North Carolina continues to work its way through one of the most significant but least reported stories of the last year: the adoption of common core standards by states and school systems.
The common core is a set of guidelines written for both math and English by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Where adopted the common core standards will replace state standards and provide a common curriculum and a better means of comparing students across subject areas.
At least that’s what it says in the glossy documents. For parents who know little about the common core standards, there are many reasons to be concerned. Find out why you should be, here, here and here.
In an interesting article in a recent issue of Atlantic Magazine, Barry Garelick outlines why parents should be concerned about common core math standards.
Many of these standards require that students be able to explain why a particular procedure works. It’s not enough for a student to be able to divide one fraction by another. He or she must also “use the relationship between multiplication and division to explain that (2/3) ÷ (3/4) =8/9, because 3/4 or 8/9 is 2/3.”
It’s an odd pedagogical agenda, based on the belief that conceptual understanding must come before practical skills can be mastered. As this thinking goes, students must be able to explain the “why” of a procedure. Otherwise, solving a math problem becomes a “mere calculation” and the student is viewed as not having true understanding.
This approach not only complicates the simplest of math problems’ it also leads to delays. Under the Common Core Standards, students will not learn traditional methods of adding and subtracting double and tripled digit numbers until fourth grade. (Currently most schools teach these skills two years earlier). The standard method for two and three digit multiplication is delayed until fifth grade; the standard method for long division until sixth. In the meantime, the students learn alternative strategies that are far less efficient, but that presumably help the m “understand” the conceptual underpinnings.
I’m all for higher standards, but when the standards prove ineffective, come with strong arm tactics that threaten states the loss of federal dollars, lower existing state standards (Massachusetts) and result in less control over public education; the damage outweighs the benefit.
Think the problems are limited to math standards? This morning Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas outlined how common core standards will negatively impact literary study and analytical thinking.