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Gates Foundation admits Common Core Mistake. What now?

This isn't just a common curriculum. It's Common Core(TM), a newfangled, buzzword-heavy rearrangement of deck chairs. Some of it's pretty good, like incorporating the latest research in education. Some of it is less good, like insisting that everyone use expensive, proprietary software to be online all the time so that everything can be tracked on an individual-student basis. And some of it is just plain dumb, like doubling down on America's existing infatuation for standardized tests to make an even more bare minimum of course material.

Interesting. I passed over the OP, but the subsequent discussion was quite nice. My wife is a teacher, and while she didn't love the switch to CC, she had the same impression as above—some parts are great, some are mediocre, some are meh.

My oldest son has known nothing but CC, and, obviously, so has my second son (youngest won't start for another two years). I am quite impressed with his math skills (since I have none). Perhaps he gets it from his scientist mother (let's hope), but he has brought home awards for his skill in it. Whatever they're doing, he seems to get it.
 
Interesting. I passed over the OP, but the subsequent discussion was quite nice. My wife is a teacher, and while she didn't love the switch to CC, she had the same impression as above—some parts are great, some are mediocre, some are meh.

My oldest son has known nothing but CC, and, obviously, so has my second son (youngest won't start for another two years). I am quite impressed with his math skills (since I have none). Perhaps he gets it from his scientist mother (let's hope), but he has brought home awards for his skill in it. Whatever they're doing, he seems to get it.

I teach elementary. When people complain about Common Core, I always ask them what's 7,000 - 4999. If they bother to do the problem, there's the usual crossing out of zeros in place of nines, etc. It looks like a mess when they're done.

Then I tell them, just add 1 to both numbers: 7001 - 5000. How easy is that? THAT'S Common Core.
 
I teach elementary. When people complain about Common Core, I always ask them what's 7,000 - 4999. If they bother to do the problem, there's the usual crossing out of zeros in place of nines, etc. It looks like a mess when they're done.

Then I tell them, just add 1 to both numbers: 7001 - 5000. How easy is that? THAT'S Common Core.

Or:

(7000 - 5000) + 1

But that's not something I associate with Common Core. I'm pretty sure such shortcuts were covered in my school days.
 
Or:

(7000 - 5000) + 1

But that's not something I associate with Common Core. I'm pretty sure such shortcuts were covered in my school days.

Common Core math is all about understanding the why to the point that you stop depending on rote memory and approach a problem with a wide set of tools. Showing several ways to solve a problem is encouraged. When you learn the why you are more likely to retain it after summer break or a few years out of school.

One major problem is that most teachers were used to teaching processes and the reasoning behind them was secondary if that. And perhaps many teachers didn't really have a deep enough knowledge themselves to be effective. Where that was the case Common Core produced poorer results. Where the teachers were able to teach it the way it was designed results were much better.
 
But that's not something I associate with Common Core. I'm pretty sure such shortcuts were covered in my school days.

The very best math teachers have been teaching with Common Core methods for decades. And the very best students have basically been teaching themselves what Common Core is trying to get all the students to learn.
 
The very best math teachers have been teaching with Common Core methods for decades. And the very best students have basically been teaching themselves what Common Core is trying to get all the students to learn.

Thats pretty much my take. I was *far* from the best maths student in grade school, but as an adult when I started reviewing CC math techniques my kids were studying I recognized a few that I used as a kid. I remembered a couple of occasions where I explained to my teachers how I determined the (correct) answer to certain types of problems and was told flat out I was wrong, even tho I could arrive at the correct answer faster and more intuitively.

Lucky for me my dad was a math major with a doctorate in cognitive psychology. He told me around this same time "you're going to find that almost all of your teachers are human, and in some areas you are going to be smarter than your teachers. Deal with it." It was.... liberating to realize my teachers might be wrong instead of me, and that I could also let that go.
 
