Have you all read this editorial about Common Core testing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As I said, reading. It's an ELA Curriculum.

Common Core is weak in math in a lot of ways. Instead of focusing on the basics, it has students regrouping and explaining and analyzing. Not doing, you know, actual math problems. It's incredibly confusing for students because it's so wordy and confusing.

It an effort to be "deep" -- it's just talky and confusing and turning kids around the country off math. It's also based on a failed experiment. THere's no proof kids who are learning Common Core will be any better at math than those who learned the old-fashioned way.

In my day, we easily got all the way to Calculus by 12th grade.

In my day (I don't know when your day was), the only way you got to Calculus by 12th grade (and Calculus I only) was if you qualified for advanced math, meaning Algebra I in 8th grade. And most kids didn't qualify for advanced math. They took Algebra I in 9th grade and did not take Calculus I in high school.

Whereas the Common Core standards are supposed to prepare all kids for Algebra I by 8th grade.

I'm surprised to read, by the way, that regrouping isn't doing actual math.

I went to school in Florida, and it was common for kids to be taking Calculus in 12th grade. This was in the 70s. I only got to Trigonometry, but I wasn't much of a math fan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Reports are flooding in that Kids subjected to these Common Core standards are shutting down, begging not to go to school every day. And they are in KINDERGARTEN!

Reports are also flooding in that kids subjected to these Common Core standards like school and are learning math. Or, at least, those are the reports at my house.

If you learn in a particular way, you will like the Common Core. If not, you are are deemed stupid and worthless.

The Common Core math and English/language arts standards say that kids at this grade level are supposed to be able to do this thing. They don't say anything about world civilization units or Mesopotamia. They don't say anything about the classes the schools should have. They don't say anything about how teachers are supposed to put together or grade tests. All they do is say things like:

"Count within 1000; skip-count by 5s, 10s, and 100s" (a second-grade math standard)

and

"Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text." (a second-grade English/Language Arts standard)

Please tell me the connection between these standards and deeming children stupid and worthless if they do not learn in a particular way,.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Kids are hating school, begging not to go, saying they are dumb. I'm hearing it from friends all around me.

If only we could go back in time to pre-common core times! You know, those halcyon days when every single kid across America would wake up bright and early just so happy they were going to school. When no kid would ever beg not to go to school and kds had no idea that school could be something that is hated. Where no kid ever thought they were dumb.

Common core, what have you done to our kids these last past two years?!?!? No parent ever had these problems with their kids before.

Nice try. But these are kids -- and parents -- who liked school and whose children were doing well. Now their kids come home, humiliated and frustrated. I have one friend whose afraid her son is going to drop out he hates school so much. He tells her over and over again: "I'm dumb." I have another whose older two kids are doing great with it, but whose youngest can't fathom the way he is being taught. He's failing every test. I have another whose child -- a previous A student -- failed the NY test. So ALL her electives were stripped from her, and she spends every hour being grilled on the Common Core standards.

Still want to keep defending it?

I don't know anything about New York's Common Core-aligned curriculum. But I have two kids going to school under the Common Core, not in New York, and they're doing fine. I think the Common Core is a good thing. Yes, I want to keep defending it.

I am a different poster. I also have two kids using Common Core in Maryland. They both do not report having any problems.

In fact, my son is n 6th grade and he told me they just took a a PARCC pilot test for English Language Arts. He says that they were given 2 poems they had to read and then write a 5 paragraph essay to compare and contrast the two poems.

I asked him if he felt the need to vomit during the test. He said, "No. It was pretty easy. We read the two poems by ourselves, then compared and contrasted them."

I asked him if ANY child in the class appeared to be emotionally harmed by this test. He said "Mom, it was no big deal. We wrote an essay."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Reports are flooding in that Kids subjected to these Common Core standards are shutting down, begging not to go to school every day. And they are in KINDERGARTEN!

Reports are also flooding in that kids subjected to these Common Core standards like school and are learning math. Or, at least, those are the reports at my house.

