Common core

[terra]

Maybe the problem is that most of the US is functionally retarded.

...Careful. You're beginning to sound like the rest of the world.

[baffled]

Oh, I meant to add: they send math worksheets home as homework, one "packet" a week of 2 or 3 worksheets. A lot of the homework questions are of the type, "use the Whatchamacallit Method to solve..." whatever. So the exercise isn't just to get an answer, but to use some particular method to show the answer. This makes sense to me. To make a Judo analogy: if we are working on ogoshi in class, and I throw my partner some other way; well it's nice that I got my partner down, but I can't be said to have done the assignment. I didn't show my teacher what we're supposed to be working on. Same thing with the math homework.

A lot of the complaints I see about Common Core on the internet & Facebook seem to fall into the category: "my kid got the right answer, but she didn't do it the way the teacher wanted her to, so fuck that teacher and fuck Common Core." I don't in general agree with that complaint category. I mean, I'm sure some specific teachers are being assholes, and some specific school districts are fucking up their curriculum. But in general, if your kid's math class is working on some particular method this week, then it makes sense to require the kid to practice and show THAT method. Part of math is teaching tools & methods. One teacher marking a kid down for not showing a particular tool or method, doesn't make Common Core bullshit.


BTW, there's also Common Core english / language arts. I never see any complaints about that. I'm not sure why the math triggers, and the english doesn't.

Common Core English doesn't trigger because it isn't nearly as drastic a change for most people compared to math. I mean, you can change the expectations, but spelling is spelling, and you can only teach essay writing and grammar so many ways. I think there's supposed to be more critical thinking, but that's something I think most people are in favor of.

I've actually spent a lot of time as a substitute teacher over the last 4+ years while working on some school stuff for myself and also to fill in when my normal work gets slow. I've accumulated well over 2,000 hours in the classroom with multiple extended assignments (always in a History/Government/English class, and never in math or science). I'm capable enough to hold down the fort at the high school level and have actually done a fair amount of instruction when I work for teachers I've known for a couple of years and count as friends. Those classes largely behave because the kids know me, I don't take their shit, and treat them well if they treat me well. Other classes are sometimes more along the lines of Lord of the Flies.

In a number of subjects, I can do a passable job as an instructor. Math is so-so at best for me and I'm useless in anything above Algebra II.

That background out there, here's what I see as the likely issues for folks who think Common Core is bullshit. Guessing most of the problems stem from one or two of the following:

1) You've got people who have been done with math for a decade or more who usually weren't that good at math to begin with. Their kid in 6th grade or whatever comes home needs help, and mom and dad haven't bothered to do any math aside from counting casino winnings or maybe balancing the checkbook.

They'll struggle for a while, then give up and help their kids do it the "old way" that worked for them. Then the kid's teacher tells them it's wrong because the method wasn't correct, and people throw a shit fit on Facebook because the answer is correct, but the wrong method was used.

Solution: Fuck if I know. The parents have basically been cut out here. If you're working 60+ hours, commuting 2 more hours per day and struggling to keep up, how much review can you do to keep up with a new approach to math? The district I work in is Title 1, and most parents can't afford a tutor, even if they wanted to.

2) You've got kids who weren't doing well in class through the first few years, and now they're learning a "new way to do math" on top of new and advancing material. Now, they're all turned around because they find the new way intimidating, just don't like math or a combination of the two.

Solution: I guess tutoring, after school help etc. Going to your teacher for more help is good, but most kids won't do it unless they're forced by an engaged parent. The math departments here do after school help 2 or 3 days per week for all classes. Not sure what turnout is like.

3) The parents aren't worth shit as actual parents, and the kid's struggling everywhere, with the most obvious problems showing up in math. Assuming a kid can read, he can make it for a while doing just enough to get by.

Not really the case in math.

Solution: ???? Feel free to insert a snide comment about requiring a test or a license exam to have a kid here if you'd like.

4) The teacher isn't worth shit. A really common complaint in every subject is that the kids haven't been prepared for the next level.

At least out here, kids can continue to advance a grade level whether they pass all their classes or not. If a kid doesn't want to, he doesn't have to do a thing in his classes, and there isn't much the school can do about it unless the parent asks for the kid to be held back.

You see this a lot with kids coming up from 8th grade into high school. Freshmen are challenging anyway, but it hasn't yet made sense to them that they won't graduate if they don't pass all of their core classes, at the minimum. At least Algebra 1, 4 years of English, 3 years of history/geography/econ/government, 1 year of biology and 1 of chemistry, and 2 years of PE. Can't remember the elective and language requirements for graduation from high school.

Solution: The more time I spend doing this the more I'm in favor of ending teacher tenure and using the money saved to reduce class sizes. It's way more complicated then just ending tenure and moving money around, but it's step 1.

Of course, giving teachers and administrators more power to hold kids back would help, but parents would rather their kid be a fucking idiot than embarrassed by having to repeat all or part of a grade level.

