Common Core

Before the new school year, we hear from several teachers from across the state, who work in different grade levels, about their hopes, concerns and goals for the upcoming year, from teaching the fundamentals to mandated testing, to creating a positive classroom climate. 

It's a growing group nationally: parents who refuse to let their children take statewide assessments such as those aligned with Common Core. Now, New Hampshire lawmakers are considering a bill allowing parents to do the same without fear of penalty, arguing these tests do more harm than good. But test-backers say they provide valuable information.

  It's been eight years since No Child Left Behind expired and congress failed to reauthorize it, but today both of New Hampshire's senators were among the 85 who voted to overhaul the federal government's controversial education law. 

The two biggest school districts in the state have not met the federal benchmarks set for participation in a controversial state-wide standardized test, known as the Smarter Balanced.

The Word of Mouth team wondered just how well our primary school cursive instruction stuck many years later, so we decided to put it to the test. The same issues that plagued us as children, continue to come up as adults. Why does the capital cursive 'Q' look like the number '2'? Why does the lowercase 'z' look nothing like the letter 'z'? 

Last month the New Hampshire Senate nearly made cursive a mandatory part of public school curriculum. But does the argument for keeping longhand in the classroom have more to do with nostalgia than it does educational outcomes? On today’s show  we go inside the emotional, and surprisingly partisan debate over cursive.

Today’s classrooms may come outfitted with iPads and gadgets, but the textbook industry has weathered the digital storm surprisingly well. On today’s show we’ll look at an unexpected threat to the textbook industry:  the rollout of the Common Core standards.

Then, between jam packed schedules and lengthy to-do lists, it’s little wonder that so many people claim they hate surprises. But what can we gain from embracing the unexpected?  A self-described 'surprisologist' makes the case for being caught off guard.

Listen to the full show or click read more for individual segments.

New Hampshire students will take a new standardized test this spring, called the Smarter Balanced. Early indications are the test will be substantially more difficult, and school teachers and administrators are anxious, and some – like Manchester – have been looking for an out, only to find there is not much wiggle room.

Last month’s announcement that the U.S. and Cuba will restore diplomatic relations sparked waves of speculation about what the thaw means for diplomacy, trade, and tourism. On today’s show: what normalized relations mean for Cuba’s internet infrastructure.  

And we usher in awards season by going off the red carpet. We’ll celebrate some of the best films of 2014 that were not nominated for a Golden Globe.

Plus, we kick off a new series on offbeat college courses, The Uncommon Core. Today: Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond.

Listen to the full show and click Read more for individual segments.

The New Hampshire Department of Education has rejected the Manchester School District’s request to opt-out of a new standardized test to be given this spring. In a letter to the school district, Education Commissioner Virginia Barry writes that if Manchester doesn’t administer the Smarter Balanced exam, it could lose nearly $17 million in federal education funds.

We look at the Common Core and how these new education standards are being met with enthusiasm, confusion, and protest. While some states have rejected the Common Core, others are moving forward. We will get an update on this issue, including in New Hampshire, where several districts may take their own approach.

GUESTS:

There’s a database in New Hampshire, nestled in hard-drives in the Department of Education, with all sorts of information about student test scores, graduation rates, and achievement. It shows how poor kids do on tests compared to rich kids, and how minorities do compared to whites, and whether schools are improving on those tests.

Whenever the data in it is accessed, it’s totally anonymous; only a handful of employees at the DOE can match these test-scores with student names.

We’re continuing our series “A Matter of Degrees” with a look at what it means to be college ready.   A common complaint is that freshmen arrive without the fundamentals of writing and math.  Meanwhile, the nation’s top tier schools are tougher than ever to get into – and students are playing an admissions game, figuring out the right mix of grades, extra-curriculars and experiences. 

GUESTS: 

Schools all around the state are currently working to “tweak” a set-of academic standards that have been adopted by nearly the entire country: the Common Core. The highest profile example of that tweaking is going on in Manchester, where critics of the standards claimed a political victory last fall when the city announced it would create its own standards. Reactions to the revisions in Manchester show that no set of standards is going to please everyone.

The House Education committee continued a hearing Thursday on legislation that would require New Hampshire to pull the plug on implementing the Common Core standards.

Most of today’s students and their parents are used to report cards based on the letters A through F. But a new grading system is taking root in schools across the country that seeks to give parents a lot more information. Standards based grading breaks classes down to specific skills students have mastered.

A is good, F is bad. But what about E, M, IP, and LP?

Those are the grades that kids in Sanborn High School in Kingston get. They stand for exceeding, meeting, in-progress, and limited progress.

New Hampshire adopted these new public school standards several years ago... one of forty five states to do so. Now, while many districts are on the path, more pushback has developed in some communities, especially from groups suspicious of outside involvement in local public education.  Today we'll look at the current debates around Common Core.

Guests:

The state adopted the Common Core Standards in 2010 with little controversy at the time. But you wouldn’t know that by the tone of a legislative forum Tuesday morning.  The controversy over the Common Core State Standards has made its way to the New Hampshire legislature. This session lawmakers will be asked to consider pulling the plug on the state’s new educational goalposts.

The hall was packed with conservative activists who called the forum one-sided.

Diane Ravitch, one of the nation's loudest voices against efforts by recent presidents to reform American education, says teachers should be able to make changes to the new Common Core State Standards that New Hampshire schools are implementing now.