How do you feel about Common Core?

[nanette1985]

Having read a bunch of opinions on the web, I figured I'd see what the gang here thinks.

In my state http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/11/0601/0026/

In theory it might have some good points, but I don't know a lot about the details. My daughter the math teacher thinks it's at least no worse than No Child Left Unharmed, but calls it's just the latest whiz-bang fix-it-all that isn't going to be any better than New Math of my early years. She wasn't exposed to New Math but she's an admirer of Tom Lehrer.

At any rate, she's just going to go along with whatever gets thrown her way (she's a good little employee)

She used to be a special needs math teacher, and just changed to HS Math. She knows this will be awful for special needs students because the whole point is for everybody to be exactly the same - that's the opposite of special needs.

Anyone?

 

[boomerang]

The bigger question is what changed that it's now required?

I think we've all seen the tests that were given to public school students 100 years ago. I couldn't pass them today and I don't think I could have passed them in my school years which were a long time ago. My point is that I wonder how children were taught far more then than they are now. What has changed?

In Michigan, which adopted the program early on, it's being contested. It has yet to be funded.

http://www.theoaklandpress.com/arti...oc51f832575e198838936201.txt?viewmode=default

Here is a quote from page three of the article. Bolding is mine.

While opposition has been characterized as coming from political conservatives, McMillin points out that a leading national education figure, Diane Ravitch — who he characterizes as a liberal — is opposed to Common Core.

“The Common Core standards effort is fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted upon the nation,” Ravitch wrote in her blog earlier this year.

“The Common Core standards have been adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia without any field test,” she continued “They are being imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools.

We are a nation of guinea pigs, almost all trying an unknown new program at the same time.

“Maybe the standards will be great. Maybe they will be a disaster. Maybe they will improve achievement. Maybe they will widen the achievement gaps between haves and have-nots.

Maybe they will cause the children who now struggle to give up altogether. Would the Federal Drug Administration approve the use of a drug with no trials, no concern for possible harm or unintended consequences?”

The question this raises in my head is that how is it, that after educating children formally for literally hundreds of years, our educators are still guessing about how to do it?

 

[werepossum]

Seems like a giant step backward to me. One big problem with primary school is that it is excruciatingly boring until you can get into advanced classes. Right now my grandson at almost-seven is learning some fairly advanced (for second grade) math, which not only helps keep things interesting but also gives a sense of progression, of learning. Hammering the same things over and over and over seems to me to be crushing all that and essentially putting everyone in remedial math and science. By middle school, kids will have learned that science and especially math is terribly boring and should be avoided as much as possible. I literally cannot imagine how leaving geometry to middle school can possibly be a good idea.

On the other hand, tougher, more frequent, and more detailed testing standards would be a good thing, as would more complex reading and writing. At the heart of all learning and all work is communication skills. However, at the heart of Common Core seems to be reducing everyone to remedial classes, studying the same old things year after year. Makes me think this will simply demonstrate once again that each new wave of "national school improvement" leaves us farther behind the rest of the developed world.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Raise the standards and say "keep up".

I do not agree with the idea that learning needs to incorporate games and technology to make it interesting and effective. Personally I think more screens detracts from learning rather than enhances it, but the school technology lobby would say otherwise. To learn, you need:

Effective teacher
Engaged parents
Textbooks
Black/white board
Pencil
Paper
And later on a calculator

Beyond that to me is just distraction. Can other things be incorporated to help the kids learn, sure? Is it ever effectively used? Not often enough to justify the expense. Instead of flashy new things, hire worthwhile educators. Don't teach to the lowest common denominator. Hold parents accountable too, not just the teacher.

 

[werepossum]

Raise the standards and say "keep up".

I do not agree with the idea that learning needs to incorporate games and technology to make it interesting and effective. Personally I think more screens detracts from learning rather than enhances it, but the school technology lobby would say otherwise. To learn, you need:

Effective teacher
Engaged parents
Textbooks
Black/white board
Pencil
Paper
And later on a calculator

Beyond that to me is just distraction. Can other things be incorporated to help the kids learn, sure? Is it ever effectively used? Not often enough to justify the expense. Instead of flashy new things, hire worthwhile educators. Don't teach to the lowest common denominator. Hold parents accountable too, not just the teacher.

