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Voters won't get chance to rescind Common Core this fall; court rejects proposed ballot question as too darn broad

The Supreme Judicial Court today tossed a November ballot question aimed at forcing Massachusetts to abandon a set of national educational standards known as Common Core .

The state's highest court ruled that the six-part question asked voters to approve things that weren't really related and so violates a requirement set by the state constitution that ballot questions ask voters to approve or reject just a single basic idea at a time.

Sections 1 through 3 may be said to share a common purpose: redefining the contents of the academic standards and curriculum frameworks for the Commonwealth's public schools. Section 4, however, which would amend § 1I to require annual publication of all the previous year's questions, constructed responses, and essays for each grade and core subject included in the mandatory diagnostic assessment tests, has the explicitly stated purpose of better informing educators about the assessment tests. Thus, the apparent goal of section 4 is to make more transparent the standardized diagnostic assessment tests and testing process required to be used in public education, and it is a goal that comes with a significant price tag: as the Attorney General agreed in oral argument before this court, implementing section 4 will require the development and creation of a completely new comprehensive diagnostic test every year, which means a substantial increase in annual expense for the board -- an expense to be borne by taxpayers and to be weighed by voters in determining whether increased transparency is worth the cost.15 An initiative petition properly may contain only subjects "which are related or which are mutually dependent."

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Comments

Is there a list of proposed/accepted ballot questions, or does that come out closer to the election?

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Here. The ones you want to look for are the ones marked "certified." But as we've seen with this question, the list is not yet final.

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Constitutional Amendment to Provide for Non-Partisan Election and Service of the Attorney General

We need this badly

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gotv efforts.

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President Trump will repeal it anyway, a distinction without a difference. My sister told me my little nephew came home from school in tears under Common Core. He wrote 2+2=4 and the teacher told him it could also be 3 or 5. Great! This was after the class (public elementary) on the peaceful traditions of Islam.

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Secretary of Education. Although anything is possible with all the time she'll have in PRISON!!!! Benghazi!!!!!!!!

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#thattotallyhappened

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They tried to explain the concept of "Arabic numerals" and Uncle Fish took it and ran with it.

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Keep fighting against the awesome powers of the terrorist group, Al Gebra, FISH!

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just make it up.

By the way, how do you have time to talk with your sister when you are so busy socializing with working folks and the African Americans,

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It's really strange, as somebody in my 30s, to see common core math -- since the general concept has always been how I've mentally shorthanded math. (Example: 15 + 23, 10+20=30, +5 = 35, +3=38) So from a personal perspective, I never got why people flipped out about how ridiculous the process was -- it's supposed to teach kids to approach numbers modularly, instead of relying on memorization, right?

But when I was learning math in school my teachers were not impressed. Meanwhile, my girlfriend mentally sets up the two column add+carry the tens the way our generation all learned it. Breaking up numbers gets her confused and she needs the (mental) visual of everything lined up. Any my brother can't get adding at all - he does something weird with subtracting everything from 100.

I guess my point is there's no one math method that's going to work for every kid, because everybody's brains are weird and unique places, and trying to nail down a HOW to think is going to end up ruining some kids and turning them off STEM all together.

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Thank you for posting that. I don't have an opinion on Common Core itself, but I am baffled as to why the federal government is trying to tell local schools how to teach math to kids.

I liked math class when I was a kid. I have a mind for it. I hope today's kids get to appreciate math class as much as I do. Really, it's one of the few classes in which I always excelled, which is why I was railing so passionately in the BLS threads earlier this week, despite my lack of knowledge of that situation.

Math is the only universal language. In a world of Shia vs. Sunni, red state vs. blue state, PC vs. free speech, hell, even climate science denial, the last thing the human race agrees on is math problems. Let's protect that.

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Why should the federal government get involved when 3+5 = 8 in MA but 3+5= a pony in CA.

It's like your second two paragraphs were written in opposition to the first one.

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We can't let states take an absolute subject like Mathematics subject it to the evils of relativism.

3 + 5 = 8
5 + 8 = 13

(except of course when doing modular base 12 arithmetic where 5 + 8 = 1, which is useful for calculating our 12-hour time format)

Please don't conflate "arithmetic" with "math". Those California kids with their pony answers are probably learning a lot more about the underlying properties (associativity, commutivity, if 5 + 3 = pony, does 3 + 5 = pony?) than your kids who will probably whine about not knowing how to add "clock time"

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Cheers, MPA.

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But lets oppose a universal system for teaching it!

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I would imagine that the richest man in the world, Mr. Bill Gates, who is a stong advocate of Common Core, would become much richer as a result of Common Core adaptation.

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The feds have jack shit to do with common core. It was dreamed up and created by several state governments, and others joined.

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Texas for one. He used Common Core critical thinking skills to establish that since Bin Laden was in Afghanistan and 15 of 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi Arabian nationals we should invade Iraq.

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When my father was helping me with my 3rd grade long division homework I still remember how frustrated he was that I was being taught a different way than he was taught. That was in 1964.

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ballot questions that contain a bunch of unrelated or irrelevant provisions. How can we get this requirement forced on the Legislature as well?

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and make it a ballot question at the next election?

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1.Become Speaker of the House
2.Avoid getting indicted
3.#WINNING!

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