When I was in elementary school and middle school my siblings and I would sit down at the kitchen table, after the dinner dishes had been cleared, to work on our nightly homework. Mom or dad would be in the kitchen with us cleaning up the dishes from dinner and were always able and ready to help us with our work, should we need it. I don't have much of a brain for numbers. I easily mix my numbers (similar to dyslexia), and my spacial and numerical reasoning is, I am sure, below standard levels. I vividly remember on several occasions sitting down and working some math problems with my dad who has an engineering degree from a reputable state university. No matter how many different ways he would try to explain how to do a problem to me, I wouldn't get it. And, because I was being taught by my teachers the latest and greatest "method" of doing math, he didn't understand the way I was taught. This resulted in, on more than one occasion, his yelling, my crying, and at least once a pencil being stabbed through a single subject notebook and making a lead mark on the wooden kitchen table. It was ugly.
The frustration was born out of his knowledge of how he was taught how to do math, and my knowledge of how I was learning to do math. And the fact that they were not the same. Let me clarify, the methods were not the same, however, the mathematics were the same.
As an educator, and as a person with friends who have children of elementary school age, I frequently hear "I hate the Common Core" and "Common Core math is so confusing." And really, what I think they're talking about in this moment isn't the Common Core State Standards, but rather the tool that their school district has adopted to best implement the Common Core.
I would venture to guess that most of the people who complain about the Common Core have never actually looked at the documents. Shocking, I know. I'm sure that many of them have relied on getting their information from biased news articles, upset neighbors and family members, and my favorite of all, social media. If only there was some way that the average American parent could access these documents, because certainly they're not widely available. Oh wait, yes they are.
And this right here is what I hate about the Common Core. The lack of understanding on the part of the public, and their seeming insistence on not educating themselves on the matter.
Because if the public did educate themselves on the Common Core, they would know that they are a set of standards. The Common Core State Standards aren't redefining math or reading or writing. They're redefining the standards our students need to reach to. And yes, they are more challenging.
I can only speak about my knowledge of the English Language Arts standards, for these are the standards I know quite intimately, as I took some graduate level courses pertaining to the standards. I am also being held accountable for helping my students reach these standards.
To me, the English Language Arts standards are smart, realistic, and relevant to today's kids. I am sure that the Math standards are very similar.
So here's my suggestion: read.the.standards. Read the standards for the grade your kid is in, plus the grade band up and below theirs. These standards build on one another. And here's another suggestion: understand what a standard is. A standard is a goal, an end result, not the way of doing something.
When you're frustrated helping your kid do their math homework, instead of complaining to them that "Common core math is hard," (oh my goodness, I pray you are not saying this to any child within earshot) try learning the way they are learning to do math. (That 10s system is WAY intuitive, and I wish I had been taught that method when I was in school).
When we tell our kids that the math their doing is too hard this is so terrifyingly damaging to them. In the kid's brain, if their parent, who they idolize, can't do or understand the math, how in the heck are their little 3rd grade minds supposed to get it? And they shut down.
Another misconception is that Common Core = a test. This is not the case. A few tests have been developed to assess how well your student has learned these standards. PARCC is the test that Ohio has adopted. It's certainly a different beast when it comes to the English portion. They're asking questions in ways that kids aren't used to answering. Each question has two parts, the first is along the lines of something like "what is the theme of this story." And the second is "which line shows this theme." You know, making a student "show their work" so to speak. Not a bad thing. In fact, it's a good thing. But, if you get the first answer wrong you will automatically get the second answer wrong. Tricky tricky!
Please don't be mad at your student's teacher. They're only doing their job of implementing these standards, which are not, in my opinion, terrible, awful, and horrible. Instead, allow me to offer some places for you to direct your misdirected frustration.
Instead of being mad at the Common Core, be mad at:
1. Politicians. People who have never been in a classroom before are making decisions about what your kids should know, and by when. Might I suggest, that instead of voting down a party line in November, research your candidates to see who supports education. And by supports education I mean doesn't want to test the crap out of your kid.
2. Pearson. Who the heck is Pearson, you ask? If you're outside of education you might not have heard of them, but you should be aware of this company. Pearson is more or less taking over education. The majority of my textbooks for graduate school have been published by Pearson. The materials I've read about the Common Core? Yep, published by Pearson. The online grade book my district uses? Pearson. Oh, and that PARCC test I was talking about above? Pearson again. I recently read an article about a student getting a basic math problem wrong on a unit test. This unit and its test was prepared by Pearson. The parent wrote to the teacher and asked why the daughter got the problem wrong. And the reason? It was because Pearson marked down the wrong answer in the answer key. And this is a test that teachers, students, and parents could look over. The PARCC test your kid has to take at the end of the year? Pearson isn't letting anyone see that test before or after your kid takes it. So there's no way of knowing if Pearson didn't get the answers right on its own test, you know, when it really counts.
3. The Implementation. In an ideal world, if someone had been using their noggin, the Common Core would have rolled out gradually. Something like, this year's kindergarteners would be the first group to be under the Common Core. And then the next year's kindergartners and first graders would work under them, and so on. So by the time they get to me in 10th grade they've built upon their knowledge and are good to go. Not the case. My 10th graders are being held responsible for standards that are, at this point, much more rigorous than what they are accustomed to, due to the fact that the Common Core is meant to be built upon. If you look at the kindergarten standards and the 10th grade standards, each strand builds upon itself as the grades go by. It is frustrating and unfair to hold kids accountable for something that they're seeing for the first time, when really the standard is meant to be enhanced over a period of time.
So there. I hope that was helpful. As a refresher: Common Core are standards. They are NOT a method of doing Math or English and they are NOT a test. They're actually not that bad. Google 'em. Look at the actual document. And go forth and freakout not!
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