In the humanities and social sciences, Common Core looks like a socialist indoctrination campaign, but evidently, in the sciences, or at least in mathematics, it seems to actually raising standards. The sudden D might be a result of suddenly having to do rigorous math at the 7th grade level, rather than getting whatever mush the girl was getting A’s on previously.
I say this because I was talking with a 4th grade teacher who works in a nearby town that adopted Common Core at a housewarming party last Saturday. He reports that the new curriculum has his students actually able to do long division, with a good understanding of why the steps work, by the second month of fourth grade (about four school-months later than we did it back in the 60’s, but earlier than the topic had slid to over the intervening 40 years) and even his slow students are understanding the next topic: fractions. Considering that we’ve had students entering our university who couldn’t add fractions correctly, I’d say that may be an improvement.
How was Common Core designed? If they had folks in each area (mathematics, physics, English lit, history,...) rather than in ed (math ed, physics ed,...) design it, that might explain it: the humanities and social science parts would have designed by typical leftist professors in those areas (yup, lit crit types would use politically tendentious statements in grammar exercises, as we’ve seen reported elsewhere) while the sciences would have been designed by scientists.
However did children manage to learn math before the revelations of Common Core?
I would say that the cause of the “slide” we are talking about in education is quite debatable and possible has zero (no pun intended) to do with the lack of Common Core teaching techniques.
By the way, are you familiar with Charlotte Iserbyt?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywd_U1T9Ck0