[barryparr]

Our daughter is enrolled in a Summit school in the Bay Area. It’s been a very positive experience and not one I’d recognize from the way it’s described in the story. Her teachers are extremely available and supportive, and there’s a lot of emphasis on group and individual projects and presentations.

But I would agree that a lot of the linked resources in the curriculum are not of very high quality. I don’t know whether better sources at the appropriate reading level aren’t available, or if they just grabbed something from the first page of Google results.

I’m wondering if some of the issues in the story have to do with the implementation of the program and not the program itself.

[schoolboard]

I'm a board member of a school district, and I have to say I was shocked at the resistance to trying new methods of learning from both the administration and educators in our districts. Flat out statements that "kids can't learn from computers," while not universal, were common. Resistance to change is enormous. Combine this with the education industrial complex that has built up around traditional schools, and getting anything done is very very hard.

So I would have a view that there was likely some bumpy implementation, that there were some grumpy parents, and the teachers were more than happy to have the rebellion established. Don't underestimate a passive-aggressive implementation approach as an attempt to scuttle the whole thing. (I had a teacher for my son when common core was established, who literally told all the parents "my job now is just to hand out worksheets every day." And that's what she did. Even though that was obviously not the intent of common core.)

So yes -- poor implementation in an environment that easily rolls small snowballs into avalanches that hit the NYT.

[killjoywashere]

> I had a teacher for my son when common core was established, who literally told all the parents "my job now is just to hand out worksheets every day." And that's what she did.

Wow, that sounds like exactly what we heard from the teachers in our daughter's school. My mom is a math professor who helps write high school curriculum and was initially a big proponent of Common Core. She has tutored my daughter through common core and now 5000 miles away in a third-world country. She has come face-to-face with the fact that something was terribly wrong. I honestly can't tell if how much was truly common core vs the passive-aggressive implementation by unwilling teachers, but, you know something's wrong when you can literally move to a place where the availability of electric power and fresh vegetables are uncertain, and do better in math.

[EliRivers]

It's certainly true that some children (and indeed, many adults) do not seem to have the ability to learn from computers, and the computer won't do anything about that (where a human teacher would identify the children who cannot learn from them and can do something about it).

Learning from computers is a skill like any other; is that skill taught first? I wonder if there's an unrealised assumption that everyone can simply sit down in front of a computer and be efficiently educated by it.