. We still had Socialist Brainwashing going on and yes they even used that Commie Rag A Peoples History of The United States written by the late Howard Zinn in the history classes.
I was spoon fed European Socialism in my Michigan Public Schools during the 80’s and still came out a fierce Patriot and Lover of the Constitution, so I was not as concerned about that side of it. More, I wanted our children to feel a part of our community and engage with friends on an intellectual level.
Yet now, I feel like I have to be an objector not just with my words but with my deeds, even though I know it will create more work for me as a Mother.
It is obvious that the dumbing down of the American People has been a goal for certain elites for a long, long time.
And these Educrats have been at the helm of some of the most noxious and evil teachings that have seen the light of day in America. How would it have been if Bill Ayers had been death penalized out of this world forty years ago for his Treason instead of influencing Education, Writing the Book of the President of the USA, and implementing his Peoples Revolution through Alinsky tactics with every day that has passed from then to now?
Parents are busy, financially strained, and like to believe that the taxpayer money spent on education means that when they send their child off to school every morning they are going to be taught something important and real for six hours a day.
We do not need yet another layer of this toxicity in our society.
When we have a group of America Women who not only once, but TWICE smugly voted for the Marxist fraud in America when they could have had a decent, god fearing businessman who has a proven record of Leadership as President, then we know that something is terribly off in American Education.
I look forward to the day when it all comes crashing down and we can start over with local everything. Local schools, local food, local control of the school board, and local efforts to teach and train. Then I will know that parents and taxpayers and not the federal government are back at the helm of education.
Until then? We will be homeschooling for the long haul. Ben is in fourth grade and he will NOT be attending public school tied to the Common Core Standards.
If you are a parent to an elementary student in public school, chances are you have heard one of these terms to describe Current Math Curriculums:
New Math
Reform Math
New “New” Math
Dumb Math
World Class Math
Common Core Math
Fuzzy Headed bizzy work so bored I want to die Math
What you really need to know about Math is that all serious Mathematicians agree, the original SAXON Math curriculum, especially the second edition, has no equal, and is the best in the marketplace.
So I am going to begin this essay with a really sad story.
Once upon a time a brilliant mathematician named John Saxon decided to make it his life’s work to create an incremental curriculum from Arithmetic to Calculus and everything in between.
He published his books and educators and parents quickly flocked to his textbooks and everyone agreed they were the best and most effectively superior Math Texts ever written.
John had to deal with some Homeschooling Parents who took issue with certain words in his books: Click HERE to read Mary Prides overview of early controversies.
“Aim . . . fire . . . ready! What’s going on here? Why are some home schoolers sniping at the best math program ever made available to home schoolers? Why do some homeschool magazines refuse to accept ads from its publisher, or even mention the program’s name?
I’m talking about the famous Saxon Math program, developed by former Air Force officer and high-school math instructor John Saxon. In spite of test after test showing that the use of Saxon Math increases algebra enrollment by up to 400 percent, and that Saxon Math students radically outperform students using other math programs, Mr. Saxon has been fighting an uphill battle to get his program used in the public schools. Opposed by leftist groups such as NOW, on the grounds that his books fail to promote feminism, political correctness, and the New World Order, Saxon was delighted to find out about the homeschooling movement. Surely home schoolers would appreciate his books for what they are — excellent and witty math teaching devices!
Then came the pie in the face. A few home schoolers took it upon themselves to start circulating letters condemning the Saxon texts as “New Age” and urging others to boycott them.”
Most educators of good will understood that his texts were treasures.
“Over the years I often heard the name John Saxon but knew for sure only that his books were popular among homeschoolers. I was under the impression that he wrote his books for them. Not true. He wrote his books for every kid stuck in a classroom.
I’ve just finished “John Saxon’s Story: a genius of common sense in math education,” an excellent biography by Nakonia Hayes. It is a smart, judicious book with 340 pages. It is not a potboiler, not really a page-turner. But it tells the life story of a totally remarkable man. I think it’s correct to say that John Saxon is the greatest American educator of the last hundred years. He is unique in our history. If you want to understand the wreck that is American public education, read this book. If you are a teacher or parent hoping to defeat the treachery in the school system, read this book…
…If you told me the NCTM is a Communist front, I would think, now everything makes sense. However, if you insist that NCTM is composed of patriotic Americans, I would have to insist in return that they must live in Cloud Cuckoo Land. About math education, they are right as often as a stopped clock. John Saxon is right the rest of the time.