Common Core standards were released on June 2, 2010. Perhaps you can tell us which states you claim adopted it before that date, since you claim it was almost universally adopted "before it was written."

No answer to this question from the OP. I guess this was a post-and-run for him rather than a discussion.
 
As a former maths student, and the son of maths teacher, I respectfully suggest that what most system seem to assume is that there is one best way to teach the subject. This is not the case, and I would assume the same holds for other subjects.

Different students learn in different ways, and a good teacher is able to adapt their style to suit that individual. Now this requires extra effort, and of course it is not practical for a teacher to teach a topic in 30 different ways to suit 30 individual pupils. But having the ability to approach topics in different ways to assist student who struggle with a single method is invaluable in engaging with those who struggle to understand.

Prescriptive frameworks that insist on a rigid approach will, in my opinion, always fail those who learn in different ways, and will put barriers in the way of the exact teachers that we should be encouraging.
 
Thats pretty much my take. I was *far* from the best maths student in grade school, but as an adult when I started reviewing CC math techniques my kids were studying I recognized a few that I used as a kid. I remembered a couple of occasions where I explained to my teachers how I determined the (correct) answer to certain types of problems and was told flat out I was wrong, even tho I could arrive at the correct answer faster and more intuitively.

Lucky for me my dad was a math major with a doctorate in cognitive psychology. He told me around this same time "you're going to find that almost all of your teachers are human, and in some areas you are going to be smarter than your teachers. Deal with it." It was.... liberating to realize my teachers might be wrong instead of me, and that I could also let that go.


I remember a brief heated argument with my 6th grade teacher. He insisted planets were not visible at night to the naked eye because they didn't emit light unlike stars. The discussion ended abruptly before I could ask how the Romans came to name many of them. Precognitive skills I guess.
 
I remember a brief heated argument with my 6th grade teacher. He insisted planets were not visible at night to the naked eye because they didn't emit light unlike stars. The discussion ended abruptly before I could ask how the Romans came to name many of them. Precognitive skills I guess.

Ha!

In a high school history class, almost went to the principal’s/discipline office (I forget which) when I argued against a test definition from an open book test. The teacher, who was really a coach, (why are they always coaches?) insisted that they were socialists. His confusion came from a line in the book, which I still recall: “The Nazi Party claimed to be socialists. They were not. They were fascists.” I had no idea why he would insist on the socialist definition, when the book was clear.
 
What exactly is wrong with standardized testing, in a practical sense? I'm pretty sure all advanced nations use teaching and testing standards, including all of those that opponents of standardized testing like to lament score routinely higher than the US in (standardized) international comparative tests.
 
There is nothing wrong with standardized testing, which we have been doing for over a century.

I don't know what reasonable person could possibly oppose standardized testing. As homeschoolers, how else are we supposed to gauge our progress? Same with public schools - there are appalling ones and decent ones, and standardized testing is the only way to accomplish a comparison. Parochial schools - same thing.

Common Core, in Bill Gates' vision, was a testing delivery system: computerized online testing. Instead of paper, pencil, and bubbles to fill in. A computer and software for every child, an online interactive test.

We've had to use them. It is infuriating for technical failures. The tests for the entire state of Alaska were cancelled this year because a worker in Kansas severed a cable. We did not sign up for the same test, but we did a battery for both kids. We have to do these advanced placement nonverbal progressive matrices tests too - a few elite public schools like one in NYC do them. I have a hair to move there. So we're training for the test, regardless.

For us what happens is the test is timed. So it takes time to download, to send the answer, to record it, and to come back with the next question. Parts of a question will download, and you cannot figure out how to answer because there is visual material missing.

Paper and pencil tests are bullet proof and they leave permanent evidence of your answers.
 
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The teacher, who was really a coach, (why are they always coaches?)

Because that is what the parents value. Society. Our culture. In the High Schools the Jocks are Kings. The cheer squad for the girls traditionally, but any athletic girl, yow.

