United Opt Out is backtracking this week from its campaign to opt teenagers out of driving tests after a spate of car accidents nationwide. While the news was lauded by transportation secretary Anthony Foxx, the insurance industry, and the American Automobile Association, Diane Ravitch was unrepentant. “This is yet more proof that Pearson and its cronies in the corporate ‘deformer’ movement are running, and ruining, our schools,” she blogged. To which a spokesperson from Pearson replied, “Huh?”
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Facing accusations that its revamp of the SAT amounts to a “dumbing down” of the test, the College Board announced Monday that it has reversed its decision to make the essay voluntary. All students will henceforth be required to select from one of the following three prompts:
- “When David Coleman said that ‘Tom, who knows me well, knows how pathetic the beginnings of the Common Core standards movement were. Think of a napkin,’ was he employing sarcasm, irony, or metaphor? Defend your choice.”
- “When David Coleman claimed that ‘adults are different and they hate it when you tell them so,’ was he making an evidence-based statement? Draw on the fields of psychology, philosophy, and physiology.”
- “Regarding David Coleman’s assertion that ‘it is rare in a working environment that someone says, ‘Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood’: is this evidence of hard-nosed realism or a morally corrupt, neo-capitalist system?”
Coleman himself had no public comments about the return to mandatory essays, but was said to be smirking even more than usual.
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It was only a matter of time: say hello to the Common Encore. Managers of hundreds of U.S. musicians concluded that it’s unfair and confusing for audiences (as well as the artists) when orchestras, bands, chamber groups, guitar players and singers choose different encores at their concerts. So after two years of intensive behind-the-scenes work, the Council of Chief State Symphonic Officers released its plan for a Common Encore. The Massachusetts-based Pioneer Institute immediately denounced the standardized encore, declaring that the Boston Symphony Orchestra should stick to its own time-honored repertoire, and the Cato Institute took this opportunity to (again) propose abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts.