> focus on assessing conformance to the methodology eliminates coursework in things like social studies and history that applied/reinforced reading and writing

> focus on assessing conformance to the methodology eliminates coursework in things like social studies and history that applied/reinforced reading and writing skills I've noticed that in my kids common core based middle school experience. Nothing is ever applied. Cover sections of the test and move on. Half of his day is reading, writing, and math. Everything else fits in the other half of the day. It is a strange sort of cargo cult mentality, the purpose of life is to do well on an infinite number of basic skill tests. But never apply those skills to anything other than endless testing. Aside from applied classes everyone used to take like history, there are also no electives anymore. He got to select band, choir, orchestra, or music theory. That's all. I would imagine there would be no way to common core the electives I took as a kid, photography, science fiction, technical drafting, science classes. Its a "top school" in a "top district" but that ranking probably has a lot more to do with parental demographics than curriculum design.