The assumption here is that the current method relies only on rote memorization of facts. That is not the case.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Does not bide well for the future of this country that so many are in favor of mediocrity because what kids in other countries is just too hard for our snowflakes.

No. The standards are taking away from what makes our snowflakes great. The standards will not improve our education. They will create robots who are taught how to think and what to think.

CCSS.Math.Content.3.NF.A.2
Understand a fraction as a number on the number line; represent fractions on a number line diagram.

will turn your child into a robot?

Rote memorization actually would turn the kids into robots. All the "explain your thinking" does the opposite. It may not be appropriate for younger kids, but it certainly is the opposite of turning them into robots. Quite the opposite - it really forces the child to think about how the child got the answer.

They are teaching young kids how to add in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots; it is teaching them that there are many ways to get a different answer. This helps the kids think in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots.

This fear of memorizing some bits of information is nonsense. We were taught to memorize basic math facts like times tables and that has been hugely useful throughout life in all kinds of mental math situations that I deal with on an everyday basis at work and elsewhere. Likewise, memorizing key formulae and other information has been a massive time saver for me throughout the years, and hardly made me a "robot" - if anything it allowed me to be both more creative and pragmatic, as I can more easily build up on and expand on foundational knowledge and take it further than someone who didn't. It's frankly kind of sad to see so many kids these days who can't do basic mental math, who are lost without a calculator.

I don't know what kinds of kids you are seeing, but my kids can do mental math without a calculator. They are 6 and 9. My 6 yr old uses the base 10 method of adding/subtracting to do mental math. This was taught in school, and reinforced at home, and this is how I do mental math, too.

I think only memorizing formulas is a terrible way of teaching. I can do integrals still, but I can't tell you why it's done the way it is because the teachers never emphasized the "whys" only the "hows". That really doesn't help a person understand math and how to apply it to real world concepts.

A math teacher laments the rote memorization techniques.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/02/12/why-falling-behind-math/WQ34ITFotp30EPF9knjqnJ/story.html

For practical purposes, there's a difference between drilling through the whole deep dive into why versus just trying to quickly figure out a problem. Not all of us are Isaac Newton, who had to invent Calculus, and neither should we have to, when we just have a basic problem to solve. "SOH CAH TOA" - fastest way to solve a triangle, ever. Yes, certainly an explanation of how the relationships of angles and sides in a triangle work is important to teach, but once you are beyond that, memorization is hugely more pragmatic. There's a balance to be had, but not memorizing anything at all and instead relying on people to derive everything from scratch is certainly not pragmatic - but just the same, I don't think there's any reasonable expectation for people to memorize absolutely EVERYTHING and nobody here has proposed that.

Anonymous wrote:

in fact, Common Core standards are not all that different from what most schools with established standards already had in place for years.

Something must be different or people wouldn't be noticing. It's about the standards. People who post on here may be more partisan than most. Most parents in America are not that ideological. They are very pragmatic, especially when it comes to their kids. There are a few outliers. The states that are pulling out are not doing it for ideological reasons. The changes are impractical for them right now, especially based on their budgets. People just don't see how it's all worth the money. And five states never took it on (thankfully one is Virginia).

The vast majority of people "noticing" that something is wrong are only just now catching on to the fact that schools have for years been teaching garbage - weak phonics programs and overemphasis on sight words, resulting in poor reading skills, no mastery of math facts and key math algorithms, overreliance on calculators and an aversion to having students do meaningful homework to reinforce what they've learned - and then they point to "fuzzy math" problems on a worksheet (not realizing it's copyrighted 2004, long before Common Core), noticing that their 7th grader is struggling with math and other things, and they are then blaming Common Core, as though Common Core was the cause of all of these problems which in fact go back decades. What they think they are noticing is merely them being slow on the uptake.

That, and yes, the ideological reasons - opposition to Common Core because they think it's an Obama thing (when in fact it was a States initiative) and NCLB because they think it's an Obama thing (when in fact it was a Bush initiative) - but damn that Kenyan born communist Muslin, we'll show him!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Does not bide well for the future of this country that so many are in favor of mediocrity because what kids in other countries is just too hard for our snowflakes.

No. The standards are taking away from what makes our snowflakes great. The standards will not improve our education. They will create robots who are taught how to think and what to think.

CCSS.Math.Content.3.NF.A.2
Understand a fraction as a number on the number line; represent fractions on a number line diagram.

will turn your child into a robot?

Rote memorization actually would turn the kids into robots. All the "explain your thinking" does the opposite. It may not be appropriate for younger kids, but it certainly is the opposite of turning them into robots. Quite the opposite - it really forces the child to think about how the child got the answer.

They are teaching young kids how to add in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots; it is teaching them that there are many ways to get a different answer. This helps the kids think in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots.

This fear of memorizing some bits of information is nonsense. We were taught to memorize basic math facts like times tables and that has been hugely useful throughout life in all kinds of mental math situations that I deal with on an everyday basis at work and elsewhere. Likewise, memorizing key formulae and other information has been a massive time saver for me throughout the years, and hardly made me a "robot" - if anything it allowed me to be both more creative and pragmatic, as I can more easily build up on and expand on foundational knowledge and take it further than someone who didn't. It's frankly kind of sad to see so many kids these days who can't do basic mental math, who are lost without a calculator.

