I am not convinced quite yet we suck at math because I regard test results, particularly competitive international ones, with suspicion.
The actual objectors to CC, not to be confused with people bitching about it, have-- you know-- actual reasoning for doing so, and we are not ignorant.
Objecting without understanding is ignorant, which is what I said. What are your reasons for objecting? The only objections I've come across are that parents don't understand or that the way we learned is just fine and there is no need for change or improvement. I would be interested to hear well reasoned arguments against.
I meet many adults who have difficulty with even very basic math, so I don't have trouble believing that we do poorly compared to other countries.
I take it you have never read my many threads on Common Core, then. Alas. I had my all old posts deleted when Megan Heimer entered GBCN because I feared the fundie influx.
Common Core has filthy corporate fingerprints all over it. Achieve, Inc. was commissioned to write the standards. Achieve was founded by business leaders and is allied with the Fordham Institute (conservative) and National Alliance of Business. It furthers corporate interests. Who stands to gain when schools are labeled as failing? Businesses. Moreover, Bill Gates was the underwriter. He is a huge proponent of charter schools and education "reform" as well as a corporate maestro. Corporatizing education is a conflict of interests because it gets away from the purpose of education does not serve student interests and results in a conflict of interests wherein schools become extensions of the corporate world and a source of profit rather than public good. Unions were not represented because they got grants for CC teacher training if they would not be part of the CC discussion.
Common Core is not developmentally appropriate. Over 500 early childhood and ECE professionals sent a joint letter calling on the NGA and the CC officials to suspend the K-3 standards, which they felt were out of line. Among the the committees who wrote and reviewed the standards, none were either K-3 teachers nor early childhood experts. The lexile bands (readability of texts) for Common Core are unreasonably high. Example: grades 11-12 call for 1185L–1385L which exceeds the difficulty of their textbooks.
Common Core eliminates Carnegie units. Those were invented to ensure a rounded and liberal education. Common Core calls for mastery and individualized pathways instead of pursuing a liberal education in many subjects.
Because of the above 2, Common Core has conflated college ready with career ready. It should be college OR career ready; they are not the same.
It presumes that low standards are the problem when in reality, there are many problems facing education, not the least of which are poverty and student apathy, be it because of family problems or assholery. Holding a kid who is thinking of killing himself to a higher standard is not going to improve his school performance. Holding minority kids to a higher standard is not going to automatically engage them in learning.
Common Core has been cheapened to nothing more than a test, and the tests are BULLSHIT. That is a whole separate thread that I don't have time for.
Objecting without understanding is ignorant, which is what I said. What are your reasons for objecting? The only objections I've come across are that parents don't understand or that the way we learned is just fine and there is no need for change or improvement. I would be interested to hear well reasoned arguments against.
I meet many adults who have difficulty with even very basic math, so I don't have trouble believing that we do poorly compared to other countries.
I take it you have never read my many threads on Common Core, then. Alas. I had my all old posts deleted when Megan Heimer entered GBCN because I feared the fundie influx.
Common Core has filthy corporate fingerprints all over it. Achieve, Inc. was commissioned to write the standards. Achieve was founded by business leaders and is allied with the Fordham Institute (conservative) and National Alliance of Business. It furthers corporate interests. Who stands to gain when schools are labeled as failing? Businesses. Moreover, Bill Gates was the underwriter. He is a huge proponent of charter schools and education "reform" as well as a corporate maestro. Corporatizing education is a conflict of interests because it gets away from the purpose of education does not serve student interests and results in a conflict of interests wherein schools become extensions of the corporate world and a source of profit rather than public good. Unions were not represented because they got grants for CC teacher training if they would not be part of the CC discussion.
Common Core is not developmentally appropriate. Over 500 early childhood and ECE professionals sent a joint letter calling on the NGA and the CC officials to suspend the K-3 standards, which they felt were out of line. Among the the committees who wrote and reviewed the standards, none were either K-3 teachers nor early childhood experts. The lexile bands (readability of texts) for Common Core are unreasonably high. Example: grades 11-12 call for 1185L–1385L which exceeds the difficulty of their textbooks.
Common Core eliminates Carnegie units. Those were invented to ensure a rounded and liberal education. Common Core calls for mastery and individualized pathways instead of pursuing a liberal education in many subjects.
Because of the above 2, Common Core has conflated college ready with career ready. It should be college OR career ready; they are not the same.