Please note that all the bad ideas in Reform Math are now being rebranded as Common Core Curriculum. John Saxon died in 1996. We need him more than ever.
As noted, Nakonia (“Niki”) Hayes is a careful and scholarly narrator. So far she has been a teacher, counselor, school principal, journalist, and now author. She understands the genius of John Saxon’s methods. I came away thinking that Hayes would be an excellent Secretary of Education.”
Here are a few SAXSONISMS:
Results, not methodology, should be the basis of curriculum decisions.
Creativity springs unsolicited from a well prepared mind.
Fundamental knowledge is the basis of creativity.
Creativity can be discouraged or encouraged, but creativity cannot be taught.
Problem solving is a process of concept recognition and concept application.
Problem solving is merely the application of previously learned concepts.
The “art” of problem solving cannot be taught.
The use of productive thought patterns can be taught,
but the act of “critical thinking” cannot be taught.
Mathematics is an individual sport and is not a team sport.
Students do not detest work; they detest effort without purpose.
Beautiful explanations do not lead to understanding.
Saxon books will win every contest by an order of magnitude.
To finish this expose on what has happened to the Saxon Books I share the complete expose’ article by Linda Schrock Taylor (all of you who are new to Homeschool would do well to spend several hours reading all of Lindas Articles hosted HERE at Lew Rockwell.
Harcourt Achieve acquired Saxon Publishers in 2004. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Harcourt Achieve provides customer-driven educational materials that fundamentally and positively change the lives of young, adolescent, and adult learners and empower those who teach them. The company is also the publisher of the Rigby and Steck-Vaughn product lines.
I never thought I could ever be critical of Saxon Math, and frankly, had Saxon, Wang, et al, retained ownership of Saxon Publishers, I am confident that I would not have been presented with issues to which I take great exception; to terminology such as “provides customer-driven educational materials” that I find both foolish and frightening.
However, Saxon did make the regrettable decision to sell out to the Harcourt group, and now New-Saxon, its decisions, and its rewriting and restructuring of products, are fair game for close analysis and critical comments.
I am distressed to read that the order of the topics has been changed in the rewritten books already on the market, despite the red herring claim that the company values the incremental steps of the original Saxon books. I am frustrated to read that instead of instructing, the teacher will serve as “tutor and coach.” This sounds too much like New-Math to those of us who mourn the loss of America’s competitive edge in mathematics, and strongly disapprove of the crazy educational ideas coming out of universities and teacher training colleges — from the very people who should be more astute and analytical; from those who are being paid to know better.
I cannot help but feel sadness and great concern at the probable loss of the effective, efficient, incremental, building-block philosophies that John Saxon brought: to math instruction; to teachers and homeschooling parents wishing to teach lean, hard mathematical principles, concepts and applications while avoiding fuzzy, dumbed down fluff like leaf and stem problems; illogical sequencing of material; procedures that teachers, themselves, have difficulty internalizing, let alone teaching to others.
Progressive-minded teachers will feel fine about the very changes that we dread. If teachers are only required to wander the room as coaches, and encouraged to believe that uneducated children are capable of “constructing knowledge” then teachers will come off smelling like proverbial roses. When children fail to construct knowledge, as most certainly will occur, the blame will be put squarely on the innocent students and duped parents. Such teachers will absolve themselves of any guilt by recalling that they roamed the room as expected and so should not be found at fault just because few children bothered to ask questions.
I cannot help but think of John Hersey’s assertion in his book, The Child Buyer, that — everyone has a price.
I cannot help but feel relief that we were able to homeschool our son with Saxon’s original and very effective middle and high school level books: Saxon 76, Algebra ½, Algebra I, Algebra II, Advanced Math, and even Calculus, before the company was sold and the rewriting / restructuring began. I feel fortunate to have Saxon Physics on-hand, ready for use.
As they become available, I will order copies of each rewritten / reformatted textbook and compare them closely to the original Saxon books. I will write of any discrepancies, dumbed down instruction, and confused concepts that I find. As noted above, already the New-Saxon website uses New-Math terminology and reorganized materials are on the market within months of Harcourt acquiring Saxon. I cannot help but believe that the plans for such progressive changes were in place prior to the closure of the sale.
