Oklahoma State Board of Education Approves Final Draft of New (Non-Common Core) Educational Standards

Unfortunately, ROPE has a good deal of skepticism regarding the new Oklahoma Educational standards approved by the Board of Education today. Let me be clear here, the new standards were approved by the board just today, so none of us (at ROPE) would have had the opportunity to review them at this point. 

It is important to note, however, that while the OSDE press release contained comments in support for the standards from many quarters, none of these were attributed to the experts that were invited by the Standards Steering Committee last February to consult on the standards writing process.

I Fear For The Future - And I'm Not Alone

Just recently, a topic of discussion on a national list-serve of which I'm a member, turned to "project-based learning". I HATE PBL, which is essentially a way for the type 'A' personalities to show their stuff and the laziest students to hide behind their work. 

Project-Based Learning (PBL) has a very long history that goes all the way back to John Dewey - a Marxist Progressive Constructivist - who believed that children learn best by 'doing'. He developed this idea back on his rural Vermont farm watching kids do their chores (I often wonder if he was in fact simply observing because he wasn't interested in 'doing' himself...).