Posted on 03/11/2015 10:52:12 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The Common Core testing standards, not passed through state legislatures and forced upon schoolchildren without parental consultation or consent, are obviously a subject of much debate.
An Arkansas mom encapsulated just how brazen the manner of implementing these standards was when she confronted the Arkansas State Board of Education and questioned how well the testing was preparing kids for college.
The mother, Karen Lamoreaux, represented fellow educators and a total of 1,100 people by her count, when she spoke before the board in December 2013. She laid out a case of why the standards were so ill-conceived, and at one point elucidated just how absurd it is to teach around these tests.
At one point, she asks the board directly: Are you smarter than a fourth grader? Here is the test question she asked:
Are you smarter than a Common Core fourth grader? Let’s find out. The problem is: Mr. Yamato’s class has 18 students. If the class counts around by a number and ends with 90, what number did they count by?
After a moment, one educator familiar with the circuitous language answered ‘5’ by performing the rudimentary calculation of dividing 90 by 18.
Lamoreaux goes further by explaining just how tedious and unrealistic the ‘correct’ method of answering is under the standards:
This, however, is what the Common Core Standards expect our fourth graders to do. If they solve it in those two steps they get it marked wrong. They are expected to draw 18 circles with 90 hashmarks solving this problem in exactly 108 steps. Board members, this is not rigorous. This is not college ready. This is not preparing our children to compete in a global economy.
This is the crux of the problem. The nations that the U.S. is competing in the global economy are not preparing schoolchildren for careers in scientific and engineering fields by having them waste time drawing circles and hashes. These countries are establishing the fundamentals of mathematics, and moving pupils on to higher concepts such as those used in algebra and calculus, at age-appropriate increments.
In a NY Times article that bluntly asks, “Why do Americans stink at math?,” the main issue with such confusing methods is illustrated by a striking counter-point from a Japanese school:
Instead of having students memorize and then practice endless lists of equations — which Takahashi remembered from his own days in school — Matsuyama taught his college students to encourage passionate discussions among children so they would come to uncover math’s procedures, properties and proofs for themselves. One day, for example, the young students would derive the formula for finding the area of a rectangle; the next, they would use what they learned to do the same for parallelograms. Taught this new way, math itself seemed transformed. It was not dull misery but challenging, stimulating and even fun.
Imagine that: Children love to solve problems and mathematics is a tool among others to tackle real-world problems. Bogging kids down with tedious exercises is not improving our children’s ability to love math and science.
Until our state legislatures and local school boards, through competition and trial-and-error, are free to find ways to tap into the passion that children have to learn, we are going to continue debating the wisdom of bureaucrats and corporations imposing one-size-fits-all standards on America’s young students.
Educators and parents would do well to listen to this mom’s concerns as an outstanding starting point to find out what they think themselves about the Common Core standards. If we should do anything, it is to hold it to the same standards that we are holding our kids.
I posted the link and instructions for the PARCC practice tests and Ohio’s AIR tests here: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3265858/posts
Anybody can take the practice tests.
Get your children out of the government indoctrination centers - NOW!
This, however, is what the Common Core Standards expect our fourth graders to do. If they solve it in those two steps they get it marked wrong.
No way! This can't be for real.
Can anyone see any of these students being able to do double-entry bookkeeping in the future????
EVERY business needs such a person.
Nice work! She tells it like it is.
When one of my kids was in fifth grade, I went to a PTA night. The teacher, a nice fellow in his 60’s, thought he’d enlighten the parents by showing how they were teaching the kids division.
It was a cluster-f**k. In essence, the kids were supposed to be “seeing” everything in terms of powers of ten, but the method and notekeeping was extremely convoluted. I said, “What are you doing here? You’re trying to teach the kids to divide using synthetic division when they barely know arithmetic, and three or four years before the concepts of polynomials and synthetic division will be introduced.”
Now, this fellow wasn’t a bad guy, and didn’t care if the kids learned the traditional way at home. Many teachers aren’t so understanding.
Anyway, after the class, about a half-dozen parents came to me and thanked me for expressing succinctly and accurately what the pedagogic problem was.
This was maybe 15 or 17 years ago. I’m sure it has only gotten worse since then.
Thanks
Standing ovation for Karen Lamoreaux.
The Engineering teacher that prepared me best for the real world never gave lectures or went through the pages of the book with us.
He’d just walk into the class, tell us to go to the next problem in the back of the chapter and figure it out.
While I appreciate what this Arkansas mom is doing, why doesn’t she point out that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to decide policy for intrastate schools?
Exactly! The idiots who came up the Common Core, the idiots who got it implemented, and the idiots who uncritically teach it STILL comprise government education. They haven’t gone anywhere, they haven’t dropped their agenda, and they’re going to damage your kids one way or another.
“why doesn’t she point out that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to decide policy for intrastate schools?”
Whether the topic is roads, energy or schools, the one with the gold makes the rules. Since local society does not want to pay for anything anymore, that opens the doors up to the feds to control everything.
Common Core teached kids what the meaning of “is” is. :-)
It is for real.
During Parents’ Night at my daughter’s elementary school many years ago, her teacher announced that she would be teaching her pupils how to do division using the German method. Our school district probably has more engineers than most so we asked her to demonstrate this method. The teacher was unable to do so.
As Ms Bagman pointed out later, what good is it to teach one solution technique one year and then learn another one the next year?
Counts around? What the heck is that? Who writes these things?
I had never heard of this, so I went off looking for the German method. It is quite similar to normal long division, but doesn't keep the columns lined in rows. So it is really a notational difference. Why they don't want to use the current method is beyond me, other than to frustrate students and parents.
typo:
” ... but doesn’t keep the columns lined in rows.”
should be
” ... but doesn’t keep the columns aligned vertically.”
Sorry about that.
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