Common Core Standards

[phildonnia]

I would consider usage of exclusively frowny faces as indication s/he disapproved of the exercise for some reason. Unless that is commonly the way your child draws them.

I assure you that the frowny-faces instead of smiley faces can be entirely attributed to smart-assery on the part of this particular student.

Having once participated in the design of instructional materials myself, I am aware of a trade-off between clarity and precision in the instruction. Generally, the academic advisor in the room will insist on precisely specifying the instructions, eliminating all possibility of misinterpretation. The result is that a very simple task is often described in a very complicated way (and is usually still open to misinterpretation)

For example: if the instructions ask the student to find the a least common multiple, someone might point out that, accounting for negative numbers, there is no least multiple of anything. And so you end up calling it the least positive real integer common multiple, and now you have a big confusing mess, when the task is quite simple.

The answer is this: in addition to learning to do the math, students need to be able to learn the art of figuring out what is expected, and why. This will serve them in life: in any job, you need to be able to figure out what to do, when your stated duties are ambiguous and incomplete.

Has your child been chastised in the past for making assumptions?

Not chastised exactly. Following an animal report project (he chose Whale Sharks) he was given a survey with the question "If you had to do this project again, would you choose the same animal?"

He completely missed the assumption that you or I wouldn't even think about: that the idiom "if you had to do it again" suggests a counterfactual. He quite literally imagined doing it again. Obviously (to him) the correct answer is that if you write another report, you wouldn't do the same one you just finished.

So I tried to explain to him what the question was getting at. Well, try explaining to a second-grader that he should think about what he would do if something might not have happened that clearly did happen. I called it off before I ended up in a discussion of philosophical actualism with a seven-year-old.

 

[Minoosh]

The exercise asks students to randomly draw colored cubes from a bag, and create a histogram of the results. Then they must "[e]xplain how you know that the number of [marks] for blue matches the number of blue cubes."

Arrgh, just looking at that image gave me the willies - not so much the "smiley" exercise as the visual clutter on the page. I don't know whether that makes the material more accessible or less accessible but to me personally it's a distraction.

I'm curious how this was resolved - because I think maybe the mystery is that a student is being asked to "explain" something that is obvious to him/her.

"I know because I made a mark (and only one mark) for each cube I drew."

"I know because there is a one-to-one relationship - each smiley represents one cube."

"I know because that's what the directions asked for and I followed directions"

If I were a little kid and was asked to draw three marks, then to explain how I knew there were three - I'd be at an utter loss. So I'm curious as to the "right" explanation.

One caveat: The directions could have been explained in class, and maybe the answer would be, "I tallied as I went along, then double-checked against the cubes." Sometimes students aren't paying attention in class.

I think instead of being asked to "explain" a student could be asked, "how did you get that answer?" I'd save that for questions/problems when there really was something to explain, though.

 

[Minoosh]

The answer is this: in addition to learning to do the math, students need to be able to learn the art of figuring out what is expected, and why. This will serve them in life: in any job, you need to be able to figure out what to do, when your stated duties are ambiguous and incomplete.

If students think they know what's expected, and they are wrong, then they may do the math wrong, and get caught in an "I'm bad at math" loop, and in my experience it's hard to work with individual students when you have 150 of them, or more. So these things tend to accumulate, IMO. Nothing shuts down my brain faster than feeling dumb.

The new standards are a perfect vehicle for making teachers feel just as baffled as students. A 148-page appendix on designing high school courses based on Common Core is just torture to read and mostly beyond a teacher's control.

Under my old state standards teachers and students at least knew what they were supposed to be able to do. I didn't like the way trig was handled - no unit circle - but IMO the new standards go too far in the opposite direction.

As far as I can tell, what's broadly known as "number sense" now is "number and quantity overview" and unless I'm reading this wrong, complex numbers would be part of this presumably fundamental unit. I don't think that helps. Conceptually it may make sense to address to address real numbers and imaginary numbers at the same time, but it's like your example above of "least common multiple" - being a conceptual purist isn't always practical.

I would save that for higher math which should be *available* to all students but not necessarily *required*.

ETA: The main value of Algebra 2 is, in my opinion, to serve as refresher for Algebra 1. My theory is many students were learning this stuff as freshmen but forgetting it. Forgetting and relearning can be very valuable. But it doesn't mean Algebra 2 has to mimic college algebra.

 

[peterb12]

Hi, new poster here.

While I think that Common Core has some problems - in particular, the actual books the big publishers have created to cover the materials range from "pretty bad" to "abysmal" - the actual material and techniques focused on are excellent. In talking to a number of my younger cousins, I've seen that across the board they have a much more "how it works" grasp for math than the average kid did when I was a kid. That's only anecdotal evidence, of course, but I'm a believer in the overall arc of the standards, if not the implementation details and/or the focus on testing at the expense of all else.

 

[Minoosh]

I'm a believer in the overall arc of the standards, if not the implementation details and/or the focus on testing at the expense of all else.

