I suppose defining "Common Core State Standards" is the best way to begin a blog about a man in Maryland who had questions about it at a school meeting and was then removed from the room and arrested.

Here's one definition I found: a set of learning standards that are supposed to prepare students for a 21st-century economy by emphasizing critical thinking skills and informational texts in reading, and depth in important math concepts.

Or you can go to corestandards.org for a more in-depth analysis. I have done that and am still not sure what it means. I HAVE seen an explanation of Common Core on TV by an educator who gets it and she said that Common Core is more interested in the method of learning and solving rather than the actual outcome. I think her example was that if a child believes 4+4=11, that child would still get credit if he or she could successfully demonstrate how he or she arrived at that conclusion, even if it's wrong.

Yikes!

Well, anyway, this man in Maryland objects to Common Core and had questions about it at this meeting. But, I guess, his questions were deemed unacceptable and he was removed from the proceedings by a security guard. He was later arrested.

The charges against Robert Small have since been dropped. But the idea that this man cannot ask legitimate questions about the education of his children without getting booted from a meeting infuriates me. And it was nice to see he had support in the crowd, even if he DID admonish some in attendance for not being more vocal, as he was.

To be fair, the man was charged with assaulting a police officer, and the video doesn't follow Small and the security guard--an off-duty Baltimore cop--out into the hallway, so who knows what happened out there? And you shouldn't lay your hands on a policeman. But Small's passion was justified and if the charges were dropped, there couldn't have been much to them.

Oh, well. I just watched the video again and it STILL makes me mad!

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