To get a public school job, most especially high school you have to be a coach. Football and Basketball are the highest royalty in most places. Hockey, wrestling, baseball, track and field - you name it. If you can coach wrestling, you are the math teacher.

I have had the same experience as you more than once. In Pennsylvania, the closed-book test had a question on the battle of Pittsburg landing. It was meant by the teacher-coach to be a "gimme" question that everyone could answer because Pittsburg is in Pennsylvania. It was in Tennessee and he marked me wrong. I brought my father's civil war history book to class and showed him. He made me keep it a secret. But he sure had kids laughing at me when I called attention to it in class.

That was protocol for my public school teachers.
 
Hey, AlaskaBushPilot is back. Swell.

Common Core standards were released on June 2, 2010. Perhaps you can tell us which states you claim adopted it before that date, since you claim it was almost universally adopted "before it was written."
 
To get a public school job, most especially high school you have to be a coach. Football and Basketball are the highest royalty in most places. Hockey, wrestling, baseball, track and field - you name it. If you can coach wrestling, you are the math teacher.

This is a gross misstatement of the obvious joke I was making. My wife, mother and sister are all high school teachers. They all have advanced degrees for the subjects they are/were teaching. I volunteer coach the speech and debate at my wife's high school, and interact with a number of teachers on a regular basis. I can assure you that your characterization of high school teaching positions is wholly inaccurate.
 
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Because that is what the parents value. Society. Our culture. In the High Schools the Jocks are Kings. The cheer squad for the girls traditionally, but any athletic girl, yow.

To get a public school job, most especially high school you have to be a coach. Football and Basketball are the highest royalty in most places. Hockey, wrestling, baseball, track and field - you name it. If you can coach wrestling, you are the math teacher.

I have had the same experience as you more than once. In Pennsylvania, the closed-book test had a question on the battle of Pittsburg landing. It was meant by the teacher-coach to be a "gimme" question that everyone could answer because Pittsburg is in Pennsylvania. It was in Tennessee and he marked me wrong. I brought my father's civil war history book to class and showed him. He made me keep it a secret. But he sure had kids laughing at me when I called attention to it in class.

That was protocol for my public school teachers.

When a student and when a teacher there always were a few of that kind in every school I taught in. Most teachers knew who those were - as did many of the students.
 
Hey, AlaskaBushPilot is back. Swell.
.

Kentucky was the first to adopt and here is an article citing the state board adopted it before release of the alleged core.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/what-kentucky-can-teach-the-rest-of-the-us-about-the-common-core/280453/

But remember the whole effort is about the TEST. The standardized test. The curriculum geared to the test. The teaching methods geared to the test.

Our gradeschool common core historically was reading, writing, and arithmetic. I can say that and have no test, no curriculum, no texts that represent those claims.

The first field testing of Common Core tests were in March 2014. Between 2010 and 2014 a number of industry vendors hired at the request of two groups of states: the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC wrote, what is in concrete terms the Common Core standardized test.
 
Kentucky was the first to adopt and here is an article citing the state board adopted it before release of the alleged core.
That Atlantic article was an interesting but ultimately annoying read. I'm still not sure: What can Kentucky teach the rest of us?

The mix of educator responses to Common Core in Kentucky—and the still-lackluster test scores—suggest it won’t lead to an instant revolution, in Kentucky or elsewhere.

That's it? Education writer stating the obvious is obvious?

Students were actively answering her questions and chiming in with some of their own.
If class discussions are considered a novelty, there's a problem right there.

Superintendent Sprinkles expects a more dramatic shift for most schools, though. “There’s no way a teacher can teach the old way—stand and deliver,” he said.

Though I hate to criticize anyone named Superintendent Sprinkles, the "old way" of teaching - "stand and deliver" - has been obsolete for decades, if not forever. Even the "Stand and Deliver" guy didn't stand and deliver.

