However, there is still something to be said for local schedules. I don’t want to have the same spring break as my brother in Texas–it’ll be spring there, but still the dead of winter here. Most New York schools still lack air conditioning. If we started school before Labor Day, as my relatives in California do, we’d be roasting in our classrooms. And another reader pointed out that snow days can significantly change the year end date. We lost a scheduled day off in May to make up for a snowstorm in early April.

What I’d REALLY like to see is the ability to adopt a national schedule for classes that are nationally tested. If the kids are done with AP exams by May 10, then they should be done with class attendance then, too.

Nope, that’s what you’re hearing because, like any nutter, you’re running all sides of the conversation in your head.

You’re merely rabidly afraid of Washington since you have been brainwashed into thinking its bad.

“This is not ‘power to the people’,”

Yes it is.

‘the people’ are a group. The federal government is the representative of that group (the fact that this is often not the case is because of your meddling in it for fundamentalist credo reasons).

“it is control, but for what purpose ?”

So that the whining predispositions of those who don’t like free thinking can enforce their ideals on their children, and even better, if it gets forced on other people’s children (so your own don’t get any funny ideas that don’t come from you).

“If we begin to treat children as a State asset”

You’ve been treating them as a corporation asset for decades. You haven’t complained about that yet. Why start now?

Oh, because you’re afraid not that it will be “state asset” but stop being “corporate asset” or “parental asset” since you believe in the primacy of corporations.

How, for the love of god, do you get from “state school curriculum’ to ‘state asset’???

Truly there is no thought going on in that brain-pan. Just emotion.

Also, your argument is exactly the argument that creationists make in order to separate individual school districts from the heard and force their religion on the children. That is not acceptable.

Just listen to what people are saying here – to appease Washington DC and get money, we need to jenuflect at the altar of conformity – will that support creativity and innovation ? This is not ‘power to the people’, but the opposite, it is control, but for what purpose ? If we begin to treat children as a State asset, then this sort of control looks like a good idea. The opposite is happening however, in that distributed technology and social media will allow for innovative and unique solutions in learning – the revolution will be digitized.

I also often wonder why is it so difficult for this country to have a standardized holiday sytem for all states and school systems. We are one country but our eductaional system operates like 52 different countries. Thanks to the work behind common core, the curriculum is finally coming on stream to have all states focussing on the same content. Now we need to move to a nationwide exam with common core. Finally no longer will our transient student population have to miss key topics becuase the state they relocated from was teaching earth science and the state they moved to is teaching life science. Change is inevitable and realistically we all need to have common holidays for these students. Other nations do this and so can we.

Or was it just playing the victim card, so that failure is not THEIR fault, but “the man”.

Ask that student how do you tell if they’ve managed to learn the subject without testing? Ask how an employer will know if you can do the job if you haven’t shown aptitude (and how can that aptitude be shown if not by showing test results)?

It comes across more as blame avoidance than preceptive comment.