If you learn in a particular way, you will like the Common Core. If not, you are are deemed stupid and worthless.

The Common Core math and English/language arts standards say that kids at this grade level are supposed to be able to do this thing. They don't say anything about world civilization units or Mesopotamia. They don't say anything about the classes the schools should have. They don't say anything about how teachers are supposed to put together or grade tests. All they do is say things like:

"Count within 1000; skip-count by 5s, 10s, and 100s" (a second-grade math standard)

and

"Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text." (a second-grade English/Language Arts standard)

Please tell me the connection between these standards and deeming children stupid and worthless if they do not learn in a particular way,.

If you have a language based learning disability or autism, being able to "ask and answer who, what, where, when, why" will likely be unobtainable in 2nd grade. They could do the work in another way, but because if forces discussion, they are immediate failures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Reports are flooding in that Kids subjected to these Common Core standards are shutting down, begging not to go to school every day. And they are in KINDERGARTEN!

Reports are also flooding in that kids subjected to these Common Core standards like school and are learning math. Or, at least, those are the reports at my house.

If you learn in a particular way, you will like the Common Core. If not, you are are deemed stupid and worthless.

If someone is deeming a child stupid, and worthless? That is a HUGE problem, but it has nothing to do with Common Core.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
If you have a language based learning disability or autism, being able to "ask and answer who, what, where, when, why" will likely be unobtainable in 2nd grade. They could do the work in another way, but because if forces discussion, they are immediate failures.

If a child has a disability, then they will need to have an IEP to help them access the grade level curriculum. They should not be deemed "failures" but if they are, they would have been anyhow, under the old state standards, which also required 2nd graders to ask and answer questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Reports are flooding in that Kids subjected to these Common Core standards are shutting down, begging not to go to school every day. And they are in KINDERGARTEN!

Reports are also flooding in that kids subjected to these Common Core standards like school and are learning math. Or, at least, those are the reports at my house.

If you learn in a particular way, you will like the Common Core. If not, you are are deemed stupid and worthless.

If someone is deeming a child stupid, and worthless? That is a HUGE problem, but it has nothing to do with Common Core.

Again, read the blogs of parents whose children ARE struggling with Common Core. That is the takeaway message for these kids. That's how they feel, day after day, when they try to do work they don't understand.

[Anonymous]

OK, let me see if I understand.

Common Core standards are too hard. Also, Common Core standards are too easy. Also, schools in the US were great before the Common Core. Except that schools in the US are awful, and everybody else in the world has better schools. Where the standards are higher, even where they're the same as the Common Core, which is dumbed-down and too hard (now we're back where we started).

[Anonymous]

Common Core should have been phased in. The older kids in our elementary school are suffering but the K and 1st grade kids are having a much easier time.
The amount of work has greatly increased and my 3rd and 4th graders are bringing home 2-4 hours of homework each night. It's insane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Reports are flooding in that Kids subjected to these Common Core standards are shutting down, begging not to go to school every day. And they are in KINDERGARTEN!

Reports are also flooding in that kids subjected to these Common Core standards like school and are learning math. Or, at least, those are the reports at my house.

If you learn in a particular way, you will like the Common Core. If not, you are are deemed stupid and worthless.

If someone is deeming a child stupid, and worthless? That is a HUGE problem, but it has nothing to do with Common Core.

Again, read the blogs of parents whose children ARE struggling with Common Core. That is the takeaway message for these kids. That's how they feel, day after day, when they try to do work they don't understand.

I agree that they have a problem, but I don't see how you can blame it on Common Core. If these are kids in New York, apparently NY State has implemented a curriculum that is quite rigorous and ambitious, and also appears to be based on the Core Knowledge sequence. They have taken basic Common Core standards, and have added a great deal of Core Knowledge content. If teachers are making kids feel stupid, then teachers need to change. If the New York State Curriculum is too hard for these kids, or if they have learning disabilities that make the standards inappropriate, then those things need to be addressed.