If having students doing math in math class is a new technique in rural Kentucky, the problem isn't really the standards, IMO.

Liberty’s math department has made it a point to have students work through the mathematical process on their own instead of listening to lectures.
"Instead." Not, "We'll do this and do that," but, "We'll do this instead of that." That's a problem, I think: Everyone is so eager to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

ETA: Isn't "have students work through the mathematical process on their own" an awfully long way of saying "Work the problem"? All education writing is like this. Except Fred Jones, he's pretty cool.

Students have a checklist to go through when they can’t solve a problem, before turning to the old default of asking a teacher.

I hope students are encouraged to come up with their own checklist - that would be a worthwhile exercise. No, kids don't learn math if you keep doing it for them. I run into resistance from students who need to be trained in patience, in sticking to a procedure for solving a problem. If it's not a two-step problem they can do in their heads, they give up. The problem is often not in their thinking but in their lack of persistence.

Every so-called education reform seems determined to do a 180 to prove how different the new way is from the old. IMO, that's the wrong approach. Lose the more stultifying aspects of endless lecture, but don't abandon lectures. Keep doing what works and try new things.

I know that's more easily said than done. I'm just being grumpy here but really, kids are natural critical thinkers. Try arguing with them. It's fun.
 
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That Atlantic article was an interesting but ultimately annoying read..

The poster demanded proof anyone had adopted common core before it was written. I gave the Atlantic article as a citation of that.

It is not just literally true about the alleged vague "standards", which only exist in theory and not in practice until there is an actual test written. Curriculum and textbooks have to be aligned to the test. None of that existed as states signed on to common core in order to get federal money.

It has been a huge national de novo experiment. And by Bill Gates' own standards it was successful in making him money but unsuccessful in the alleged academic objectives.

So what now? We're just lost (my family) without Bill Gates leading our education agenda, lol.
 
There is nothing wrong with standardized testing, which we have been doing for over a century.

I don't know what reasonable person could possibly oppose standardized testing. As homeschoolers, how else are we supposed to gauge our progress? Same with public schools - there are appalling ones and decent ones, and standardized testing is the only way to accomplish a comparison. Parochial schools - same thing.

Common Core, in Bill Gates' vision, was a testing delivery system: computerized online testing. Instead of paper, pencil, and bubbles to fill in. A computer and software for every child, an online interactive test.

We've had to use them. It is infuriating for technical failures. The tests for the entire state of Alaska were cancelled this year because a worker in Kansas severed a cable. We did not sign up for the same test, but we did a battery for both kids. We have to do these advanced placement nonverbal progressive matrices tests too - a few elite public schools like one in NYC do them. I have a hair to move there. So we're training for the test, regardless.

For us what happens is the test is timed. So it takes time to download, to send the answer, to record it, and to come back with the next question. Parts of a question will download, and you cannot figure out how to answer because there is visual material missing.

Paper and pencil tests are bullet proof and they leave permanent evidence of your answers.
According to this article, Alaska hasn't adopted Common Core, so the test that was cancelled was not PARCC or SBAC but rather the Alaska Measures of Progress. How is this the fault of Bill Gates and Common Core? I've worked as a scorer for the written portion of PARCC. I can assure you that not all the tests were taken on computers. Would that they were. Many, many students wrote essays in pencil on paper.
 
The very best math teachers have been teaching with Common Core methods for decades. And the very best students have basically been teaching themselves what Common Core is trying to get all the students to learn.

I think I understand why Common Core does not sound bad for me as a French : the whole national program is based on teaching us by the time of the Bac to solve problem rather than spit out of memory stuff.

In fact for the baccalaureate, at least when i passed it, you never had multiple choice stuff, you had a set of questions, for which you had to solve the problems using all what you learned previously, in math/physic and a bit less in biology. History, philo and geo were rote memorization though. But even in those last two it was an essay.
 
