You mean, like IXL? “Practice that feels like play”, according to my kids, is a huge lie. The “adaptive learning” that IXL does is actually a punishment done in Marine drill sergeant fashion, where one missed problem results in five more problems being added to your “practice”. My kids are given IXL work as a regular part of their homework. They have learned to stop working on it once they score above 70%, else program will “play” with them to the point of tears.
I haven’t heard that criticism. I’ve heard the opposite where the standards are too low. I’ve skimmed through the standards and nothing stuck out as odd, can you tell me any specific examples of this?
Also one other criticism I’ve seen is that the feds blah blah. While I too would like a smaller fed gov, from what I have read this has all be headed by state based orgs.
It is easy to confuse the “new math” with CC standards, so be careful. You can read the CC standards online and you will find there is practically no “new math” called out in the standards, unless it falls under a “and/or” type phrasing. That optional terminology alone should raise a red flag, however. Since when do standards get “and/or” treatment? It is either important or it isn’t.
But the “and/or” stuff and the “new math” are being tested in CC tests, which is where part of the problem lies. The CC proponents will say “the CC isn’t a curriculum” and that is true. But in practice, the curriculum maker is also the CC test maker, and so will be sure to include the “new math” stuff on their tests. See the conflict of interest?
I would have trouble using a program that puts a blatant lie on the top of the page. Bog standard homework questions are not fun or play. Anybody who tries to tell you differently is lying.
I tried out a couple of examples on their website to see if they’re even trying to make it “fun”, but nope, it’s just plain old questions delivered interrogation style. Pretty much the opposite of fun.
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Sounds like they learned a valuable lesson, just not the intended one.
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Exactly this. I am unfortunately familiar with TQM and several variants of it that have come down the pike and have refrained from making the comparison to CC simply because I did not think many would relate. And recall that TQM is a cycle,“Plan, Do, Check, Act”. Even if CC standards weren’t a crock, (why doesn’t it comply with even the basic ANSI requirements for standards?) the last half of the TQM cycle is missing. After analysis, who decides what actions to take and what provision is there for modifying the standards based on the test results? None of that is spelled out.
This and this go hand in hand. The common factor is a moral one. Greed, at the expense of a better all-around experience for people. Treating life as a juvenile game of “I win because I have the most monies!” But it usually goes in cycles, and eventually there’s a movement against those values. It’s just… these days it seems like the resistance movements can’t get enough power together to effect a significant counterbalance to the money-grubbing holders of influence at the top.
Do any parent’s have real experience with the “new math” parts of common core
You just reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA&feature=kp
I LOVE this song. It’s funny that this is from the 60s and it’s 2014 and still having new math issues
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I am very suspicious of any criticism along these lines that does not allow that
A. There are a lot of really terrible teachers out there. Many have good intentions and are just bad at what they do. But there is a huge block of crappy teachers and pretending they don’t exist when we talk about this issue is a red flag.
B. Teachers are not currently being held responsible for students’ learning outcomes, and that does have effects.
To B: in a college prep, pre-AP equivalent chemistry course, I was once trying to help the kid next to me when I discovered that he didn’t know how to divide fractions. If you make 70% an okay target, teachers want to make it possible for struggling students to meet that–not least because holding a student back would be one of the few things that might invite criticism of their role in the kid’s failure–so padding and busy work allow a Good Student to make up the difference in their grade even if they only get maybe half of the material. My chemistry compatriot had, faced with this gap in his knowledge compounded over the years, become ever more diligent about showing work and turning in something in order to compensate for not knowing what he was doing. Every teacher who touched him shrugged and passed him along, no one responsible for the real and troubling deficits in his skills. It was someone else’s problem before the beginning of the year and it’ll be someone else’s problem after the end. I’m not saying that any specific reform proposal would fix this situation, but people point to the negative effects of reforms like there aren’t inherent downsides to the specific structures we have today.
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I don’t know if this is a country-wide thing, but I live in Illinois and my wife was talking about some of the changes they’re going through.
For one thing, she has to teach math and English as part of her classroom curriculum.
She’s a music teacher.
The PE teacher has to do the same thing.
During budget crises–and oh boy, are we ever in one–people like my wife are the first to go. I have to wonder: if the arts teachers are teaching math and English, why the hell do we have math and English teachers?
