"Standards Don't Work: Better Teachers Do'' - February 19, 2015;
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=25383&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Common Core (more formally, the Common Core State Standards Initiative) -- a set of federal standards for math and reading that states can adopt in exchange for federal grant money -- has sparked debate across the country, with critics concerned about everything from the federal government's role in education to the head-scratching math problems that accompany the new teaching methods.
Jason Riley, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, says one of the biggest problems with Common Core is that it's a set of standards -- and there's no real evidence that national standards will improve student achievement:
According to Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, there are states with high-quality standards that produce high levels of achievement (such as Massachusetts), but there are also states with high-quality standards and poor student achievement (such as California).
According to Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, states with high standards improved their National Assessment of Education Progress scores from 2003 to 2009 "by roughly the same margin as states with awful ones."
The Department of Education has released three reports finding no link between student achievement and the difficulty of state tests.
Students in countries such as South Korea (which has national standards) do perform better on international tests than American students. However, Canada lacks national standards, and its students also outperform American students. Furthermore, Americans perform better than students in some countries who do have standards.
What does make a difference in student performance? Teacher effectiveness. Riley notes that a child with a top elementary school teacher gains a half-year of learning compared to a child with one of the worst elementary school teachers.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Source: Jason L. Riley, "Common Core Has a Central Problem," Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2015. http://www.wsj.com/articles/jason-riley-common-core-has-a-central-problem-1424216327
''Getting Rid of Ineffective, Unnecessary Federal Spending'' - February 19, 2015;
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=25382&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
The Heritage Foundation has released a great report on ways to cut federal spending category by category. In fact, the report notes that over the last two decades, federal spending has grown a staggering 63 percent faster than inflation.
Reining in spending will require cuts in every sector -- from science to energy to agriculture to national defense to transportation and welfare. Here are a few of the report's suggestions on cutting spending on education, training, employment and social services:
Privatizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds services such as PBS or NPR, would save Americans $445 million every year. In 2012, 82 percent of spending on public broadcasting came from non-federal sources, and the report contends PBS and NPR could survive on their own without government funding.
Getting rid of the Job Corps would save Americans $19 billion over a decade. The program is intended to teach trade skills to youth, but a National Job Corps Study concluded that for every $25,000 that taxpayers invest in a single Job Corps participant, Corp participants were less likely to graduate from high school than their peers, were no more likely to attend or complete college and earned just 22 cents more in hourly wages compared to their peers, wasting taxpayer dollars.
Eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA and the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) would save Americans $3.2 billion over a decade. The report notes that private giving to the arts far outweigh federal funding (Americans gave $13.1 billion 2011 to the arts and humanities, compared to just $292 million from the NEA and NEH), and private philanthropy would be more than sufficient to support the arts.
The report calls cutting entitlement spending "the ultimate challenge," as half of all federal spending goes to just three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Source: "The Budget Book: 106 Ways to Reduce the Size and Scope of Government," Heritage Foundation, February 2015. http://budgetbook.heritage.org/
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=25383&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Common Core (more formally, the Common Core State Standards Initiative) -- a set of federal standards for math and reading that states can adopt in exchange for federal grant money -- has sparked debate across the country, with critics concerned about everything from the federal government's role in education to the head-scratching math problems that accompany the new teaching methods.
Jason Riley, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, says one of the biggest problems with Common Core is that it's a set of standards -- and there's no real evidence that national standards will improve student achievement:
According to Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, there are states with high-quality standards that produce high levels of achievement (such as Massachusetts), but there are also states with high-quality standards and poor student achievement (such as California).
According to Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, states with high standards improved their National Assessment of Education Progress scores from 2003 to 2009 "by roughly the same margin as states with awful ones."
The Department of Education has released three reports finding no link between student achievement and the difficulty of state tests.
Students in countries such as South Korea (which has national standards) do perform better on international tests than American students. However, Canada lacks national standards, and its students also outperform American students. Furthermore, Americans perform better than students in some countries who do have standards.
What does make a difference in student performance? Teacher effectiveness. Riley notes that a child with a top elementary school teacher gains a half-year of learning compared to a child with one of the worst elementary school teachers.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Source: Jason L. Riley, "Common Core Has a Central Problem," Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2015. http://www.wsj.com/articles/jason-riley-common-core-has-a-central-problem-1424216327
''Getting Rid of Ineffective, Unnecessary Federal Spending'' - February 19, 2015;
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=25382&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
The Heritage Foundation has released a great report on ways to cut federal spending category by category. In fact, the report notes that over the last two decades, federal spending has grown a staggering 63 percent faster than inflation.
Reining in spending will require cuts in every sector -- from science to energy to agriculture to national defense to transportation and welfare. Here are a few of the report's suggestions on cutting spending on education, training, employment and social services:
Privatizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds services such as PBS or NPR, would save Americans $445 million every year. In 2012, 82 percent of spending on public broadcasting came from non-federal sources, and the report contends PBS and NPR could survive on their own without government funding.
Getting rid of the Job Corps would save Americans $19 billion over a decade. The program is intended to teach trade skills to youth, but a National Job Corps Study concluded that for every $25,000 that taxpayers invest in a single Job Corps participant, Corp participants were less likely to graduate from high school than their peers, were no more likely to attend or complete college and earned just 22 cents more in hourly wages compared to their peers, wasting taxpayer dollars.
Eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA and the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) would save Americans $3.2 billion over a decade. The report notes that private giving to the arts far outweigh federal funding (Americans gave $13.1 billion 2011 to the arts and humanities, compared to just $292 million from the NEA and NEH), and private philanthropy would be more than sufficient to support the arts.
The report calls cutting entitlement spending "the ultimate challenge," as half of all federal spending goes to just three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Source: "The Budget Book: 106 Ways to Reduce the Size and Scope of Government," Heritage Foundation, February 2015. http://budgetbook.heritage.org/
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