Cogent and Fallacious Reasoning in Mediated Communication #1

Common Core

As I was scrolling through Facebook I came across an interesting article on Common Core titled Lies My Teacher Told Me. The article is just an opinion piece from a blog by Hollis Easter. I found it to be a fallacious argument trying to clear up some of the miss conceptions about Common Core State Standards. The article has a link to the Common Core website where one can go to see the entire set of standards. I thought the title alone was misleading.

It never says anywhere in the article where misleading information came from teachers. It actually says that teachers were involved with coming up with the state standards and that teachers agree with its concept. How are the teachers the ones telling lies? I understand that Common Core sets the standards for the curriculum and isn't actually the curriculum itself, but this leads to the same problem we had with the "No Child Left Behind" act and that is that to have the same standard for every student is wrong. Common Core is not part of NCLB, but it still holds the teacher accountable for which standard students reach. That's not a bad thing, but my point is that each and every child learns differently, but are all being taught the same way. 

About a quarter down the page the author tries to clear up the misconception that "Common Core is another Federal power grab" by stating this:

"Nope. Common Core State Standards are optional, voluntary standards developed by stakeholder groups in various states." The author then continues to state "What is true is that the federal government has awarded about $300 million in Race to the Top grants for states that implement Common Core."

If I understand this correctly, the states get to choose whether or not they implement Common Core Standards, but if they don't they lose out on the incentive the Race to the Top grants offer states that do implement it. That alone seems like a big giant bribe. When education is so under funded, what state isn't going to want the extra money the incentive offers. It doesn't seem like much of a choice (there are five states that have not implemented CCSS. I thought just to be fair that should be stated).

The article continues to break apart and clear up what the author believes to be misconceptions about Common Core. The problem is that some of the "misconceptions" aren't really being misconceived. There are problems with the Common Core Standards. The author even says as much. There is definitely room for improvement when it comes to Common Core. I don't disagree with the idea of the Common Core State Standards, I just don't like the way it is being implemented and found this article to be fallacious.