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Common Knowledge™

The Newsletter of the Core Knowledge Foundation

Our Common Knowledge electronic newsletter is now published weekly during the school year, and includes news about curriculum and teaching, education policy, parenting, homeschooling, and much more. 

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Sample Newsletter

Common Knowledge
Core Knowledge to Make Curriculum Available for Free
After more than two decades of publishing and distributing the Core Knowledge Sequence exclusively to Core Knowledge schools, the Core Knowledge Foundation is planning to make its curriculum available for free online. 

DOE to States: Clean Your Room!
Race to the Top reminds Dan Willingham of his mother's attempts to get him to clean his room when he was 10 years old.  Like his mother's attempt to make him a tidy boy, Race to the Top, writes Willingham, is "a doomed bribery scheme." 

It Boggles My Mind the Kind of Power We Have
An article in the current issue of Washington Monthly looks at Texas' outsize influence on textbooks nationwide. 

Suing Over Curriculum
A judge in Washington State has rejected Seattle's high school math curriculum and ordered schools to consider alternatives. 
 

Best of the Education Blogs
States Can't Pick and Choose Among Common Standards
Curriculum Matters
States that adopt the new common standards must adopt 100 percent of the document, according to two officials working on the initiative.

ED Budget Winners and Losers
Eduflack
The President's FY2011 budget is out, and we've now had time to digest the toplines and find out if our pet programs are on the chopping block or slotted for additional support. 

An Open Letter to Arne Duncan
National Journal Online 
I don't know whether getting a man on the moon in the sixties was more or less "utopian" than getting our students to the minimum goal of "grade level" over 12 years, writes Sandy Kress. "What I do know is that scrapping that goal and replacing it with a much tougher and higher goal with no challenging annual markers and deadlines for its achievement is real fraud.

Proficiency Pollyanas
Flypaper
Getting 100 percent of students to do anything is either a recipe for setting the bar low, or Utopian, writes Mike Petrilli. Getting most students to reach a real standard is challenging, but doable.

The Whole Story?
Public School Insights
National reporters all seem to be working from the same shrinking rolodex. What results is a new education orthodoxy. "Is it impossible--or maybe even foolish--to acquaint the general public with complexity?" asks Claus Von Zastrow."

Teaching and Curriculum  
Female teachers may pass on math anxiety to girls, study finds
Los Angeles Times
Girls have long embraced the stereotype that they're not supposed to be good at math. It seems they may be getting the idea from a surprising source -- their female elementary school teachers.

Administration to Seek Teacher/Student Link in Title I
Teacher Beat
The Obama Administration's administration's budget request would make Title I funding contingent on establishing a link between teachers and student performance.  Unlike Race to the Top, for which states can decline to apply "it's the farthest-reaching federal K-12 program," says Stephen Sawchuk.  "It would be pretty much financially impossible to say no thanks."

What Makes a Great Teacher?
Teacher Magazine
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is preparing to invest $45 million on research to discover what makes a teacher great. Award-winning teacher Anthony Cody offers his own list. 

More students struggling with AP exams nationwide
USA Today
The number of students taking Advanced Placement tests hit a record high last year, but the portion who fail the exams - particularly in the South - is rising as well, a USA Today analysis finds.

Education Policy
Obama to Seek Sweeping Change in 'No Child' Law
New York Times
The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law's 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency.

Obama's Education Plan Errs In Abandoning 'Proficiency' Goal
Boston Globe
THE Obama administration is retreating from a deadline to bring every child in 98,000 public schools to academic proficiency by 2014. What was seen as an attainable goal in the Bush years is now a "utopian goal," according to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

States Rush to Join Testing Consortia
Education Week
Spurred by the promise of Race to the Top money for improved tests-as well as an opportunity to strengthen bids for part of the federal fund's larger $4 billion pot-states are scrambling to join consortia to develop common assessments

Homeschooling and Parenting
No safe haven for bullies
Boston Globe
The apparent suicide of a Boston-area girl after persistent bullying in and out of school, has led some to call for legislative action. But, writes columnist Kevin Cullen, "you can't legislate common sense, and you can't legislate good parenting."

Judge rejects Seattle's high school math program
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle's so-called "Discovery" math curriculum doesn't add up for a King County Superior Court judge, who rejected the style of instruction Thursday and ordered the district to try again.

German homeschoolers granted political asylum
Washington Post
A German couple who fled to Tennessee so they could homeschool their children was granted political asylum by a U.S. immigration judge, according to the legal group that represented them.

Et Alia
What's a Degree Really Worth?
Wall Street Journal
For years, estimates of the difference in lifetime earnings of college grads over high-school graduates topped $1 million.  But now, some researchers are questioning the methodology behind the high projections.

 



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