I really would like to ask New-Saxon why they are changing from the traditional hardback books to consumable workbooks, and why now? I also would like to ask them why they are changing the order of topic presentation in books that have proven to be so successful, and why now?
Quite recently, my son and I read — and we both believe it was on the Saxon website although the information is no longer prominently posted there, if posted at all — that seventy percent (70%) of homeschooling families use the Saxon math materials.
It was good to know that so many children are being taught real math, although I do feel that the percentage claimed is far too low. Innumerable families purchase used copies of the Saxon Math books on Ebay, or from other families, or from homeschooling groups. These purchases would be missed in a publisher’s count of “number of materials sold to homeschooling families,” so it must be nearly impossible to know exactly how many homeschooled children are using Saxon Math books, and whether they are using new or used copies.
Since there are millions of children who have been, or are being homeschooled, the number of Saxon math books sold would be several million. Of course…there would be several million more sold if the books were consumable and thus able to meet the needs of only one child, rather than meet the needs of all the children in one family; plus all the children of the family that later buys the used copies; plus the children of the family that buys the used-used copies…
Using the traditional Saxon math books, a family with, say five children, would only need to buy one (1) copy of each book for each level, K-through-Calculus. At the lower elementary levels the family would only need to buy the fairly inexpensive workbooks in order to teach the next child in line. The instructional materials would already be in the family’s possession, having been purchased for the first child. Once a child moved into the hardback books, further purchases would be totally unnecessary.
Thus, when a child finished Saxon 54, the Saxon 65 book would already be in the home and available for that child and each successive sibling. Through the years, five children would each use the single copy of each book. After all five children completed a level; the family could sell the used books on Ebay and recoup many of their original costs. Other families would find the books that they seek on Ebay, and save the cost of purchasing new books. What an efficient set-up for homeschooling families! What a loss of sales for New-Saxon — if the company were to continue publishing sturdy, long-lasting, multi-child-serving, hardback math books.
I would also like to ask New-Saxon if they are purposefully making changes that will put a heavy financial burden upon homeschooling families; if they are striving, on their own, or under someone else’s agenda, to discourage parents from choosing to homeschool; if they are thinking that, if parents decide to homeschool, despite all the roadblocks continually thrown up before them, at least their children will join the rest of America’s children in being subjected to dumbed-down new-new-math. I do not feel at all comfortable with any changes being made to the tried and true Saxon books, let alone those changes described, even briefly, at the website. I hope that John Saxon joins me in questioning his decision to sell his company to a publisher that would, by August of the year of the sale, have rewritten books on the market with topics reorganized and coaches replacing teachers.
Dr. John Saxon was, for me, the last major holdout in our struggle to defeat the destructive forces of: progressivism; globalism; New-Math; whole language; balanced literacy; “customer-driven materials”; textbook publishers that build future sales upon the failure of their very own educational products to meet the expectations (of parents and taxpayers, at least) that instructional materials actually teach skills and knowledge integral to the process for developing scholars.
What will become of schools when all classrooms are coached by progressively trained, jargon speaking, educators? Instead of actually teaching children, will these people focus on smiling broadly, wandering about the rooms, echoing the publishers’ dialogue, and perfecting methods by which they can live, coach, and self-evaluate according to the following advice?
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.” ~ W.C. Fields.
What will schools become? They will become empty buildings with boarded up windows. Many have already crossed over that line.
With the sale of the traditional Saxon methods for instruction, to the progressive New-Saxon with its game plan for coaches, the last hope for successful reform of America’s public schooling system absolutely died. There will never be an educational plan formulated and directed by the central government, or even the individual state governments, that will be successful. Mark my words. They speak of standards but count smoke rings.
Despite the rhetoric, the laws, the costs — effective instruction will still be done by dedicated, traditional teachers and parents, working in isolated groups — in an occasional public school; at kitchen tables across the nation; in traditional private and parochial schools. Only these few will truly focus on real scholarship; only these few will continue to struggle — against the numbing factors of the culture, the media, the textbooks, the directives of the State; against heart breaking odds — to open minds, teach skills, convey knowledge and thus nurture scholars.
True educators are coming to realize that they are incapable of slowing, let alone stopping, the waves of progressive poison moving with the currents and the trends through the halls of government schools, and through too many private and parochial schools, as well. Where we used to plan offensive actions, now we attempt to build defensive walls that can enclose and protect our isolated enclaves. Now we only hope that we can fill a gap and guard our small groups as the destructive forces pass across the land with their final solution to the problems inherit within, and created by, the State-run system of public schools. The irony is that like parasites, progressive educators are destroying the hosts upon which they feed and thrive. When the host dies, so do the parasites. Final solution?…the closure of all government schools.