It presumes that low standards are the problem when in reality, there are many problems facing education, not the least of which are poverty and student apathy, be it because of family problems or assholery. Holding a kid who is thinking of killing himself to a higher standard is not going to improve his school performance. Holding minority kids to a higher standard is not going to automatically engage them in learning.
Common Core has been cheapened to nothing more than a test, and the tests are BULLSHIT. That is a whole separate thread that I don't have time for.
I trust that suffices.
It does suffice. Thank you. It seems that you take issue with the whole of common core, standards and implementation not specifically the new style of math education.
The thing that these parents overlook is that eventually the simple algorithm is taught. It's not like new math is trying to do away with the time-tested quick way for getting a result. The whole point of this approach is trying to build computational fluency and an understanding of what you are actually doing when you write a math equation. The algorithm just comes a little bit later, when everyone hopefully has practiced with the concepts to understand what the algorithm is actually doing.
There are kids under the old system who will see the problem 10,000-600 and go about lining the numbers up on top of each other in the traditional "algorithm" and borrow 1s over and over and over again. That is a huge waste of time, and it shows that you don't have a great understanding of numbers if you do that instead of mentally working with 100s. What this new approach aims to do is help people grasp the underlying concepts better.
Okay, so I think I now understand the "taking away from one number to get the other number to ten" theory, but how do you use CC to solve 10,000-600 if both numbers are already multiples of 10?
As an engineering major in college and math lover, I'm actually sort of excited to learn this new way along with the kids.
You would drop two zeros (divide both by 100) to carry out the subraction, then add them back (multiply by 100) to get the final answer.
Nurse Cramer had stopped speaking to Nurse Duckett, her best friend, because of her liaison with Yossarian, but still went everywhere with Nurse Duckett since Nurse Duckett was her best friend....Nurse Cramer was prepared to begin talking to Nurse Duckett again if she repented and apologized.
Okay, so I think I now understand the "taking away from one number to get the other number to ten" theory, but how do you use CC to solve 10,000-600 if both numbers are already multiples of 10?
As an engineering major in college and math lover, I'm actually sort of excited to learn this new way along with the kids.
You would drop two zeros (divide both by 100) to carry out the subraction, then add them back (multiply by 100) to get the final answer.
The thing that these parents overlook is that eventually the simple algorithm is taught. It's not like new math is trying to do away with the time-tested quick way for getting a result. The whole point of this approach is trying to build computational fluency and an understanding of what you are actually doing when you write a math equation. The algorithm just comes a little bit later, when everyone hopefully has practiced with the concepts to understand what the algorithm is actually doing.
There are kids under the old system who will see the problem 10,000-600 and go about lining the numbers up on top of each other in the traditional "algorithm" and borrow 1s over and over and over again. That is a huge waste of time, and it shows that you don't have a great understanding of numbers if you do that instead of mentally working with 100s. What this new approach aims to do is help people grasp the underlying concepts better.
Okay, so I think I now understand the "taking away from one number to get the other number to ten" theory, but how do you use CC to solve 10,000-600 if both numbers are already multiples of 10?
As an engineering major in college and math lover, I'm actually sort of excited to learn this new way along with the kids.
There are probably different ways of showing 10,000-600, since students should realize they can solve in their head better than using the algorithm, and they might express their understanding differently on paper.
Drawing a quick number line is one method. Starting at 10,000 and then "jumping" back in increments of 500 and 100 or 6 100s (easy mental numbers to work with) until you land on the answer.
The number line (or some form of counting back in round numbers) is a lot closer to what most proficient math people probably do in their heads, as opposed to the algorithm. The alternative methods just give a better "picture" for the kids whose brains don't automatically go from algorithm to deep understanding of the concepts.
Okay, so I think I now understand the "taking away from one number to get the other number to ten" theory, but how do you use CC to solve 10,000-600 if both numbers are already multiples of 10?
As an engineering major in college and math lover, I'm actually sort of excited to learn this new way along with the kids.
You would drop two zeros (divide both by 100) to carry out the subraction, then add them back (multiply by 100) to get the final answer.
10,000-600 --> 100-6 = 94 --> 9400
Lol that makes sense. My first thought was add 400 to 600 to get 1000, then subtract 1000 from 10000 to get 9000, for a total of 400 plus 9000. It only took a second in my head, but I scrambled it writing it down.
All of this looks like the "mental math" I was taught as a kid. I learned traditional ways of carrying numbers, etc. for when you have paper and need to show your work and then ways of manipulating numbers to do it in your head. I didn't realize a lot of people didn't learn to move numbers around until I went to college.