I remember a brief heated argument with my 6th grade teacher. He insisted planets were not visible at night to the naked eye because they didn't emit light unlike stars. The discussion ended abruptly before I could ask how the Romans came to name many of them. Precognitive skills I guess.

"so the shepherd'S star is really a star ! All those year i thought it was venus... Thanks teach !".

http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/visible-planets-tonight-mars-jupiter-venus-saturn-mercury

:p
 
(some snipped)

But remember the whole effort is about the TEST. The standardized test. The curriculum geared to the test. The teaching methods geared to the test.

I don't understand the import of this or why it would be viewed as a negative. Insofar as the test tests what we want to test, "teaching to the test" is exactly what we want to do.

I wouldn't complain that the track coach was doing a bad job because she's just "teaching how to run on a track" when "real" running is ever so much more than that. The track event is meant to measure how well her students can run. The better they run, the more we think she's doing a good job.

If the complaint is that running a track is a shallow imitation of running in real life - where there are pedestrians, cyclists, and you have choose a route - well, I have to agree. But there's still a useful overlap.
 
Common Core math is all about understanding the why to the point that you stop depending on rote memory .

Propaganda.

The NAEP math scores for 8th graders fell for the first time in its 25 year history in 2015. It is a political disaster for common core.

The most visible "understanding" gimmick or hoax in common core math is the developmentally inappropriate demand that kids memorize a song and dance about base 10 math when they count from nine to eleven. It is why the only math committee member with the appropriate experience resigned in protest.

So we can say, before the common core experiment, some pie-in-the sky crap about students not really understanding what 11 means unless they understand it is one unit of tens and another unit of ones.

But the math scores have fallen. First time EVER in that 25 year history of national testing. Gates has already bailed. He's whining about how nobody else tried hard enough.

He got a bunch of states into an airplane, saw the mountain coming and bailed out since he has billions of dollars in parachute.
 
I don't understand the import of this or why it would be viewed as a negative.

Well I can't help you there. I really can't understand how your thinking is so dysfunctional.

You don't adopt some theoretical assertion, and a key example is the claim students cannot understand the number 11 without understanding it is one group of 10s and one group of 1s. That's ridiculous. It is the number that is one unit larger than ten, just like all of the numbers before it.

You can assert with zero evidence that students will "understand" math better if you force them to memorize counting this way. Taking four years to develop all the curriculum, texts, and then the exams to find out it was a stupid idea...

Well, this is why we homeschool. Teachers not even understanding basic science concepts. Experimental validation of hare-brained ideas for example. Before they are put into practice.
 
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According to this article, Alaska hasn't adopted Common Core, so the test that was cancelled was not PARCC or SBAC but rather the Alaska Measures of Progress. How is this the fault of Bill Gates and Common Core? I've worked as a scorer for the written portion of PARCC. I can assure you that not all the tests were taken on computers. Would that they were. Many, many students wrote essays in pencil on paper.

What a silly question. The beef I had is with online computerized testing and the inevitable catastrophes in the delivery system. Alaska is a perfect example of the enormous risks to anyone adopting computerized online testing.

Instead of one student not being able to take a test because you are short on answer sheets or something, you have millions of tests at risk for catastrophic failure because some worker severs a line.

Maybe that is too much for you to grasp? Seeing total failure in one online computerized test for an entire state as an example of how online computerized testing can be a total failure for others? Up your game here.

Yes, there were some places in the first roll-out in 2014 that did written tests, who could not for example afford to buy computers for every single student and buy the necessary bandwidth.
 
What a silly question. The beef I had is with online computerized testing and the inevitable catastrophes in the delivery system. Alaska is a perfect example of the enormous risks to anyone adopting computerized online testing.
Except you specifically mentioned that "Common Core, in Bill Gates' vision, was a testing delivery system: computerized online testing." You chose the title "Gates Foundation admits Common Core Mistake. What now?" for this thread. Then you use Alaska as an example: it's not Common Core, and Bill Gates didn't impose computerized testing on Alaska as far as I can tell.

