There is nothing prettier than the night sky when you can see it without leaf obstruction. The weather is warmer for a while this week so perhaps you can take a good look at the rapidly approaching winter sky. Orion is always beautiful this time of year.
Sequestration continues to be a particular worry for Northern Virginians. We dodged so much unemployment and don’t want it here.
Are you shopping more in stores or online? Just call me Amazon Girl.
Just when you thought nothing could be worse than No Child Left Behind (NCLB), think again. The Common Core State Standards could be worse and a whole lot worse. To date, Virginia is one of 5 states that has not adopted the Common Core State Standards: Nebraska, Alaska, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia. That’s a scary group to be grouped with but in this case, I think it might just be a good thing.
According to the Washington Post:
As states across the country implement broad changes in curriculum from kindergarten through high school, English teachers worry that they will have to replace the dog-eared novels they love with historical documents and nonfiction texts.
The Common Core State Standards in English, which have been adopted in 46 states and the District, call for public schools to ramp up nonfiction so that by 12th grade students will be reading mostly “informational text” instead of fictional literature. But as teachers excise poetry and classic works of fiction from their classrooms, those who designed the guidelines say it appears that educators have misunderstood them.
Proponents of the new standards, including the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, say U.S. students have suffered from a diet of easy reading and lack the ability to digest complex nonfiction, including studies, reports and primary documents. That has left too many students unprepared for the rigors of college and demands of the workplace, experts say.
