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Ze'ev Wurman Subscribe

Ze’ev Wurman is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution. From 2007 to 2009, Wurman served as a Senior Adviser in the U.S. Department of Education. In the summer of 2010 he served on the California Academic Content Standards Commission that reviewed the adoption of Common Core for California. In his non-educational life Wurman is an executive with Monolithic 3D, a Silicon Valley semiconductor start-up.

April 18, 2014|Common Core

Lowering the Bar

by Ze'ev Wurman|9 Comments

Image: Basyn/Shutterstock.com

Editor’s Note: Another installation in a series of posts evaluating the question: Has Indiana departed from the Common Core State Standards and its attempt to nationalize education in America?

Having been the first state to leave the Common Core, the final draft of Indiana’s new K-12 content standards has been published and it will be brought to the State Board of Education on April 28 – ten days from now – for the final vote. Some reviews of this draft have been already published (e.g., here, here and here) but they focused mostly on the English and Language Arts (ELA) piece. I will focus on its mathematics and I will start with some general observations.

The drafting was done under a serious time pressure. There were only 12 weeks allocated for the standards-writing process that typically takes many months or even years. The writing panels should be commended for significant improvement of its early drafts, yet – as we shall see shortly — the final result is far from satisfying for Indiana, whose prior (pre Common Core) standards were highly praised as the best in the nation.

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April 9, 2014|Common Core, James Milgram, Parliamentary System, Sandra Stotsky

Indiana’s Current Dilemma: College Readiness versus STEM Readiness

by Ze'ev Wurman|6 Comments

Image: Basyn/Shutterstock.com

In my previous post, I discussed the true meaning of Common Core’s “College Readiness” and I showed—using the words of Common Core’s own authors—the low level of its college-readiness definition and of its high school content in mathematics.

But what about the plus (“+”) standards? As already mentioned, those “+” standards go beyond what every student is supposed to study. Perhaps, if students take all those, too, they will be prepared to study calculus in college and have a reasonable chance of success in STEM? No such luck, says Jason Zimba, the Bennington professor and lead writer of the math standards.

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April 1, 2014|Benchmarking for Success, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Higher Education

Common Core Invasion: How It Will Alter Higher Education

by Ze'ev Wurman|Leave a Comment

Supporters of the Common Core repeatedly claim that Common Core was a state-sponsored initiative, that the nation’s governors originated in 2007-8 this wonderful idea, and that the federal government had really – but really – nothing to do with these wonderful career- and college-ready standards that will propel many more of our students to be competitive in the global marketplace.

I will ignore for a moment what those supporters “forget” to mention – that the standards were produced in a secretive non-public process, that they were funded largely by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and private DC-based lobbying organizations, and that they had little input from their actual stakeholders: teachers and the public.

Instead, I will focus on how well Common Core standards match their own claims and aspirations.

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March 27, 2014|Common Core

The Common Core’s Pedagogical Tomfoolery

by Ze'ev Wurman|17 Comments

One frequently hears that the Common Core standards are merely standards and expectations that do not dictate curriculum or pedagogy. Common Core proponents argue that those national standards do not interfere with the ability of teachers to use their preferred pedagogical approaches, and do not further interfere with local autonomy over the curriculum.

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Book Reviews

Andrew Roberts Takes the Measure of the “Populist” Aristocrat, Churchill

by Joao Carlos Espada

Yes, there is something new to be learned about Winston Churchill, and it's in the new 1,105-page biography by Andrew Roberts.

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Honor, Sacred and Profane

by Lynn Uzzell

Craig Bruce Smith shows that honor was a vitally important concept for the development of the American nation.

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Liberty Classics

Bringing Natural Law to the Nations

by Samuel Gregg

If sovereign states ordered their domestic affairs in accordance with principles of natural law, the international sphere would benefit greatly.

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Belloc’s Humane Defense of Personhood and Property

by James Matthew Wilson

Perhaps the memory of that metaphysical right to property informs our fears, and could lead to a restoration of human flourishing.

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Podcasts

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A discussion with Steven D. Smith

Steven Smith talks with Richard Reinsch about his provocative thesis that a modern form of paganism is becoming public orthodoxy.

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"Slouching Towards Mar-a-Lago:" A Conversation with Andrew Bacevich

A discussion with Andrew J. Bacevich

Andrew Bacevich discusses his new book Twilight of the American Century

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Bureaucracy, Regulation, and the Unmanly Contempt for the Constitution

A discussion with John Marini

John Marini unmasks the century-long effort to undermine the Constitution's distribution of power.

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Beautiful Losers in American Politics: A Conversation with Nicole Mellow

A discussion with Nicole Mellow

Nicole Mellow on the beautiful losers in American politics who have redefined the country.

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