But the Common Core objectives are actually pretty basic, and in my opinion, reasonable. I say this as a parent of 2 kids in Common Core schools, and as an ESOL teacher in elementary school. The Common Core objectives are not that difficult that most students shouldn't be able to reach the standards, just fine, with proper instruction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Common Core should have been phased in. The older kids in our elementary school are suffering but the K and 1st grade kids are having a much easier time.
The amount of work has greatly increased and my 3rd and 4th graders are bringing home 2-4 hours of homework each night. It's insane.

My kids had that, before Common Core.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Common Core should have been phased in. The older kids in our elementary school are suffering but the K and 1st grade kids are having a much easier time.
The amount of work has greatly increased and my 3rd and 4th graders are bringing home 2-4 hours of homework each night. It's insane.

My kids had that, before Common Core.

Never should a child that age have that much homework. It's inexcusable. Children are suffering because they aren't allowed to be children and they aren't free to run about for a couple of hours before dinner. There just isn't any time.

My kids come home, have a snack, work on homework for several hours, eat dinner, take a bath, go to bed, wake up, go to school, come home, have a snack...................... Well, they did until I cut them off at a certain amount of time so they could go out and live in the sunshine, ride their bikes, play basketball... I unlocked the key to childhood obesity and it involved less homework.

I can also say that I don't care that they will receive B's instead of A's on their report cards. There are more important things in life than grades. Creative thinking, conflict resolution, social skills, and the like which you can't teach in the classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK, let me see if I understand.

Common Core standards are too hard. Also, Common Core standards are too easy. Also, schools in the US were great before the Common Core. Except that schools in the US are awful, and everybody else in the world has better schools. Where the standards are higher, even where they're the same as the Common Core, which is dumbed-down and too hard (now we're back where we started).

Common Core has shoved 6th grade concepts down to 1st grade. It has also shoved down reading levels, so all of a sudden 4th graders need to read at 8th grade levels -- overnight. And if you were already a struggling reader, now you are 6 or 7 levels behind. You are not given a chance to read books at your level...instead, you are told to just read the "more rigorous" material over and over and over again, until you "take deep meaning" from it.

At the same time, because they are going "deeper" they are covering less, so kids won't even make it through Algebra 2 by high school. They are learning math in groups, so some kids are learning a lot, and others, not at all.

It's the latest educational fad, and I worry that it will be the end of public education as we know it in the U.S.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
If you have a language based learning disability or autism, being able to "ask and answer who, what, where, when, why" will likely be unobtainable in 2nd grade. They could do the work in another way, but because if forces discussion, they are immediate failures.

If a child has a disability, then they will need to have an IEP to help them access the grade level curriculum. They should not be deemed "failures" but if they are, they would have been anyhow, under the old state standards, which also required 2nd graders to ask and answer questions.

You obviously have no idea how difficult it is to get and keep an IEP. DS has 4 separate disabilities but only has a 504 because some of those disabilities can involve behavioral issues. That is until CC entered our lives. This kid doesn't do well with multiple steps and will often shut down when over instructed. It's not working out well for him and he is spending the majority of his days in the office doing nothing. We keep requesting an IEP, go through the testing, but have yet to receive one. This kid needs the IEP and an aid and I have no idea if he will ever get it. Most likely he will wind up repeating his current grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate to admit it but I'm confused by the first question and number 5 which is just like it.

I agree. I had no idea what they were getting at. Poor kids. What a stupid test.

Teacher here. This is the critique I find silly.

The kids are taught using this framework - they should know what it is asking. All question one is doing is presenting a whole and a known part and asking them to find a missing part. It is essentially a specific representation of the math problem 6 - 5 = ?

The idea is to develop algebraic thinking at earlier ages to help students develop a strong base in algebra so once they tackle higher level algebra they will be more experienced in the area.

The answer should me more intuitive. I was a math major in college and I could not figure that out.