Posted on 12/02/2015 5:06:05 PM PST by Kaslin
Another Common Core-aligned math problem is going viral. This time a 3rd grade math problem was marked as incorrect even though the student found the correct answer. On the other hand, submissions with the wrong answer have been counted right.
The question asked the student to find the result of 5 multiplied by 3, using the "repeated addition strategy." The student wrote "5+5+5" and correctly found the answer to be 15. Apparently, this strategy didn't fit with the Common Core-established method for teaching multiplication, so the teacher punished the student for getting the right answer in a way not prescribed.
In problem number 2, the student was asked to solve 4 multiplied by 6. The child created an array with four columns of ones and six rows of ones. With this array, the student provided the correct answer of 24. The teacher again punished the student for getting the right answer in a different manner, wanting six columns of ones and four rows of ones.
NBC Chicago reported, "The new math methods are in response to the Common Core States Standards Initiative launched in 2009. It focuses on more critical thinking and less on memorization."
That report is inaccurate. First, these math methods have been around for more than two decades, under names such as New Math, Fuzzy Math, Everyday Math, and Chicago Math. Second, Common Core was created before 2009, as its own supporters claim. Third, the critical thinking talking point is an excuse to prevent accountability for teaching methods and results. This talking point also defies logic because, as this math problem shows, many Common Core teachers want only one method to be taught for calculating the correct answer, regardless of the critical thinking utilized by the student. When a student uses his or her own strategy to come to the right answer, isn't that an example of the kind of "critical thinking" Common Core is supposed to be promoting?
In contrast to how this math problem was correct yet marked incorrect, Grayslake District 46 Curriculum Director Amanda August told parents in 2013, "But even under the new Common Core, even if [students] said, '3x4 was 11,' if they were able to explain their reasoning and explain how they came up with their answer, really in words and oral explanations, and they showed it in a picture but they just got the final answer wrong, we're more focused on the how and the why."
The recently released Nation's Report Card scores, officially called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), show an across-the-board decrease in math test scores. This was the first score drop in 25 years. Breaking down the data by Common Core participation and Common Core testing consortia shows a correlation between math test scores and Common Core states; scores declined by 0.5 percent more in the Common Core states. These are the first NAEP scores released since Common Core was fully implemented, and it will be two more years before the next set of NAEP scores are released and potential correlations examined.
There are already calls to align NAEP to Common Core. Aligning NAEP would prevent the independent testing of education quality, and it would foster a much higher propensity of teaching to the test and the potential for even greater test cheating scandals than those that occurred in Alabama, California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Washington DC over the past several years.
The math techniques now associated with Common Core-aligned math are solidly entrenched in many public education systems across the nation, even though in 2006 the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics called for an end to these techniques and a return to teaching the basics, i.e. direct instruction and memorization of basic facts. These basics provide a solid foundation for understanding, learning, and building future math concepts. Teachers who use Common Core-aligned math are similar to those who attempt to build a house without a foundation; the house is destined to crumble.
One other question no one seems to be asking about this problem is this: Why are teachers using Common Core math working on math problems such as "5x3" in a 3rd grade class? Multiplication should have already been started, at a minimum, in 2nd grade, with the concept being introduced at the end of 1st grade.
Here's all you need to know about Common Core-aligned math: It's a system where a student’s wrong answer can be "right" and a right answer can be "wrong." It doesn't take much critical thinking to realize Common Core-aligned math is a disaster.
It’s not surprising, but still another reason.
Setting math back 500 years in the U.S.
and she did
seven eggs ... six 'ticks' in each egg ... above the first egg the number 6 ... above the second, the number 12 .. etc ... 42, Pappy !
She was never induced to memorize the times table
When a girl with no math skills beyond long addition grows up .... she can .....
GW Bush and his pals on the left came up with this big government gift horse, instead of encouraging teach of the states to become educational laboratories of innovation.
Joy Hofmeister, when running for State School Superintendent ( OK ), told me, eye to eye, nose to nose, that she did NOT have a problem with Common Core!
Multiply and divide within 100.Fluently multiply and divide within 100, using strategies such as the relationship between multiplication and division (e.g., knowing that 8 × 5 = 40, one knows 40 ÷ 5 = 8) or properties of operations. By the end of Grade 3, know from memory all products of two one-digit numbers.
All the crazy math anecdotes are the product of the liberal math establishment, started before common core, and will continue after. The goal is to bring down the best and brightest, and equalize everyone at government dependent level.
This ping list is for the "other" articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
Having looked at the CC curriculum I can appreciate what they are trying to do. The problem is that they have thrown the baby out with the bath water in promoting thinking skills above both utility an truth..
In order to develop thinking skills you first must have something to think about. When process is more important than data you’ve got a real problem.
If we let every child re-invent the wheel mathematically they’ll have a great understanding of the simple things but never be able to go beyond that. They is a real place for route learning in that helps us to quickly attain a level of competence where we can ask intelligent questions and provide creative solution.
Common Core is abysmally bad and destructive.
“In order to develop thinking skills you first must have something to think about. When process is more important than data you’ve got a real problem.”
Very well stated. May I quote you?
:-)
.
As the several nuclear scientist hover over the problem of critical mass, someone suggests to use Common Core Math to solve the problem. After hours of computations, the “consensus answer” is that critical mass will not be reached soon..... boooooom!
Exactly what I was thinking! Basic math should be a given, something you know, so why not memorize? This is unbelievably foolish! In the real world, how are these future adults going to balance a bank statement quickly and accurately?
What a crap
She explained to me that he was supposed to estimate the answer using some funny fuzzy process. Instead, he did it the right way and his answer, though exactly correct, was not the answer he was supposed to present.
I told him in front of his teacher, "Get the answer exactly correct. Don't worry about the grade."
You need to memorize then learn critical thinking. Math would have made more sense to me if I had had the tools in my memory, then I would have been prepared to understand their critical thinking.
Wrong. The “standards/goals” are for public consumption and in any event don’t address methods. In the teaching materials provided to teachers are instructions that math be taught according to the 1989 NCMT standards. The implementation is sometimes called “constructivist” or “Chicago” math. All of the major textbook companies teach the methods you call “crazy anecdotes”.
I am way to old to give a hoot about the “progressives” critical “thinking”
This website should cause you some brain freeze. http://3rdgradegrapevine.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-add-common-core-way.html
You just repeated what I said. Thank you, but it was unnecessary. To reiterate, the problem is mainly the methods, not the standards, it is the education establishment that is the problem, and the problem predates common core. Common core is a distraction, and victories over common core are just going to cause complacency.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.