I don't know what kinds of kids you are seeing, but my kids can do mental math without a calculator. They are 6 and 9. My 6 yr old uses the base 10 method of adding/subtracting to do mental math. This was taught in school, and reinforced at home, and this is how I do mental math, too.

I think only memorizing formulas is a terrible way of teaching. I can do integrals still, but I can't tell you why it's done the way it is because the teachers never emphasized the "whys" only the "hows". That really doesn't help a person understand math and how to apply it to real world concepts.

A math teacher laments the rote memorization techniques.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/02/12/why-falling-behind-math/WQ34ITFotp30EPF9knjqnJ/story.html

Anonymous wrote:

Rote memorization actually would turn the kids into robots. All the "explain your thinking" does the opposite. It may not be appropriate for younger kids, but it certainly is the opposite of turning them into robots. Quite the opposite - it really forces the child to think about how the child got the answer.

They are teaching young kids how to add in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots; it is teaching them that there are many ways to get a different answer. This helps the kids think in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots.

This all sounds nice, but it actually slows down kids who already understand and can go faster and get through more material. Some people are wired very logically and find this kind of curriculum to be stifling (they "get it" right away). For others it is too advanced (those not wired for this kind of logic or those not at that cognitive stage). The teacher has to try to deal with all of these groups in one room and also has the pressure of a standardized test to measure everyone---and there is pressure coming down from the top. Meanwhile parents are complaining On top of all that, this is all new curriculum to the teacher. Who do you think will get the most attention and who will be left behind? There, at the very least, needs to be a moratorium on the testing until the teacher gets used to this (because the pressure is driving people crazy). Teaching is very hard even without changes like this.

That doesn't make sense. CC isn't "stifling" - it's a MINIMUM standard. Teachers and school districts have the freedom and flexibility to go beyond it however they like, teach it however they like, et cetera. The only thing CC cares about at the end of the day are the specific objective measures in each standard, like whether a student can multiply two single digit numbers and come up with the correct answer. And the vast majority of it is not all that new or different from what most school districts have already been doing for years.

Seems to me that it's more just the idea of "change" itself that is threatening, regardless of how small that change may actually be.

Opposition to Common Core is a Koch Brothers-funded right-wing effort to keep Americans dumb and stupid by undermining public education in this country.

It's sad that a few well-meaning but incredibly gullible liberals jumped on the bandwagon of something they really didn't understand.

Anonymous wrote:

This fear of memorizing some bits of information is nonsense. We were taught to memorize basic math facts like times tables and that has been hugely useful throughout life in all kinds of mental math situations that I deal with on an everyday basis at work and elsewhere. Likewise, memorizing key formulae and other information has been a massive time saver for me throughout the years, and hardly made me a "robot" - if anything it allowed me to be both more creative and pragmatic, as I can more easily build up on and expand on foundational knowledge and take it further than someone who didn't. It's frankly kind of sad to see so many kids these days who can't do basic mental math, who are lost without a calculator.

The Common Core math standards explicitly include memorizing basic math facts.

CCSS.Math.Content.2.OA.B.2
Fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies.2 By end of Grade 2, know from memory all sums of two one-digit numbers.

CCSS.Math.Content.3.OA.C.7
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.

Anonymous wrote:

This all sounds nice, but it actually slows down kids who already understand and can go faster and get through more material. Some people are wired very logically and find this kind of curriculum to be stifling (they "get it" right away). For others it is too advanced (those not wired for this kind of logic or those not at that cognitive stage). The teacher has to try to deal with all of these groups in one room and also has the pressure of a standardized test to measure everyone---and there is pressure coming down from the top. Meanwhile parents are complaining On top of all that, this is all new curriculum to the teacher. Who do you think will get the most attention and who will be left behind? There, at the very least, needs to be a moratorium on the testing until the teacher gets used to this (because the pressure is driving people crazy). Teaching is very hard even without changes like this.

Exactly. And, besides that, "explain" is not enough for these standards. It must be "explained" in the way outlined by Common Core.

It can be "explained" in various ways. I posted in response to the statement that CC standards were turning kids into robots. How is the previous method of teaching math by rote teaching our kids to be more creative than CC standards?

The previous post doesn't address that statement, but only talks about how some kids are more advanced and should be allowed to do more than what the CC standards are allowing. This issue is not due to CC standards but rather a school or teacher's unwillingness to go far beyond what the rest of the class is doing. There is nothing in the standards that dictate that kids cannot do more than what the standards indicate. The standards are just that... a baseline, benchmark. You are confusing the issue of "turning our kids into robots" and "CC standards stifle some kids who can do more", which again, is not due to the standards, but what the teacher/school is allowing. You can argue that this isn't being done because the teacher/school is more focused on getting the rest of the kids up to those standards (which is probably true), but that would be the case regardless of CC standards. Any school district that had baseline standards had this issue due to all the NCLB testing.