------------------------------------------------------

One more hot take:

1) Assuming Common Core was necessary and good, it probably would have been better to phase it in starting from a lower grade level. The kids from- just throwing shit around here- 4th or 5th grade and up have enough time under the old methods that changing things on them was bound to cause problems for them.

Would those kids have been shortchanged? Maybe, but nobody really knew whether or not Common Core would be better.

What I do know is that a lot of people aren't happy and it's cost a lot of money for those new books.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

What's wrong with looking at what the best educated countries in the world are doing, and then implementing that system here? See: Finland. My wife's a teacher, and all they talk about is how much Finland has improved their kids' results, and why can't we do something like that here.

Is it simply down to the diversity here that their system won't work? Or is it just the huge momentum built up in this current system being too great to change directions more than moving from one standardized testing method to the next? All we do is plug kids into the Matrix of standardized testing, borrow money to go to college to get a career to pump money up the chain.

[baffled]

I'd guess it has a lot to do with momentum of the current system.

Maybe diversity, too. On my phone, so that's all I've got at the moment.

[Turdacious]

What's wrong with looking at what the best educated countries in the world are doing, and then implementing that system here? See: Finland. My wife's a teacher, and all they talk about is how much Finland has improved their kids' results, and why can't we do something like that here.

Is it simply down to the diversity here that their system won't work? Or is it just the huge momentum built up in this current system being too great to change directions more than moving from one standardized testing method to the next? All we do is plug kids into the Matrix of standardized testing, borrow money to go to college to get a career to pump money up the chain.

For me the big question is how does Finland pay for and manage education. In the US, it's a combination of local, state, and federal money with management at each level-- and it's disjointed like crazy. IMHO whoever manages and measures it needs to pay for it, and we don't do that.

The transgender bathroom issue is case and point-- feds want to mandate it, but aren't ponying any extra money to pay for implementation or cover liability.

[JimZipCode]

2) You've got kids who weren't doing well in class through the first few years, and now they're learning a "new way to do math" on top of new and advancing material. Now, they're all turned around because they find the new way intimidating, just don't like math or a combination of the two.
......
1) Assuming Common Core was necessary and good, it probably would have been better to phase it in starting from a lower grade level. The kids from- just throwing shit around here- 4th or 5th grade and up have enough time under the old methods that changing things on them was bound to cause problems for them.

Yeah. The gang I'm talking about have all had it from kindergarten up, so no issues with switching mid-stream. These are the kids who I'm observing, who seem to be doing really well with it.

I don't have any big ideas for kids in 5th grade +.

[tough old man]

My girls are growing up with the new math and are learning at a faster rate than the kids a few years earlier did. My oldest progressed out of her grade level and the next already.

[baffled]

2) You've got kids who weren't doing well in class through the first few years, and now they're learning a "new way to do math" on top of new and advancing material. Now, they're all turned around because they find the new way intimidating, just don't like math or a combination of the two.
......
1) Assuming Common Core was necessary and good, it probably would have been better to phase it in starting from a lower grade level. The kids from- just throwing shit around here- 4th or 5th grade and up have enough time under the old methods that changing things on them was bound to cause problems for them.

Yeah. The gang I'm talking about have all had it from kindergarten up, so no issues with switching mid-stream. These are the kids who I'm observing, who seem to be doing really well with it.

I don't have any big ideas for kids in 5th grade +.

Interesting. Mind if I ask what the general socioeconomic status is with the group you've observed?

I live in a pretty nice town where the kids seem to be doing well based on what my neighbors say, but a few towns over where I work, the math scores aren't very at any level, from what I've heard and observed.

[JimZipCode]

Interesting. Mind if I ask what the general socioeconomic status is with the group you've observed?

Middle-class white kids with professional parents in a Baltimore-Washington-corridor county that has prided itself for over 30 years on having a great school system. Probably many parents chose to live here (or stay here) because of the school system. Thriving and engaged PTA. There's no curriculum used in America under which this cohort of kids wasn't going to have a pretty good educational outcome.

Still, I'm impressed with the math instruction, quality / content / organization. My second-grade son and several of his friends are going to knock out the 3rd grade standards in the next few weeks. It's not just because they're "advantaged" outside of school. The school is serving them well, too.

Interestingly, the specific elem school is a Title 1 school, serving a relatively high proportion of ESL families and FARM families, and over-populated with students (too much enrolment for the physical size of the school). The school system has turned it into a positive, using the extra funds for school-wide benefit. It seems to have worked out great for us. But we're not exactly PS 666 in the poorest part of the inner city.

[TerryB]

Oh, I meant to add: they send math worksheets home as homework, one "packet" a week of 2 or 3 worksheets. A lot of the homework questions are of the type, "use the Whatchamacallit Method to solve..." whatever. So the exercise isn't just to get an answer, but to use some particular method to show the answer. This makes sense to me. To make a Judo analogy: if we are working on ogoshi in class, and I throw my partner some other way; well it's nice that I got my partner down, but I can't be said to have done the assignment. I didn't show my teacher what we're supposed to be working on. Same thing with the math homework.

