11 Years Into Obama’s Common Core – Math Scores at 20 Year Low and Falling

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Eleven years after Bill Gates and Barack Obama began forcing schools around the country to adopt Common Core, students are now recording results lower than previously thought possible, with staggering declines in average math and reading scores.

Eleven years after Bill Gates and Barack Obama began forcing schools around the country to adopt Common Core, students are now recording results lower than previously thought possible, with staggering declines in average math and reading scores.

Teachers have been coming forward with results for years to prove the controversial teaching method is a failure, and significantly less effective than traditional teaching methods.

Now the new international study by the Pioneer Institute backs them up. Released in late April, the study reveals huge drops in math and reading scores since Common Core was fully enacted in 2013. This was after decades of consistent growth in both categories.

Breaking with decades of slow improvement, U.S. reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other assessments have seen historic declines since most states implemented national Common Core English and math curriculum standards six years ago,” a statement on the Pioneer Institute’s website read.

While Common Core was promoted as improving the international competitiveness of U.S. students in math, our international standing has remained low while the skills of average and lower performing American students have dropped in reading,” it said.

How bad have things become? Only 10 percent of eighth-grade American students now score at an “advanced” level in math, according to the international study.

While we’re technically in the middle rank of countries worldwide, we are now closer to the lower end of the scale (Turkey’s 6% and the United Arab Emirates‘ 5%) than to the top nations (Singapore at 54%, South Korea at 43%).

Kazakhstan (15%) and Hungary (12%) are also beating us in that category.

Since Common Core’s full implementation in 2013, “average scores have generally declined and remain at a level that is statistically significantly lower than before Common Core,” the Pioneer Institute found in the study.

Nationally, fourth- and eighth-grade NAEP math scores were rising gradually in the years before Common Core was implemented (2003-2013).  Post-Common Core, scores at both grades have fallen, eighth grade at nearly the same rate as it was previously increasing,” the group said in its news release.

Parents and teachers across the nation have been urging schools to dump the toxic Common Core curriculum, arguing that it deliberately dumbs down children and creates unnecessary and complicated methods for working out relatively simple problems.

The declines are most acute for the lowest-achieving students, increasing inequality,” the Pioneer Institute found.

Scores for students at the 90th percentile have mostly continued their pre-Common Core trend of gradual improvement. But the farther behind students were, the more substantial the declines, with the biggest drops occurring for those at the 25th and 10th percentiles.”

It’s a similar story when it comes to reading.

U.S. students fare better in reading than they do in math when compared to international competitors, but U.S. reading trends are similar to those seen in math, with gradual pre-Common Core improvement replaced by declines after Common Core was implemented,” the news release read.

From 2003 to 2013, national fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores were increasing at an average of about half of a point each year.  Since 2013, fourth-grade reading scores have been falling by less than half of a point each year, while eighth-grade scores have dropped by nearly a full point a year.”

The sustained decline we’re now seeing, especially among our most vulnerable students, simply cannot be allowed to continue,” Theodor Rebarber, author of the study, said.

Several of us allied with Pioneer Institute have been pointing out, ever since it was introduced, the deeply flawed educational assumptions that permeate the Common Core and the many ways in which it is at odds with curriculum standards in top-achieving countries.”

Part of this, the news release says, “is a product of the misguided progressive pedagogies and biases of the education establishment that developed it.

And this is the problem with Common Core: There was always a political element to it.

As the Pioneer Institute study said, “the design of the Common Core math standards assumed and promoted certain flawed progressive instructional assumptions and dogmas. Since the math standards generally rejected the proven approach of high-achieving Asian countries, the final Common Core standards no longer claimed to be ‘internationally benchmarked’ and indicated instead that they were merely ‘internationally informed.’”

English standards were even more problematic.

The Common Core English standards also incorporated key progressive elements, such as a reduction in challenging, classic literary content and its replacement with simpler informational text supposedly intended to align with a student’s future activities in the workforce,” the study found.

This is Common Core, folks. Thanks to Bill Gates and the Obama administration’s insistence on a national set of standards — which, of course, had progressive elements baked into them — we’ve seen math and reading scores collapse through the floor.

The more Big Government gets involved in education, forcing flawed progressive assumptions and dogmas into the curriculum, the worse the outcome for our children.

The scary thing for American parents shouldn’t be Common Core, though. It should be whatever ends up replacing it.

Instead of apologizing, Bill Gates is already working with the state of New York to radically change the post-coronavirus future of education in the state.

It’s going to take a lot more than acknowledging Common Core’s failure to make up for the years of classroom chaos that the Gates/Obama curriculum inflicted on many teachers and students without their consent.

After the devastating failure of Common Core, it is hard to accept that Bill Gates should be given the opportunity to have any say in the way our children are educated in the future.

A direct apology and a promise to stay away from our kids and their education in the future would be a start.

Baxter Dmitry

Baxter Dmitry

Baxter Dmitry is a writer at The People's Voice. He covers politics, business and entertainment. Speaking truth to power since he learned to talk, Baxter has travelled in over 80 countries and won arguments in every single one. Live without fear.
Email: baxter@thepeoplesvoice.tv
Baxter Dmitry

9 Comments

  1. Barak Obama: FASCISTIC CONSPIRATOR…

    Barak Obama abused the power of his presidency & conspired with James Comey to frame General Flynn.

    Barak Obama corrupted the FBI & attempted to overthrow the lawfully elected POTUS

  2. Common core was about standardizing students in the dumb and dumber programme rhat precedes their enslavement via propagandas to become subjects to their new master race of whitexsiorenacusts disguised as multi cultural advocates of global equality using the slave labour if human rights and a living wage and healthcare designed only to keep them fit for work.

  3. Ever been to a store with a teenaged or young 20-something cashier when the power goes out? They can’t add, subtract, multiply or divide!! They stand there and look blankly at the dark computer screen and then look blankly at you.

    At our colleges, because of liberal recruitment policies to get grants and funding, incoming students have to take remedial classes in reading, writing and math just to get them up to college level!!

    We have a generation or two that are declared “educated” but are functionally illiterate!
    . https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f3e8674bc3b1397ebd3e343b09fe243cc78ded3a0ea8a6d45a2e15fca689d9b2.jpg

  4. Anyone who failed at everything the way Obama did was doing it on purpose. In that case he was very successful at making America dumber, weaker and more ignorant.

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