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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News


Study shows Common Core hurt kids’ test scores

Common Core's damage

Our incompetent federal government: Researchers have found that since the adoption of Common Core during the Obama administration the test scores of children have dropped, not risen as promised.

Moreover, the decline appears directly related to Common Core itself.

Researchers the Obama administration funded to assist Common Core’s rollout recently found, to their surprise, that under Common Core U.S. student achievement has sunk. “Contrary to our expectation, we found that [Common Core] had significant negative effects on 4th graders’ reading achievement during the 7 years after the adoption of the new standards, and had a significant negative effect on 8th graders’ math achievement 7 years after adoption based on analyses of NAEP composite scores,” the Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction and Learning (C-SAIL) preliminary study said. “The size of these negative effects, however, was generally small.”

The study found not only lower student achievement since Common Core, but also performed data analysis suggesting students would have done better if Common Core had never existed. The achievement declines also grew worse over time, study coauthor Mengli Song told Chalkbeat, an education news website: “That’s a little troubling.”

The study looked at math and reading test scores for both 4th and 8th grade students, and found that, almost as soon as Common Core was adopted scores began dropping. In many cases the drop reversed an improving trend that had been on-going for decades. The graph on the right illustrates this starkly for 8th grade math scores. There are other graphs at the link that show the same thing.

Common Core was another power grab by the federal government. It was opposed by many local parents and teachers, partly because they saw its defects, and partly because they strongly believed that education is better left to local communities, the teacher in the classroom, and the parents of that teacher’s students.

Sadly, however, we live in a time that insists that all decisions must come from Washington, no matter how trivial, and despite the reality that Washington’s track record for the past half century is truly abysmal, in almost everything it has attempted to accomplish.

Readers!

 

Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.

 

I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.

 

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2 comments

  • wodun

    What they needed was a test of teachers over this period of time. Common Core was a huge change in how things are taught and some school districts spent a lot of time and money teaching teachers how to teach. It would be useful to see the differences in teacher capability.

  • pzatchok

    I believe in a standard. And a test to prove the student reached that standard.
    As it stands there is no standard that students must reach. When teachers can subjectively hand out grades you end up with students who can not read going to collage.
    The high school diploma has been rendered a participation trophy.
    Its a closed environment where young collage aged teachers get to indoctrinate younger people into the liberal fold.

    Just take a look at all the books used in school now.
    Everything that is wrong in nature and or the environment is caused by human induced global climate change.
    History has been edited down to all things progressive and liberal.
    Washington and the revolution has been edited down to a page or two, Lincoln has been edited down to a few paragraphs.
    Even though MLK has been given several pages the fact he was a republican has been lift out, just like in the Lincoln write up. MLK was even a supporter of the NRA.
    Conveniently they also forget to state that the Democrat party was the home of racism in the USA. They started the civil war over their states right to own slaves, started the KKK when they lost the war, started all the segregation laws to hold down blacks, started planned parenthood to impose eugenics on their idea of dirty lesser people, and today practice soft racism by imposing lower standards on minority groups.

    Of course after standards were imposed and enforced the test scores dropped. The teachers had to start doing their real job of teaching reading writing and arithmetic. Add in real history and science for fun.
    Teaching to the test means your teaching things on the test. Not subjective feel good subjects like environmentalism and protest organization.
    5 years later the test scores started going back up. The students were finally being taught what was needed.

    Are you against standards being imposed or are you against what those standards are? Keep the idea of standards but improve the test of those standards.

    The standards tests are in a way a test of the teachers also. In some districts the teachers bonuses and pay are related to the amount of students who pass the tests. So of course the teachers do not like it.

    By the way. The rest of the world has been doing this for a hundred years.

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