I have this yummy bag of jelly beans sitting on my desk.   It has 50 flavors in one little bag.   My personal favorite is cherry.  It is the perfect blend of a tart, juicy fruit.  I love it.   Therefore, I am going to set a new mandate and reform all jelly beans.   Jelly bean bags will be filled with cherry, cherry, or cherry.   This is a simple metaphor for our education system today.  In Wisconsin DPI is just foolish enough to sell us bags of just cherry, cherry, or cherry jelly beans and they will spend millions of dollars to push those cherry jelly beans down your throat.

Recently, Wisconsin has thrown out the ability for local schools, local teachers,  the parents, and taxpayers to have input in our schools.    We are now in the age of top – down education reform.   The top includes the rich and the powerful, a small group of people making reforms for 87% of our american student population.  It is a “one size fits all” movement called the Common Core Standards.

Teachers train for years to learn different methods and techniques to use in the classroom.  The days of diverse learning and individualizing instruction are gone.   We trusted our teachers to find lessons to help the students in each class learn.  There was a lot of diversity in instructional methods and teachers would learn from one another.   Often a teachers method was related to their natural gifts.   Today we put our teachers in a box.   This next month my local school will be retraining the teachers to the common core math.    This new math has a very specific  methodology and technique.   The geometery is very controversial and failed in a Russian gifted and talented program.    Parents are frustrated when they help their child with math homework.  It is very different than the math most of us grew up with.  This new math is the cherry jelly bean of math.

So are you sick of cherry yet?