Do not mourn the passing of the public education monopoly, for other than the children, there is little worth saving. Let us turn away from the State’s vision and gather those precious children to us. Let us, as citizens acting in the best interests of our children and our communities, establish, lead and teach in small neighborhood schools — schools of our design, our vision, our investment. Let us teach towards the revival of a literate, discerning citizenry; not towards the survival of the State. Let us teach every child to claim, then safeguard, their rights and their freedoms. Such vitally important instruction is best accomplished at familial and neighborhood levels. Let us build walls to keep the State away from our right to educate our own children, and let us do it now.
I can empathize with John Saxon for leaving the dying and distressing educational arena for even I have found the thought of escape quite enticing. However, with the sale of Saxon, our cause lost a leader who shared our visions and goals. Dr. John Saxon stood as a beacon of hope, as well as a provider of quality materials, to those of us fighting to save children from the cruel outcomes planned, and being enforced, by the Progressives. Our jobs will be much more difficult if we allow all traditional Saxon mathematics books to be replaced by consumable workbooks with disordered topics. Our hearts will be heavy without John Saxon to stand tall against the Progressives and lead our way.
In our last stand, however, there will be Ebay partnering with us to keep those fine, incremental, hardback Saxon math books circulating — from family to family; in the hands of millions of homeschooled children; through many years and many cycles. Our hopes for a return to the America of our Founding Fathers will rest upon the shoulders of children who have been, and will be, educated in scholarly homeschools and scholarly neighborhood schools. Support independent local schools. They will be America’s only chance for survival.
August 30, 2004
Linda Schrock Taylor [send her mail] is a free-lance writer and the owner of “The Learning Clinic,” where real reading, and real math, are taught effectively and efficiently.
In a post at Math Recap Blog titled Math Specialists Get Ready Now: Common Core Assessments Are Coming
BY RAYMOND JOHNSON | PUBLISHED MAY 6, 2013 I have had an interesting chat with one of the Pearson curriculum developers in the comment section tied to the post.
Jenny Hatch says:
May 7, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Common core proponents are yelling they are just offering standards to school boards and parents, not curriculum.
When the big progressive corporate powers that be bought out all of the Independent Math Curriculum Companies, they made certain to dumb them all down knowing that when curriculum committees went looking for a “world class” Math book, it really did not matter which one was chosen, because they all stunk.
Working for an Independent Math Curriculum Company, I can assure you that we have not all been bought out, nor have we been dumbed down. Have a look sometime… uh… suckas?
Your claim that “all serious Mathematicians agree, the original SAXON Math curriculum, especially the second edition, has no equal, and is the best in the marketplace” is far from accurate.
Reply
Jenny Hatch says:
May 7, 2013 at 9:53 pm
Hey Bowen,
Does your excellent, world class, bar none the best on the planet Math Curriculum have an accompanying “Remedial” program tied to it?
So that when the younguns’ use your materials approximately 33 1/2 % of the children need a Math Specialist and “Special” curriculum?
#HowTheGameIsPlayed
The thing is all of you specialists need to understand that a group of people are very much aware of the tactics beings used to dumb down American Children and we are not going to sit quietly down and just let this monstrosity percolate in the schools without trying to expose the frauds.
You need to “Simma Down”, taka a chill pill, and decide if you want to be a part of the problem or of the solution…
Jenny Hatch
Homeschooling Mom and General Rabble Rouser about #CommonCore
Reply
Bowen Kerins says:
May 8, 2013 at 8:20 pm
I don’t see myself as a specialist, I see myself as a former high school teacher who started writing books because I thought we could make something better than what existed. (That appears to be the same biography as Mr. Saxon.)
Today I spent the entire day working with math teachers in Lawrence, MA as they begin implementing a schoolwide curriculum at their high school for the first time in many years, and I am proud that they will be using our program, CME Project. We have previously shown success (in student achievement, efficacy, in standardized testing) in many other cities. CME Project is written by teachers with over 100 years of combined classroom experience, funded by the National Science Foundation, and field-tested for five years before publishing. Some of the work in CME Project was incorporated into the Common Core State Standards, particularly the Standards for Mathematical Practice intended to highlight eight deep goals of K-12 mathematics, such as persistent problem-solving, using precise language, and generalizing from repeated reasoning.