The overall arc might sound OK but a fairly detailed look at the HS math standards has given me some idea of how bewildering it may be to implement them. Though the standards aren't a curriculum, presumably there will be some sort of high-stakes test. Some of the higher math covered will have to be introduced earlier in the sequence in a potentially counterproductive way.

I was a defender, and may be again, but right now the HS math standards are giving me pause. The biggest short-term winners IMO are the people who publish textbooks and design standarized tests.

And the published standards are not supporting the claim that math will be about fewer topics explained in greater depth. There are just as many topics and the depth is very college-prep oriented. Some of it looks to me like actual college math. And though on paper we might want every kid to go to college, that's not what happens in real life.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I haven't found anything that explains what "common core" is in a lucid, compact manner. We're homeschooling, so we don't care other than curiosity.

We're thrilled. In our state there's no registration/notification requirement for homeschool, no tests, no curriculum needing approval, nothing. So this common core has no relevance to us.

 

[phildonnia]

I haven't found anything that explains what "common core" is in a lucid, compact manner. We're homeschooling, so we don't care other than curiosity.

We're thrilled. In our state there's no registration/notification requirement for homeschool, no tests, no curriculum needing approval, nothing. So this common core has no relevance to us.

I have semi-seriously considered homeschooling, which is weird, because I've always associated the practice with religious and separatist nutjobbery (present company most certainly excluded). But the main problem is that I honestly don't think I would be very good at it.

My children are all very smart; I don't have any doubts about their ability to learn the stuff they need to know. And I think everyone learns it eventually anyway. My bigest fear is not that they will not learn, but that they will become frustrated and bored, and generally develop anxiety of learning and hatred of learning institutions, becoming slackers like their old man.

Aside from that, I do care about school success for all children. The rationale behind compulsory and free education is that it is an absolutely necessary basis for a democratic government by the people, not to mention a prosperous economy. I live in that economy, and am subject to that government, so I cannot regard the academic success of others with distant curiosity.

 

[Minoosh]

My children are all very smart; I don't have any doubts about their ability to learn the stuff they need to know.

It may be more efficient to do it at home, till maybe 4th grade.

And I think everyone learns it eventually anyway.

Most of it, yeah. "Eventually" being the key word. There's a lot of inefficiency in public education. I just got off a sub shift at a K-12 charter and I'm not doing cartwheels re: whatever "learning" took place (grades 7-8).

In my limited experience: The kids' priority is, they go to school to hang out with their friends. IMO, a normal school day could be compressed to 2-3 hours in a more focused setting. But something would be lost, also.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I have semi-seriously considered homeschooling, which is weird, because I've always associated the practice with religious and separatist nutjobbery (present company most certainly excluded). But the main problem is that I honestly don't think I would be very good at it.

We are anti-religion and do not belong to any political parties. Our concerns are strictly educational and quality of life issues.

We started in the womb, singing the ABC song through my wife's stomach wall every day. We read extensively in the peer-reviewed literature on early infant learning, which bought us a lot of grief from people that don't. We tried to share our success with others but that just got us reported to Child Protection Services for teaching them "too early". Yes, they raided our home, separated us, interrogated us, and in the end told us our oldest boy was so far ahead of his peers that he needed to be tested for developmental delay. We fled the country for three months until we realized our pediatrician had stopped them cold. The CPS workers gave us blank looks when we tried to show them the papers we were following, but we had also shown our pediatrician who knew everything we were doing and heartily approved.

At the moment our four year old is studying the Periodic Table of Elements. He will be in Kindergarten two academic years from now. He uses Word, Excel, Paint, E-mail, and Chess. He has a bunch of other programs he uses but those are the ones I use with him. He is not brilliant. We've just taught him.

My brother's kids both earned full scholarships to college. They followed a homeschool curriculum but we're just making up our own. Nobody can stop us. hahahahahahahaha! So I am teaching chemistry and physics instead of "See Spot Run".

 

[marplots]

So I am teaching chemistry and physics instead of "See Spot Run".

See proton bind.

Bind, proton, bind.

Proton binds.

And now, the system's energy level is expressed as the resultant of the Einstein relationship between mass and energy so that the lowest energy state doesn't violate the Pauli exclusion principle and the quantum mechanical relationships between the strong and weak nuclear forces are satisfied.

Proton bound.

 

[Brainster]

Gotta love this example of "Critical Thinking":

The English/Language Arts assignment, first reported Sunday by the San Bernardino Sun and provided to KTLA by the newspaper, asked students to write an argumentative essay about the Holocaust describing “whether or not you believe this was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth.”

The 18-page assignment instructions included three sources that students were told to use, including one that stated gassings in concentration camps were a “hoax” and that no evidence has shown Jews died in gas chambers.

Justified as required by Common Core:

The school district initially defended the assignment, with Jafri saying it was meant to engage students in “critical thinking.”

The district’s “CORE team” planned meet to revise the assignment, Jafri said in her statement provided to KTLA on Monday.

