Educating other parents about Common Core

There is a lot of talk about Common Core on Facebook. I'm a member of five different Groups that discuss it, and I "like" one Page on the topic. I prefer the Groups to the Page, since on the Page only the admin's stuff ends up on my timeline; Pages are basically soap boxes since few people actually go to the Page to see what others have posted there. The groups though, that's where the real conversation happens.

Well today I actually went to the Page that I "like" to see what others besides the admin had posted, and found lots of questions that were never answered. The admin doesn't follow the questions, or ignores them, and since few others actually go to the page, lots of people's questions go unanswered. One of my own did a while back.

In reading through the questions I found some that are asked over and over. And over. One question today was "Can someone explain to me what common core will change?". And this question actually had a reply. But it really annoyed me that it read "Simple. Students will know less, require remedial education in order to get into college, and spend years in therapy overcoming the anger and frustration caused by a system designed to make them fail."

What the heck kind of answer is that? Someone is reaching out to the knowledgeable for education and this is what they get in response? Ugh! How on earth are we ever going to consolidate ourselves into an effective movement when we don't even show each other simple courtesy? 

And this is exactly why I started this blog. To slice through all the rhetoric and sarcasm and rudeness and plain old idiocy. I want to create a place to gather the real information without all the drama; a place where people can read through the consolidated information to educate themselves.

Over the next few days I'm going to start collecting all the basic questions that keep getting asked and try to make my own FAQ. Please let me know if there's something specific you think belongs on it.