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This. If you don’t fit in with the mass production society, you are demonized and marginalized. You are told you need to conform (which of course, in today’s society, has a number of ways to seem non-conformist while reinforcing conformity…) or your out. This starts with education of children. The social world in schools, which consistently brutalize young children (bullying) into social boxes, is approved and encouraged by the adults in charge of our children. It’s fucking depressing.
Your brother should go work in a Montessori school or in some other school that focuses on education rather than rote learning. Administrators, I think, work best when they act as advocates for students and teachers, and there is a big emphasis on this in Montessori (or many of the other alternative approaches to education)… But whatever he does, good for him for caring… too many people just don’t.
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To teach art and PE. Duh.
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My impressions of the complaints result in two generalizations:
- common core replaces boring math facts drills with boring math concept drills
- common core introduces topics of advanced math super-early because dumb kids have trouble with the hard topics later. But this will fail because dumb kids wont learn stuff better if you start them earlier
Lemma: Kids have trouble retaining anything they learn in math anyway. unless they are pretty bright.
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Testing, in general, is fine and can be useful. Test scores, when used properly, can help individual teachers to improve, and can help a school improve its programs.
The problem with the standardized testing, is that the results are used to determine school performance and even individual teacher performance. They may even be used to determine school funding, but I am not sure on that point. The problem with this is teachers and schools might start “teaching to the test”, rather than giving the students a well-balanced education, in order to boost their performance indicators (i.e. test results). The fact that teachers are saying these tests are no good (and I trust their judgement, as they are the front line), means the education of these children is going to suffer.
I agree with the idea of having standards, like the Common core, and a way to measure performance. this form of testing, however, does not seem to be an appropriate measure.
Oh yes, believe me, they have learned to be highly cynical of the school system. I do not imagine any of my kids will be proponents of public education when they grow up.
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Ultimately, every student is a collaborative effort from all of the teachers (and parents) from kindergarten till they graduate. Asking one particular teacher in the middle to be a miracle worker and bring an otherwise neglected student up to full speed is unfair, but never holding anyone accountable anywhere is also unfair to the student.
So we’re stuck in the system we have now, where students fail and where people who didn’t really have a chance are held accountable. If you can think of a better way I would love to hear it, knowing that there are in fact bad teachers out there that are underserving their students, and that environmental factors (bad parents! gangs!) will never be under control of the school system.
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I see the commonality as federal government incompetence. In the CC case, the hurried implementation of CC as a means to put TARP money in the hands of Big Data corporations, and in Net Neutrality, the lumbering bureaucracy of the FCC, unable to define itself as anything but an extension of Big Media’s lobbying efforts. Go ahead and blame Greed, but understand greed alone doesn’t get this kind of crap. It is greed with the power of government to back it that really raises the shit-level above our chins.
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Common core curriculum and standardized tests should be bad except that the bar is set so low already, the fact that children are failing to even achieve these standards should be cause for alarm.
“Number sentence” strikes me as odd, but your explanation elides two distinct ideas.
Here’s how I understand expression and equation.
Expression: x+y
Equation: x+y =z
Just as a sentence is more than a phrase, an equation is more than an expression. Referring to both expressions and equations as “number sentences” is akin to calling “The Watcher at the Threshold” a complete sentence.
edited…
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What do you mean by “terrible”? How many teachers have you seen in action? Do you go to class rooms, and sit and watch them? Do you have stats to back it up? Other than standardized test grades, which have a whole host of problems on their own? You, yourself, are making a broad sweeping statements about teachers, which may or may not conform to reality.
Are there bad teachers? Sure! But you do realize that in many cases, that these are overworked, incredibly underpaid people, who often are punished for trying to help students. You do realize that bad teachers are often seen as preferable to those who care, and are willing to go to bat for these kids. They don’t want people to go to bat for them, because then the administrators and private corporations won’t have an excuse to change the educational system in a way that benefits them.
I teach ONE class a semester, I have 40 or so kids (usually college freshman). And I have far more latitude in regards to what I can teach. I’m 37 years old. And I find it overwhelming at times, especially given that at least some of the kids coming into the class have been seriously underserved. How the hell do you think a young man or woman, 24 or 25, just coming out of college, having to teach to a test rather than actually educate kids, with an 8 hour work day, plus hours at home of planning each week, with no real chance for a raise or for recognition for the important role they play in society, no ability to make any sort of positive change, constant narrative that demonizes them as the bad guy in this problem etc. Imagine going to work everyday with that reality.
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