Our materials are built with a low-threshold, high-ceiling approach so that all … uhh, younguns’? … can learn and succeed. Our curriculum has very high standards, and students rise to meet those standards. Students learn math by working on math problems — good problems, connected to one another, with both short-term and long-term goals.
Our program comes with support for students who enter our curriculum below grade level, while continuing to ask those students to take on work at level. We have consistently found that students can and will take on challenging mathematical tasks if they are given the opportunity to work on them, gaining self-efficacy and perseverance through work.
None of this happens without high-quality teachers doing their work. I will always be grateful for the great work of these professionals. It’s an honor to work with teachers and students around the country, and a privilege to see our work succeeding in measurable ways.
However, it may instead be true that I am destroying America and am a complete fraud who needs to simmer down. I suggest you read through our curriculum, talk to teachers who use it, and get a sense of what we wrote and why we wrote it. The chance of this happening may be less than “approximately 33 1/2%” — seriously, why didn’t you just say “approximately one-third” — but I’m always glad to defend our work. Thanks for reading!
Reply
Jenny Hatch says:
May 9, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Bowen,
Thanks for explaining what you do.
I appreciate the overview mostly because Pearson has been fingered as the company with the most at stake in the Common Core rollout.
As a parent my biggest issue with the reading and math curriculums is the recidivism of the various companies.
And really, who can blame them with all that lovely money flowing in. Taxpayer money mostly.
My own research and frankly, national test scores, have proven year after year after year that nothing has changed, children are still being taught with materials DESIGNED to ensure that ONE THIRD of them will need remediation in math and reading.
With so many careers on the line and so much cash to be pumped into the glory hole of the cash cow that is American Education, WHO has the will to reform this glutonous system???
I think of the curriculum companies the same way I think of the Pharma companies who run Medicine.
When the business model DEPENDS on a high percentage of sickness and educational failure…well, I just do NOT believe Taxpayers should be funding this madness.
If we had a truly competitive private sector in education and medicine, with no taxpayer slush fund, everyone would be amazed to watch how quickly these sick systems of education and medicine reformed themselves.
But when every Johnnie and Susie has ten grand tucked away in their backpack every year to be doled out to whoever is smart enough to GO FOR THE GOLD, and when Johnnie and Susie have twenty grand per year if someone can just manage to get them labeled reading or math challenged…
Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or even a Math specialist, (sorry, teacher) to crunch them numbers…
Happy Trails!
Jenny Hatch
From: Linda S. Taylor ;
To: Jenny Hatch ;
Subject: RE: question
Sent: Wed, Sep 11, 2013 5:54:39 PM
Hi Jenny,
Thank you for your mail and thank you for asking for my approval. And thank you for posting one of my article. I appreciate your confidence. It is fine that you posted it. Lew Rockwell does ask for an active link but that is probably there. I didn’t check.
But if you could post a small disclaimer….that when I wrote the article I was unaware of the death of John Saxon ,and that it was his _children_ who sold Saxon Math, not John…I would greatly appreciate it. I have always felt badly that this article reads like censure of Mr. Saxon, a man who is indeed my hero.
From: Nakonia Hayes ;
To: Jenny Hatch ;
Subject: Re: [The Natural Family BLOG] Contact
Sent: Sat, Sep 28, 2013 10:55:05 PM
I’ll send a book this week. No need to help with the postage; thanks for the offer, though. Yes, you can include my letter because I don’t think Linda meant any harm; she just had some bad information.