Good points, but it's difficult to hold the parents accountable when they elect the school board.

 

[DrPizza]

<---- Teacher

I welcome the change. Though, there have been some rough bumps in getting it implemented, and some materials appear to have been rushed out (though, the one I'm thinking of off the top of my head still says "pending editorial review" - good thing, it's filled with errors.)

Increased emphasis on real reading skills. No longer do you water down 10th grade texts and describe them at a level that 6th graders can understand - the time is taken (in all subjects) to examine grade level material and follow close reading to discern what is meant.

When I first saw the ELA shifts a couple years ago, I applauded them. And, I've spent countless hours this summer going over the new math stuff.

For those unfamiliar, the math can be summarized like this: More focused, deeper instruction, emphasis on understanding, rather than gimmicky methods for getting to a solution. And, the common core mathematics was developed by looking at programs that worked, as well as actually listening to advice from experts this time. I believe the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) was instrumental.

Further, it should bring the standards up significantly in many states. One of our new teachers had taught in Kentucky for a couple of years. She was amazed that their students are behind NY students by at least a grade level in the district she was at, and was very disappointed in the lack of rigor. So, most of the states are adopting the same set of standards, and students from throughout the nation will be taking the same standardized tests, rather than a separate assessment made by each individual state. This, I welcome. For many years, NY was well ahead of most states, and had the Regents system of final exams for most subjects. But, in the past couple of decades, with "increasing standards", meaning "everyone needs to pass", they've made passing those exams a joke. (31 points out of 87 on the Algebra Regents exam converts to a 65%.) A lot of grades have already shifted over to the common core, and expectedly, the results weren't pretty. I think of it as we have a new baseline to start improving from. Part of the reason the results weren't pretty was, as I said early in this post, it was a pretty rocky transition. It was kind of, "hey, teach this new curriculum." "What curriculum?" "Well, you'll get to see it before the end of the year. Oh yeah, and your students will be tested based on the new curriculum. Good luck."

NY's implementation of the Common Core Algebra starts in less than 3 weeks. There are 5 modules (major units) for the course. So far, I think they're only up to publishing the 2nd of 5. Teachers are getting a bit anxious, waiting for materials (promised they'd be out by December.)

But, for instance, NY's curriculum for Algebra II/Trig used to be a mile wide and an inch deep. Now it'll be much more focused. I spent 8 hours on Wednesday with a couple dozen other geometry teachers from the area, getting a head start on our new curriculum that'll go into effect a year from now. I'm quite pleased with what I've seen so far. Though, as we examined the math curriculum from 8th through 11th, and then glanced at the planned schedule for pre-calculus, I was thinking, "wtf? there's no where near enough planned time to cover trigonometry. I spend 1 1/2 months on trig - and that's with students who already spent a significant amount of time on trig in A2/trig." Probably will be a moot point for me - I've been working on getting my course approved by a university - I'll teach it with a bit more rigor & kids will get at least 4 credit hours for it.

 

[DrPizza]

Raise the standards and say "keep up".

I do not agree with the idea that learning needs to incorporate games and technology to make it interesting and effective. Personally I think more screens detracts from learning rather than enhances it, but the school technology lobby would say otherwise. To learn, you need:

Effective teacher
Engaged parents
Textbooks
Black/white board
Pencil
Paper
And later on a calculator

Beyond that to me is just distraction. Can other things be incorporated to help the kids learn, sure? Is it ever effectively used? Not often enough to justify the expense. Instead of flashy new things, hire worthwhile educators. Don't teach to the lowest common denominator. Hold parents accountable too, not just the teacher.

It doesn't matter what either you or the technology lobby says. What matters is what peer reviewed research says on the subject. I can't remember a lot of studies off the top of my head (I have a master's degree in technology in education) - but one that was pretty specific that I was just looking at a couple of weeks ago was that students who learned and practiced taking tests on computers showed significantly better results than students who took tests on computers (with the same material) but other than the test, hadn't had significant access to the computers.

Beyond that though, you really have to differentiate between when computers are used for the sake of technology, and when computers are used to enhance education.