Instead of one student not being able to take a test because you are short on answer sheets or something, you have millions of tests at risk for catastrophic failure because some worker severs a line.

Maybe that is too much for you to grasp? Seeing total failure in one online computerized test for an entire state as an example of how online computerized testing can be a total failure for others? Up your game here.
No, I grasp that just fine. There should always be a backup plan when technology is involved. But you keep banging on about the Common Core and the evils that Bill Gates has wrought, and yet the only example of an "inevitable catastrophe" that you can come up with has nothing to do with them. There are advantages to administering the tests on computer. Some (not all) students write more quickly and easily on computer. It's quicker and less messy to correct and revise on a computer. Computer-generated tests are also scored more promptly, and not because they are more legible. Handwritten tests have to be shipped to...wherever. Then they have to be scanned and uploaded.

Yes, there were some places in the first roll-out in 2014 that did written tests, who could not for example afford to buy computers for every single student and buy the necessary bandwidth.
Probably more than half the tests I scored this year were handwritten.
 
Well I can't help you there. I really can't understand how your thinking is so dysfunctional.

And, in turn, I feel like I'm being Gish Galloped.

I was talking specifically about "teaching to the test" and got this in reply:

You don't adopt some theoretical assertion, and a key example is the claim students cannot understand the number 11 without understanding it is one group of 10s and one group of 1s. That's ridiculous. It is the number that is one unit larger than ten, just like all of the numbers before it.

You can assert with zero evidence that students will "understand" math better if you force them to memorize counting this way. Taking four years to develop all the curriculum, texts, and then the exams to find out it was a stupid idea...

Well, this is why we homeschool. Teachers not even understanding basic science concepts. Experimental validation of hare-brained ideas for example. Before they are put into practice.
 
That happens in the UK too. I do have some issues with the way that maths is taught in primary school, as the traditional approach is often quicker for more able children as well as being less error-prone for more complicated sums.

A lot of primary teachers seem uncomfortable with the maths needed for eleven year olds. The two cultures are still alive in Britain.
I think you are right. I remember once when I was teaching a skill (probably long multiplication) and some of them said they didn't understand. I asked if they knew how to use a hammer - no problem there! Then I asked if they knew how to explain the lever and fulcrum and they said no, so I said I didn't either. This worked as it gave them confidence to use the method even if the theory behind it was not clearly understood, and even if it never would be.
 
What exactly is wrong with standardized testing, in a practical sense? I'm pretty sure all advanced nations use teaching and testing standards, including all of those that opponents of standardized testing like to lament score routinely higher than the US in (standardized) international comparative tests.


I have no problem with standardized testing as an end-of-grade assessment of skills learned. But, it can be taken too far. My daughter's school had a ridiculous amount of testing. They were taking a week off for testing several times throughout the year. I don't even know what all of it was for. I know it included taking pre-end-of-grade tests so that they could go back and re-teach stuff before the actual end-of-grade test.
 
I think you are right. I remember once when I was teaching a skill (probably long multiplication) and some of them said they didn't understand. I asked if they knew how to use a hammer - no problem there! Then I asked if they knew how to explain the lever and fulcrum and they said no, so I said I didn't either. This worked as it gave them confidence to use the method even if the theory behind it was not clearly understood, and even if it never would be.

Well it's an algorithmic way of applying the distributive property, isn't it?

Not that they get the distributive property either ...

I have a "low" student who is an absolute expert at putting on makeup. She never told me this; I observed. In a small group, all girls, I asked how she did so well. She said, "Well I practiced and watched tutorials ..."

She didn't get that much better at math, but when I called her mom to say she needed to practice at home she answered her mom's phone and I spoke with her for several sentences - before realizing it was her, not her mom. Some students are fronting for their non-English speaking parents and she sounded cool, collected and mature.

