The biggest problem I see with performance based funding, is that it depends on the one cog in the machine that does not care one whit about funding - the kids. I work with a lot of kids, and there are many good students who will succeed no matter WHAT the latest and greatest learning strategy is. This is where these stupendous ideas are tested. There are also a lot of kids that don't give a crap, and will not work. They do NOTHING. Seems to me, all this is designed to make it look like they are doing something, despite their best efforts...Bottom line, the kids simply MUST do the work, and a lot of them will not. The result will be exactly what the powers that be are trying to avoid - the schools that do not succeed will be the same schools that do not succeed now. It is the kids/parents that won't do the work necessary to succeed who will make it fail.
I agree completely! Trouble is that, at least for the present, we are stuck with performance based funding. Bearing this in mind, CC is an improvement over NCLB. There are certainly schools that have taken the opportunity to pervert CC into a means of pushing a liberal agenda. There are also schools that are poorly run, that just don't know where to go with it and they are complicating and confusing their curricula in an effort to comply with CC. The CC curricular guidelines are confusing and overcomplicated, of that there is no doubt. My point here is that CC is only as bad as your district decides to make it. The mandate itself is far from perfect, but not a commie plot, nor a specific guide to teaching things in as complicated a manner as possible.