Anonymous wrote:

Exactly. And, besides that, "explain" is not enough for these standards. It must be "explained" in the way outlined by Common Core.

CCSS.Math.Content.3.NBT.A.2
Fluently add and subtract within 1000 using strategies and algorithms based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction.

The Common Core standards seem to me to provide for a lot of different choices.

Or do you agree with Bobby Jindal, who was proud of his seven-year-old son for writing "Just because it is" as an explanation of how he got his answers on a test of addition and subtraction?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/la-gov-bobby-jindal-rails-against-common-core-state-standards/2015/02/05/456e2eda-acb0-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Does not bide well for the future of this country that so many are in favor of mediocrity because what kids in other countries is just too hard for our snowflakes.

No. The standards are taking away from what makes our snowflakes great. The standards will not improve our education. They will create robots who are taught how to think and what to think.

CCSS.Math.Content.3.NF.A.2
Understand a fraction as a number on the number line; represent fractions on a number line diagram.

will turn your child into a robot?

Rote memorization actually would turn the kids into robots. All the "explain your thinking" does the opposite. It may not be appropriate for younger kids, but it certainly is the opposite of turning them into robots. Quite the opposite - it really forces the child to think about how the child got the answer.

They are teaching young kids how to add in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots; it is teaching them that there are many ways to get a different answer. This helps the kids think in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots.

This fear of memorizing some bits of information is nonsense. We were taught to memorize basic math facts like times tables and that has been hugely useful throughout life in all kinds of mental math situations that I deal with on an everyday basis at work and elsewhere. Likewise, memorizing key formulae and other information has been a massive time saver for me throughout the years, and hardly made me a "robot" - if anything it allowed me to be both more creative and pragmatic, as I can more easily build up on and expand on foundational knowledge and take it further than someone who didn't. It's frankly kind of sad to see so many kids these days who can't do basic mental math, who are lost without a calculator.

This all sounds nice, but it actually slows down kids who already understand and can go faster and get through more material. Some people are wired very logically and find this kind of curriculum to be stifling (they "get it" right away). For others it is too advanced (those not wired for this kind of logic or those not at that cognitive stage). The teacher has to try to deal with all of these groups in one room and also has the pressure of a standardized test to measure everyone---and there is pressure coming down from the top. Meanwhile parents are complaining On top of all that, this is all new curriculum to the teacher. Who do you think will get the most attention and who will be left behind? There, at the very least, needs to be a moratorium on the testing until the teacher gets used to this (because the pressure is driving people crazy). Teaching is very hard even without changes like this.

Exactly. And, besides that, "explain" is not enough for these standards. It must be "explained" in the way outlined by Common Core.

Rote memorization actually would turn the kids into robots. All the "explain your thinking" does the opposite. It may not be appropriate for younger kids, but it certainly is the opposite of turning them into robots. Quite the opposite - it really forces the child to think about how the child got the answer.

They are teaching young kids how to add in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots; it is teaching them that there are many ways to get a different answer. This helps the kids think in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots.

This all sounds nice, but it actually slows down kids who already understand and can go faster and get through more material. Some people are wired very logically and find this kind of curriculum to be stifling (they "get it" right away). For others it is too advanced (those not wired for this kind of logic or those not at that cognitive stage). The teacher has to try to deal with all of these groups in one room and also has the pressure of a standardized test to measure everyone---and there is pressure coming down from the top. Meanwhile parents are complaining On top of all that, this is all new curriculum to the teacher. Who do you think will get the most attention and who will be left behind? There, at the very least, needs to be a moratorium on the testing until the teacher gets used to this (because the pressure is driving people crazy). Teaching is very hard even without changes like this.

Embracing mediocrity is not patriotic. Who us going to invent bigger and better guns if HS graduates can barely read or do math? We won't be able to import them from China.

Don't worry. We have plenty of ability (through visas) to get these "gun maker" people here. We already have a lot of them here. The real problem is that they might not want to come because our schools have become crappy and our democracy is falling apart.

Another problem is that we are taking money away from research. That has nothing to do with CC. If you go into science and you can't get a job, what's the use?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Does not bide well for the future of this country that so many are in favor of mediocrity because what kids in other countries is just too hard for our snowflakes.

No. The standards are taking away from what makes our snowflakes great. The standards will not improve our education. They will create robots who are taught how to think and what to think.

CCSS.Math.Content.3.NF.A.2
Understand a fraction as a number on the number line; represent fractions on a number line diagram.

will turn your child into a robot?

Rote memorization actually would turn the kids into robots. All the "explain your thinking" does the opposite. It may not be appropriate for younger kids, but it certainly is the opposite of turning them into robots. Quite the opposite - it really forces the child to think about how the child got the answer.

They are teaching young kids how to add in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots; it is teaching them that there are many ways to get a different answer. This helps the kids think in different ways. Again, opposite of turning them into robots.

) Common Care WAS a grassroots effort. Doesn't get more Democratic than that.

Where are the protesters marching in favor of Common Core?