Pennsylvania's Department of Education wants public feedback on Eligible Content, the specific skills and knowledge that are listed in the Pennsylvania (Totally Not The Common) Core Standards.
Anybody with an internet hookup can go to http://www.paacademicreview.org
and review the standards, item by item. They can give each individual item a check (for "that's just fine") or an X. With the X, you get four specific complaints that you can lodge:
* The statement should be broken up into several, more specific statements.
* The statement should be in a different grade level
* The statement should be rewritten
* The statement should be rewritten
These choices allow for written explanation, rationale, and/or suggested rewrites.
You'll be asked for an email address and to explain why you have a stake in PA standards (so knock it off, you crazy carpetbaggers), and you'll only be allowed one comment per standard per device. Right now only the third grade math and ELA standards are up, but everything is supposed to be up within the next couple of weeks. The site will be available until January 15, 2015.
The stated goals of the site are
1) Increase awareness and understanding of PA's eligible content
2) Solicit actionable feedback as part of the department's review process
3) Provide exam sample questions for teachers in the tested grade/subject
The site is almost entirely funded by Team Pennsylvania Foundation, which is an economic development group. So I'm not sure what they're doing here.
The whole thing seems extraordinarily.... reasonable. So I'm not sure what we're up to, unless this is meant to help Corbett get out from under his education albatross before the election (though the lead time is a little slim). Whatever. It's an open invitation for Pennsylvania teachers (and anybody else) to sound off to the state about the standards. It would seem a shame to waste it.
NC is soliciting feedback too at : http://ncdpireview.weebly.com/. We have all the standards. What is interesting is we have a new group looking to get us new standards since the legislature overthrew Common Core. But this is the NCDPI's review of standards that occurs every 3 years. Since NCDPI only has a little bit of say on the new standards committee I am not sure what sway this survey results will hold. But both the new standards group and NCDPI believe we need standards and from the looks of this feedback- they only will allow tweaking on individual standards rather than a complete overhaul.
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