A lot of the complaints I see about Common Core on the internet & Facebook seem to fall into the category: "my kid got the right answer, but she didn't do it the way the teacher wanted her to, so fuck that teacher and fuck Common Core." I don't in general agree with that complaint category. I mean, I'm sure some specific teachers are being assholes, and some specific school districts are fucking up their curriculum. But in general, if your kid's math class is working on some particular method this week, then it makes sense to require the kid to practice and show THAT method. Part of math is teaching tools & methods. One teacher marking a kid down for not showing a particular tool or method, doesn't make Common Core bullshit.


BTW, there's also Common Core english / language arts. I never see any complaints about that. I'm not sure why the math triggers, and the english doesn't.

Common Core English doesn't trigger because it isn't nearly as drastic a change for most people compared to math. I mean, you can change the expectations, but spelling is spelling, and you can only teach essay writing and grammar so many ways. I think there's supposed to be more critical thinking, but that's something I think most people are in favor of.

I've actually spent a lot of time as a substitute teacher over the last 4+ years while working on some school stuff for myself and also to fill in when my normal work gets slow. I've accumulated well over 2,000 hours in the classroom with multiple extended assignments (always in a History/Government/English class, and never in math or science). I'm capable enough to hold down the fort at the high school level and have actually done a fair amount of instruction when I work for teachers I've known for a couple of years and count as friends. Those classes largely behave because the kids know me, I don't take their shit, and treat them well if they treat me well. Other classes are sometimes more along the lines of Lord of the Flies.

In a number of subjects, I can do a passable job as an instructor. Math is so-so at best for me and I'm useless in anything above Algebra II.

That background out there, here's what I see as the likely issues for folks who think Common Core is bullshit. Guessing most of the problems stem from one or two of the following:

1) You've got people who have been done with math for a decade or more who usually weren't that good at math to begin with. Their kid in 6th grade or whatever comes home needs help, and mom and dad haven't bothered to do any math aside from counting casino winnings or maybe balancing the checkbook.

They'll struggle for a while, then give up and help their kids do it the "old way" that worked for them. Then the kid's teacher tells them it's wrong because the method wasn't correct, and people throw a shit fit on Facebook because the answer is correct, but the wrong method was used.

Solution: Fuck if I know. The parents have basically been cut out here. If you're working 60+ hours, commuting 2 more hours per day and struggling to keep up, how much review can you do to keep up with a new approach to math? The district I work in is Title 1, and most parents can't afford a tutor, even if they wanted to.

2) You've got kids who weren't doing well in class through the first few years, and now they're learning a "new way to do math" on top of new and advancing material. Now, they're all turned around because they find the new way intimidating, just don't like math or a combination of the two.

Solution: I guess tutoring, after school help etc. Going to your teacher for more help is good, but most kids won't do it unless they're forced by an engaged parent. The math departments here do after school help 2 or 3 days per week for all classes. Not sure what turnout is like.

3) The parents aren't worth shit as actual parents, and the kid's struggling everywhere, with the most obvious problems showing up in math. Assuming a kid can read, he can make it for a while doing just enough to get by.

Not really the case in math.

Solution: ???? Feel free to insert a snide comment about requiring a test or a license exam to have a kid here if you'd like.

4) The teacher isn't worth shit. A really common complaint in every subject is that the kids haven't been prepared for the next level.

At least out here, kids can continue to advance a grade level whether they pass all their classes or not. If a kid doesn't want to, he doesn't have to do a thing in his classes, and there isn't much the school can do about it unless the parent asks for the kid to be held back.

You see this a lot with kids coming up from 8th grade into high school. Freshmen are challenging anyway, but it hasn't yet made sense to them that they won't graduate if they don't pass all of their core classes, at the minimum. At least Algebra 1, 4 years of English, 3 years of history/geography/econ/government, 1 year of biology and 1 of chemistry, and 2 years of PE. Can't remember the elective and language requirements for graduation from high school.

Solution: The more time I spend doing this the more I'm in favor of ending teacher tenure and using the money saved to reduce class sizes. It's way more complicated then just ending tenure and moving money around, but it's step 1.

Of course, giving teachers and administrators more power to hold kids back would help, but parents would rather their kid be a fucking idiot than embarrassed by having to repeat all or part of a grade level.

------------------------------------------------------

One more hot take:

1) Assuming Common Core was necessary and good, it probably would have been better to phase it in starting from a lower grade level. The kids from- just throwing shit around here- 4th or 5th grade and up have enough time under the old methods that changing things on them was bound to cause problems for them.

Would those kids have been shortchanged? Maybe, but nobody really knew whether or not Common Core would be better.

What I do know is that a lot of people aren't happy and it's cost a lot of money for those new books.

Normally I can't stand you, and you know this. But this was good work.

[TerryB]

What do I know about math? Nothing.

But it SEEMS like common core math helps the kids understand math concepts and relationships, not just memorize answers.

If that's true, I'm 100% behind it and I could see why mouthbreather parents struggle to adapt to it or understand it.