Posted on 11/13/2013 7:01:38 AM PST by Nachum
HILLSBORO, Ore. Nine parents pulled their seventh- and eighth-graders out of math class and started teaching them at home, because they are upset with the new Common Core curriculum that public schools in Oregon are starting this year.
Seventh-grader Amy Craig has always been an "A" student in math until this year. She came home with a "D."
The same thing happened to other students in her school. So their moms got together and decided to teach math themselves an hour every morning.
Then the kids go off to school for the rest of the day.
This is the first school year when every public school in Oregon is using Common Core teaching standards. Forty-five other states use those, too.
"Our teachers would tell you math is more challenging this year than it was a year ago," said Rian Petrick, principal of Evergreen Middle School in Hillsboro, who is not surprised kids are struggling.
Math hasn't changed, but he said there are now fewer numbers and formulas and many more word problems and real-world examples. It includes more group work. That's tough for some kids.
"Our teachers feel like it's the best thing for kids, making them look much deeper into mathematics than they have in the past," Petrick said.
(Excerpt) Read more at katu.com ...
Ping!
Girls with big long fake nails can't manage it.
Post of the morning!
Yep, I think that’s the focus - remove the idea of individual achievement.
If you would like more information about Oregon, please FReepmail me. I lost my Oregon list when my computer crashed last month.
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It is very likely that these teacher ( who are making kids "look much deeper" into mathematics) would FAIL the GED math section!
It would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic to hear administrators explain to Special Education teachers how this is going to work with moderate to severe autistic students--feelings over facts...
Common Core is a model of everything socialized. Don’t make the worst better; make the better worse, hopefully by destroying it.
What the eggheads who come up with this crap fail to realize...is that for every kid who is baffled and intimidated by math; there are plenty who acquire great satisfaction and confidence and speed by completing many many drills. Yeah, it’s a little tedious....but the feeling of being able to CRUSH math problems is a thing that can be self generated if the student is motivated...and that motivation can be cultivated. And this is not to say that some kids will never acquire great math skills. But there is the opportunity to allow some to acquire a lot of confidence. Of course that would be a tragedy because they might go bully “lesser” intellects.
I was interested in Vigilanteman's post at 9 above, where he said that Japan "does... a good job of integrating math, geometry and algebra instead of teaching them as separate topics." I was average at best at math and algebra, but scored on the 99th percentile on the county standardized geometry exam, so my teacher made me take the exam over under supervision, and I still scored at the tippy-top. She had been teaching them altogether, and my grades were Cs, but the standardized exam only focused on drawings and proofs. Guess I'm just right-brained. Funny, I went on to become a designer.
The best instructor I had in math in college was an engineer.
He cut through so much theory, took shortcuts, made math intelligable and every single person in that class got it.
Deming — my hero. TQM and all that.
After I moved on to other employment the math educators changed the way, even the math vocabulary, every few years. I doubt seriously that I could teach math in today's schools.
My child’s school is teaching islam and the teacher recited the shahadah. He said you can say it without really becoming a muslim. ( my feeling is that he was trying to get the children to say it.) My daughter and other students knew well enough not to say it. This is being taught to middle school kids.
Group work is great for slacker teachers. It means one kid does the work of either teaching, or just does the work for a few other classmates. Sometimes group work is appropriate, but math is not a team sport.
Bump!
My son goes to a traditional school that specifically forbids “group work”.
I first read this as a short story when I was in grade school in the 1970s. Some magazine I'd subscribed to, but can't really remember it. The story stuck with me for years. It was made into a Twilight Zone episode in the 80's remade series.
How many times have you gone to the store, and the kid uses the cash register (computer)to figure out your change ?
There is no more mathematics involved ; it is reliance on electronic machinery alone.
Just more "progressive" dumbing down in the educational system , while inflating teachers salaries as 'day care' providers.
You can't have robots if people are thinking !
Pity your daughter couldn’t secretly record the teacher doing it so it can be uploaded and publicized.
The kid that struggles with algebra will often excel at geometry. Algebra is so much abstraction, an linear thinking. But geometry is shapes, and getting it is more intuitive. Anyway, it's not unusual to see someone bad at algebra be good at geometry, and that can build confidence for the student struggling with math.
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