The kids are told to put everything into a calculator. High school students. Many if not most have zero procedural confidence.

I don't think non-base-10 operations should be brought up at all. Kids who are mathematically minded will come to understand the concept well enough if they think about base 2 binary code, but why dump that on a kid who will have no need for it EVER? But then, it's awfully hard to know what people will need in the future. That's a structural problem with education reform. By the time you turn around the battleship, battleships are obsolete.
 
Kentucky was the first to adopt and here is an article citing the state board adopted it before release of the alleged core.

Kentucky explicitly adopted the draft of Common Core standards that had already been distributed for feedback in February, not some unseen final draft.

So that's your evidence that it was "was nearly universally adopted by states in 2010 before it was written"? The fact that one state adopted an existing draft rather than waiting on the final form?
 
Yes.

It is exactly my point: "Common Core" was nearly universally adopted before it was written. It was four years from the time states began adopting it and the year the first actual Common Core standardized test was fielded. The period 2010-2014, with I think the vast majority adopting in 2010 and 2011. Three years before "Common Core" has ever had some kind of test associated with what it supposedly means.

In the interim these consulting companies, publishing companies, etc. all profited handsomely writing something people had accepted before they wrote it.

The deceptions on what "common core" means is important. Proponents switch between "standards" vs. the standardized test vs. the curricula.

The pie-in-the-sky "standards"came out in 2010 and. the standardized TEST four years later -the textbooks for the math had not been written yet, and when they finally came out it proved how stupid this base-10 gimmick is.

So states are bailing. And Bill Gates has abandoned ship! :)

Now that common core is in, Math scores on the NAEP have fallen for the first time. It's a disaster. Common core made scores fall on standardized math tests?

So now what to do. The Gates Foundation says it is willing to listen, lol. It doesn't have the answers.

The Federal government moved on in 2015 to the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA)

So we went from No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top (Common Core) and now to Every Student Succeeds Act.

The first one required that in the future, students do better NCLB. The second law exempted you from NCLB if you adopted Common Core. You got a waiver from NCLB. Now you get waivers for the waivers.

As the math scores fall, you have these common core math texts developed by consultants attached to Bill Gates. Online materials. Problem sets. Answer keys for math teachers who don't know the Pythagorean theorem, etc.

Bill Gates has bailed on you. A lot of states are in limbo, having adopted a curriculum, teaching method, and testing apparatus that has clearly failed its purpose. There is no national standard. The states connected now by common core have variable standards, variable levels of proficiency, and are exempt from any sanctions as a practical matter. So what is the point?

A state like Massachusetts, national leaders, got rid of common core. Someone on this forum was crowing about how great common core was because Massachusetts adopted it. lol.

Homeschool growth is surging, a lot of it to do with common core.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuexIMWBOQY

That's Milgram, who has a lot of speeches out. He was one of the two on the common core math validation committee that voted no.

It isn't just that they are developmentally inappropriate, but in the end a lower standard, like Algebra II for high school, ie a remedial college student in any STEM degree, business, and a lot of other majors. Not college ready.

So what now?
 
So what you meant to say is that states adopted tests before they were written?

Can you tell me when Kentucky adopted the tests, and when the tests were written?
 
I think you are right. I remember once when I was teaching a skill (probably long multiplication) and some of them said they didn't understand. I asked if they knew how to use a hammer - no problem there! Then I asked if they knew how to explain the lever and fulcrum and they said no, so I said I didn't either. This worked as it gave them confidence to use the method even if the theory behind it was not clearly understood, and even if it never would be.

Kids who are mathematically minded will come to understand the concept well enough if they think about base 2 binary code, but why dump that on a kid who will have no need for it EVER? But then, it's awfully hard to know what people will need in the future. That's a structural problem with education reform. By the time you turn around the battleship, battleships are obsolete.