I'll describe an activity I do in physics:
Students use their ipods to video a ball being thrown vertically in the air. They use the application video physics to go frame by frame and mark the location of the ball. (If you took physics, no doubt you either saw a video, or perhaps your teacher even did it in the classroom with a strobe light and a falling ball.) From the data that the students gain by doing this, it's obvious that the ball doesn't travel the same distance per unit of time (1/30th of a second). Further, this data can be exported to other Vernier software to do even more analysis, including a very accurate calculation of the acceleration due to gravity. I then proceed to have students throw a ball to a friend, and repeat this video analysis. Students discover that horizontally, the speed of the ball does not change - it moves the same distance along the x-axis for every unit of time. While, the motion in the y-direction mirrors the previous experiment. Students are able to make quite a few deductions from this & gain a deeper understanding of 2-dimensional motion. For what it's worth, this follows the modeling curriculum (See Arizona State if you want more info) - it's been well researched as to be about the most effective way to teach these concepts without introducing misconceptions.

Can you even come close to such a lesson, without technology?





edit: Thought I'd bold a portion of your quote, and question you about it. Agreed - the VAST majority of successful students have engaged parents. What the hell do you do about children whose parents never graduated from high school & don't really care if their kids graduate? To them, school is a babysitting service/something you simply do until you're a little older, then you can drop out.

Also, BAH! I'd never go back to a black board or white board. Promethean or Smart Board, please. I can make my lessons significantly better using that technology. Granted, I know some teachers in some districts barely use that technology - they treat those boards as electronic versions of blackboards, but their capabilities are significantly better than blackboards.

And, can we settle for pens? I hate pencils.

 

[waggy]

after seeing some of the stuff my daughters friends are doing in school any change to get away from that shit is good. I watch a a few kids after gym practice until the parents can get them so i help with homework a lot.

one of the girls is 11 in 6th grade and t he math she does is fucked up. box's in rows to do long multiplication? its so fucking confusing. i broke down and showed her how my daughter does it (how i bet most of us learned in school).

they keep coming up with "new and better" ways to teach kids and all it is doing is setting them up to fail in the future (one of the math's is like that. fucks the kids up when they hit high school).

i really think some of the stuff they are doing is scary.

 

[Cerb]

This is the first I've seen of it. It looks like the same old, to me.

What is the bad curriculum it's transitioning from like? For example:

Elementary education, for example, will focus on whole numbers and computation, while skills like algebra and probability won't be addressed until the middle grades.

OK, so what are they doing now, that's not that? I mean, if you're not starting with intuitive numbers and arithmetic on them, how are the kids supposed to handle real maths?

That said, while I still can't find an answer, CCI does appear to be directly using teacher group suggested ideas, which are mostly common sense, on the surface, at least. Detractors mostly seem to have salient points*, but not any solutions of their own. At what point along the curve towards perfection do you break down and act?

* The state leash is already on you, so too bad. Tests are already too numerous, and nothing can be done for it (except spur Congress on to make it worse). If your students need more work to get up to others' standards, they can fail the grade and take it over.

P.S. and OT: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-04-28/common-core-education/54583192/1
I want that guy's frames.

 

[Fenixgoon]

while common core curriculum is good for the AVERAGE student, it holds back those who excel.

i'm in favor of letting smart kids take advantage of the system to the fullest. let them opt out or test out.

 

[drebo]

The biggest problem with the American school system (and California in particular) is the belief that all kids are the same, learn the same way, and learn at the same rate.

Anyone who's ever actually seen a kid knows that's not true, and structuring the schools around it is completely stupid.

In my highschool, we had 3 sets of classes: remedial, college prep, and advanced placement. The dummies and kids who didn't care were in remedial, the ones who were smart enough or cared to work hard enough to fake it were in AP, and everyone else was in CP. It worked well because those of us in AP didn't have to be held back by 16 year olds who read at a 4th grade level or didn't know how to do long division.

But at the same time, those same kids were able to all learn at their own rates in their own classes and so they didn't have to feel like they were being left behind.

The amount of kids in the classrooms is the same whether or not we divide them by aptitude. Programs like GATE and AP need to be expanded.

Further, our high schools need more vocational studies in them. That way, a kid who doesn't give a shit about medieval European history can learn to become a plumber or mechanic, rather than ruining the other kids' in his classes days.

Yes, that philosophy implies "separate but equal" but who fucking cares? We're not all the same and we shouldn't be treated all the same.