“This was a mistake. It should be corrected. It will be corrected,” Jafri said in an interview. “We all know it was real. The Holocaust is not a hoax. … I believe our classroom teachers are teaching it with sensitivity and compassion.”

The Common Core State Standards, adopted by most U.S. states including California, include writing standards that seek to have students make arguments and defend their answers based on texts they have read, among other goals.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

This helped my bottom line, as a grant-funded tutor, and gave me the pleasure (the luxury) of working with small groups. In that context I could find work for anyone, because students' abilities and aptitudes were much easier to perceive than they would be with a class of 30 (let alone five or six classes of 30).

I see what a tremendous advantage I have in knowing where our two kids are in every aspect of their studies. I don't have to ask "what did you do in school today?"

The math teacher knows where the English teacher is who knows where the Science teacher is, who knows where the music teacher is...riding in the car or playing outside can be a continuation of academic work. Suppertime, bathtime - school is anytime.

I try to think about classes of 30 with half a dozen teachers doing different subjects plus administrators, none of whom are doing much communication at all let alone about an individual student. All of whom have seven hours in the day instead of more than twice that many.

Schools can't compete with that. My God, if we had relied on schools we would not have even started yet.

 

[Dancing David]

Gotta love this example of "Critical Thinking":



Justified as required by Common Core:

Somehow, I don't think that was the assignment the designers of the Common Core intended.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Good Lord what a bunch of rubbish. I have been reading the web page for the Common Core Initiative and it is just repetitive meaningless word salad like this:

With students, parents, and teachers all on the same page and working together toward shared goals, we can ensure that students make progress each year and graduate from high school prepared to succeed in college, career, and life.

I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony, grow lemon trees and turtle doves and blah blah blah...

That is the page allegedly explaining what the standards ARE. Since we already have internationally accepted tests like the SAT and ACT for college entrance that are actually used by colleges to measure students' readiness for college - WTF is all of this piffle?

Colleges and Universities aren't looking at this garbage. They ask for your SAT or ACT score. There isn't any point to re-inventing the wheel, especially when the wheel you are inventing isn't something anyone uses.

 

[Minoosh]

There isn't any point to re-inventing the wheel, especially when the wheel you are inventing isn't something anyone uses.

Publishers of textbooks and assessments benefit. Gotta change it up or we could use the same math primers forever.

ETA: And the more photos, graphics and perishable word problems, the better. Anything that would date a textbook. Planned obsolescence.

 

[peterb12]

I've long maintained that the social function of schools (up to and including colleges) is at least as important as the educational function. The idea that school is or should mostly be a college prep or (in the case of college) a vocational prep system is misguided. YMMV, of course.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I've long maintained that the social function of schools (up to and including colleges) is at least as important as the educational function.

We couldn't agree more. That's a major reason why we're not putting our kids into the public schools.

We're not sure which is worse - the lack of education or the lack of decent social skills the public schools are responsible for.

 

[Dancing David]

The social curriculum is a big deal in all schools, but it intersects the sub cultures and societies that intersect the school.

The biggest challenge say for kindergarten is for those students who have not been to a pre school or structured day care.

They spend many weeks learning that shoving is not an acceptable way to resolve conflicts.

Then there is the intersection of the teachers (usually white middle SES) and the sub cultures of the students some overlap better than others. Many teachers are frustrated by students not meeting the white protestant middle class standards.

But there is always the teachable moments 'expectations is school are that you will not shout in class', but the other issue is that many teachers just explain and explain and explain, when a two minute reset for the student will often derail the behavior and decrease the teachers frustration.

the social curricula is ever present and maintained by teh staff.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

There was a newspaper story about parents upset about the "new math" (forget the proper name). All the basic arithmetic involves drawing arrays and lines and such and the parents can't help the kids. The explanation is that this system teaches children critical thinking or the relationship behind the calculations or something like that. The parents said it was too complicated for youngsters, and a hinderance for older kids, but the education official said it was tested to be developmentally appropriate.

 

[Minoosh]

The parents said it was too complicated for youngsters, and a hinderance for older kids, but the education official said it was tested to be developmentally appropriate.

Yeah, appropriate perhaps, but optimal? I have found it difficult to find quantitative data on many education topics. I don't see anything wrong with the old-fashioned algorithms and would teach them, and use manipulatives. Very early in I would tell kids that there are different ways to solve math problems - counting in fingers or in your head, counting objects, making patterns with counting cubes, memorization. Having students work in pairs, having partners use different methods, and asking them to compare/contrast would help with the critical thinking. I really don't think we should be reinventing the wheel for teaching the concept of place value

I frequently Google "best ways to teach math," "best math methods" and other phrases, and as far as I can tell there is no "best" method. The earlier kids learn their times tables the better IMO. Modeling this with tiles will help some kids and there are finger tricks for nines, plus many can count by twos or fives.

When you said parents can't help do you mean they're not allowed to, or that the parents don't understand the problems?