This is such a great point. I'm very glad to be reading such reasoned arguments for and again, especially by folk who are on the front lines. Thank you. My oldest son, who is nearly 9, won a couple of math awards last year. I didn't even know that was a thing at his age. I am not mathematically inclined at all, but my father is, and my wife most certainly is. Yesterday, while we were eating at a burger-chain restaurant, he asked me how old someone would be if they were born when the chain was first founded. Instead of giving him the answer (which would require me to do math) I made him figure it out. He sat back for a moment, thought about it, and provided a wrong answer. I told him to try again, and he said, "Oh, I forgot to add the four back in," then he provided the correct answer. I don't know what "four" he needed, but whatever the process they've taught him, he gets it.
 
Except you specifically mentioned that "Common Core, in Bill Gates' vision, was a testing delivery system: computerized online testing." You chose the title "Gates Foundation admits Common Core Mistake. What now?" for this thread. Then you use Alaska as an example: it's not Common Core, and Bill Gates didn't impose computerized testing on Alaska as far as I can tell.

Exactly. Computerized online testing. Being intentionally obtuse isn't going to rescue Common Core. It is already dead. Gates moved on. The federal government moved on. States with quality education are moving on.

It leaves a lot of states with their eyes blinking like "what happened?"


No, I grasp that just fine. There should always be a backup plan when technology is involved.

And there are none. You can't wish it into existence.


There are advantages to administering the tests on computer. Some (not all) students write more quickly and easily on computer. It's quicker and less messy to correct and revise on a computer. Computer-generated tests are also scored more promptly, and not because they are more legible. Handwritten tests have to be shipped to...wherever. Then they have to be scanned and uploaded.

All evidence-free assertions that stand in contradiction of the evidence I just gave of an entire state being cancelled over a severed line. Computerized online tests have just proven themselves subject to catastrophic failure.

We saw the technical failures the FIRST TIME we took computerized online testing.

There has never been an example of an entire state cancelling tests before in the history of testing.

Gates couldn't care less about catastrophic failure. The important thing is to buy tech industry products. A software license for every student in the country.
 
So what you meant to say is that states adopted tests before they were written?

First of all, regardless of when anything was written, state educational bureaucracies began accepting Race to the Top money in 2010 without reading any of it because they got both grant money and a waiver from the requirements under No Child Left Behind.

So it is a red herring to even ask when it was written because nobody was reading what Gates' committee was doing.

When people finally saw what was being written after they already committed themselves to it generated all these youtube videos on how stupid common core math is.

The literature people really dislike aspects of it too.

Can you tell me when Kentucky adopted the tests, and when the tests were written?

I did. In 2010. It wasn't until four years later that the first field test was done.

Now Gates has left the building. The ESSA expressly prohibits a national standard and any kind of federal money withholding. The whole point of Common Core was to force everyone to be on one giant integrated system by making federal money contingent on it.

So every state can do whatever they want now. Nobody has to stay on common core in order to get federal money any more.
 
I know! I think having to learn middle school math might have been the bit that made my mom give up on completing teacher certification. She's 91 and has almost zero short-term memory but the other day I asked her: "What's 8 times 7?" She answered "56" immediately.

Common Core sounded fancier than it really was. IMO reform always seems to swing between extremes, when in fact you need *both* "math fact" drills and inquiry-based conceptual understanding. I see kids putting 10 times -1 in a calculator. That's obviously a serious structural deficit. For a lot of arithmetic, sure, use a calculator. But in cases like that, it slows down the process so much that the student is going to lose the thread of the problem.

Yeah but calculators have existed for a long time, so is the problem that math is too hard or that kids nowadays just don't have the patience for it because of their upbringing?
 
Common Core math is all about understanding the why to the point that you stop depending on rote memory and approach a problem with a wide set of tools.

Isn't math all about memorising? "Why does 12 x 4 = 48" can only lead to the answer "because that's the way it is."

'Course, this isn't the same for other subjects, but math is pretty much the king of "you have to know this", outside of languages.
 
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