Niki
From: Jenny Hatch
To: Nakonia Hayes
Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2013 1:07 PM
Subject: Re: [The Natural Family BLOG] Contact
Nikki, I would love a copy of your book! Jenny Hatch
Would you be willing for me to include your letter in my post? I would like for my readers to see for themselves the controversy regarding the aquisition of Saxon by Harcourt. I believe an open and honest conversation will inform parents and educators that some curricular mischief has been going on, and that keeps the textbook companies more honest and it provides parents the option to homeschool and or keep vigilent as they watch the curriculum developers when they mess with things. If I can slide you a few dollars for postage just let me know. Thanks! Jenny
From: Nakonia (Niki) Hayes ; To: ; Subject: [The Natural Family BLOG] Contact Sent: Sat, Sep 28, 2013 5:29:40 PM
Name: Nakonia (Niki) Hayes
Email: nikihayes@att.net
Website: http://saxonmathwarrior.com
Comment: Jenny,
I’ve just read your wonderful words about Saxon Math. Thanks for including Bruce Price’s review of my biography of John Saxon’s Story, a genius of common sense in math education. I would be happy to send you a copy of the biography (free!) as I do with anyone who will use it to promote John as the “Superman” we didn’t have to wait for (still don’t) in math education. He even managed to survive and THRIVE against the social kryptonite of the establishment leaders because he really was a true warrior spirit in fighting for things he thought equalled a “good war,” especially regarding children.
My caution is about using Linda Shrock Taylor’s article because it has many errors. Linda and I communicated a lot in my early days of researching the biography. She is a marvelous lady and a good teacher, from all I could see. However, as you probably realize, the K-8 Saxon textbooks have not changed their content matter. Neither has the Calculus book.
That’s because Stephen Hake, Nancy Larson, and Frank Wang all have authors’ rights and the content could not be changed when Saxon was sold to Harcourt Brace. The books that John wrote were fair game, and changes have been made, particularly in the Alg. 2 book and by adding a geometry book, which John never would have permitted. (As a geometry and algebra teacher, I didn’t like that because I loved geometry as a stand-alone subject. When I wrote his biography, I leaned about his reasoning on the matter.)
Also, Linda’s article really caused heartache for John’s children, who struggled mightily against having to sell Saxon Publishing. His youngest daughter was furious about the mistakes in Linda’s writing.
I am dismayed that Saxon products (including grammar and writing now) are not promoted by the publisher. With Common Core, that will be even more the case because Stephen, Nancy, and Frank will NOT change the content of their books. If I could win a huge lottery, I would set them up in business!
If you want a copy of the biography, let me know. John was a fantastically interesting and colorful person.
And today over at the Utahns against Common Core Blog a devastating Math Post outlined the stark difference between Common Core approved Math Textbooks and Saxon Math.
Roberts Rules of Order
were designed to be the way that our Republic was supposed to function at every level from local up to the Federal Level. So if you as a Taxpayer attend a Common Core informational meeting and the setup of the room is round tables and note cards with little follow through and even less accountability from those moderating the event, just know that you have been Alinsky’d with the Delphi Technique and DEMAND that the room be reconfigured according to Roberts rules with open microphones for the audience and open and honest debate COVERED BY THE PRESS. If the press does not bother to show up and report, create your own citizen reports and post them on the internet.
This is the way for our Republic to be restored from the ground up.
Because I had near constant blowback from family and friends who were watching my children every step of the way I felt an all consuming need for them to at least be at grade level with their work and perhaps even advanced intellectually. When we made the decision to pull our children out of school the first time, my oldest daughter Michelle was in middle school. She had spent four years with a unique group of students at the local elementary who were all taught using the Core Knowledge curriculum, Open Court Phonics, and “pure” Saxon Math in the classroom.
I also mothered Andy through his baby hood and weaned him on his third birthday.
We even had one of our children accepted into the initial group of students for Peak to Peak. But that year I potentially would have had a child in middle school, a child out at the charter in another town, and a child at the local elementary. The idea of driving all of them to various places and getting them there on time was daunting and I wanted to try to Home school just to see if we could have any success with it. So that year we spent six hundred dollars, bought curriculum for everyone (including Art Robinsons Curriculum) and I buckled up and dove in.
This year remains an epoch in our lives because it was such a joyful one.
who is now 24 would have started Kindergarten back in 1993, but I kept her home for two years. Then under the weight of intense scrutiny from those around me for this choice and because I felt that the watchful busybody focus was damaging to her, I sent her to school for the final four years of elementary school. She attended a public school where they had a Core Knowledge Strand. Meaning they had one class per grade that was using the Core Knowledge Curriculum, Saxon Math, and Open Court Phonics Reading.
As I observed her joy in making new friends, staying in the same class with a wonderful group of students (ten of whom were fellow Mormons), and the love she had for various teachers and classes, I decided that maybe something good was happening in Public Education after all.
Once upon a time a brilliant mathematician named John Saxon decided to make it his life’s work to create an incremental curriculum from Arithmetic to Calculus and everything in between.
