Posted on 01/25/2013 9:52:03 AM PST by Academiadotorg
There’s no better illustration of Common Core’s duplicitous talk of higher standards than to start with its math “reforms.” While Common Core promoters assert their standards are “internationally benchmarked,” independent members of the expert panel in charge of validating the standards refute the claim. Panel member Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas reported, “No material was ever provided to the Validation Committee or to the public on the specific college readiness expectations of other leading nations in mathematics” or other subjects.
In fact, Stanford University professor James Milgram, the only mathematician on the validation panel, concluded that the Common Core math scheme would place American students two years behind their peers in other high-achieving countries. In protest, Milgram refused to sign off on the standards. He’s not alone.
Professor Jonathan Goodman of New York University found that the Common Core math standards imposed “significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries.”
Under Common Core, as the American Principles Project and Pioneer Institute point out, algebra I instruction is pushed to 9th grade, instead of 8th grade, as commonly taught. Division is postponed from 5th to 6th grade. Prime factorization, common denominators, conversions of fractions and decimals, and algebraic manipulation are de-emphasized or eschewed. Traditional Euclidean geometry is replaced with an experimental approach that had not been previously pilot-tested in the U.S.
Ze’ev Wurman, a prominent software architect, electrical engineer and longtime math advisory expert in California and Washington, D.C., points out that Common Core delays proficiency with addition and subtraction until 4th grade and proficiency with basic multiplication until 5th grade, and skimps on logarithms, mathematical induction, parametric equations and trigonometry at the high school level.
(Excerpt) Read more at michellemalkin.com ...
“Everyday Math” is an incredible failure.
Why is it schools can’t just stick with what works rather than switch curriculums? I get that the books are slick and shiny with cool pictures, but the concepts are poorly taught.
Because then schools would be tempted to keep textbooks for a few years longer and then just buy reprints rather than entirely new and improved (?) editions, thus harming textbook publishers, education professors and the entire education-industrial complex. And we cannot have that!
Also all the cool schools are using Everyday Math. You don't want to be an uncool school, right? Go ahead, buy the books. BUY THE BOOKS!
It wouldn’t be so bad that they indoctrinate your kids in leftist silliness if they at least educated them. And it wouldn’t be so bad that they fail to educate your kids if at least they didn’t indoctrinate your kids.
But public schools in their current form are the worst of worlds. Indoctrination and no education. If your kids come out at the end of it with even half a clue, its in spite of the school system. If you let these nut-cases have free access to your kids’ minds for 12 years the result in the agregate is not pretty.
When you are mis-educated, what you don’t know, you don’t even know you don’t know. Much of what it takes to sustain a republic, and much of the lessons learned from history, must be passed generation to generation. Miss a couple of generations and it dies with us.
We may someday manage to reform and rebuild the school system and we should try. But your kids only have now. Get your kids out of public schools if at all you can. Grandparents may have to help.
Because somewhere there are people who sit in offices, draw rather large salaries, and never actually go to a real classroom. But they have to justify their existence and therefore, every couple of years, something drops from these people out to the schools. They are called curriculum specialists, or they are “educational consultants” hired by superintendents and boards of education to provide guidance and make it appear something is being done. Mostly they interfere with whatever I and others like me are doing. You can find them clustered around state capitals and infesting the Department of Education in DC. Sometimes they go on tours of selected schools where all the children are above average, for a photo op or the like.
The answer to all this crap is Parent run local community “home” schools that are held everyday in the local churches.
Bingo ! We have a winner !
Mark
I know my husband and I noticed that my daughter couldn't even add simple numbers together by the 4th grade. And I'm talking single digit plus single digit. We took matters into our own hands and started tutoring her at night at home to get her up to speed. Fortunately, they did stop using this nonsense; but, the public schools won't stop, even if it doesn't work.
“Why is it schools can’t just stick with what works rather than switch curriculums?”
I know you know this...but when the object is NOT to educate, then the reason for NOT teaching kids becomes obvious.
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