Everything I’m reading about Common Core makes it sound like a great idea. See this, for instance:
Whether it is through tackling math problems or analyzing text, the Common Core encourages students to show evidence for their solutions and articulate how they think, with the overall goal of promoting more critical thinking at earlier ages.
Less multiple choice and more complete sentences? Sounds like a dream come true. I’ll be one happy camper if a new generation of students comes to my classroom and doesn’t look confused when I say that “Well, it’s just my opinion” is not good enough if “the opinion” is not supported by evidence.
Or this:
At a recent study group for teachers at P.S. 36 in the Bronx, Kathleen Rusiecki, who teaches first-grade special education, described one task in her curriculum: Draw a picture of the word nobody.
“It doesn’t even make sense,” she said.
OK, Ms. Rusiecki is an idiot, but most teachers aren’t. I did this activity with my students (before reading the article), and it was the only thing that helped them understand the use of subjunctive with negative expressions. For small kids, this is a brilliant activity.
The article says there is too much homework in Common Core but there are no examples, so I can’t opine. I’m opposed to any homework before the age of 10. And after that, there should only be the kind of homework that doesn’t require any online searches.
What do you think of the Common Core?
Clarissa's Blog 
One of the problems I’ve noticed is in math. Students are expected to explain in words exactly why their answer is correct. This can be a great tool for learning patterns and concepts like subtraction, or multiplication as repeated addition, or exponents as repeated multiplication. But the tool has limited use when it comes to something like, say, addition. When a student learning addition comes across the question “why does 6 + 1 = 7?” the answer seems simple and obvious: it just is. If you have six objects, and you take another object, you have seven objects. That’s a fact. At that level, that’s the only explanation available, and the Common Core states that it’s not really an acceptable explanation. This is true. There are rules to addition and counting that you could call upon to provide an actual explanation. But for many students, these rules aren’t actually explained until upper level college math courses, when they’re proving theorems that were previously described to them as axioms.
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But at least they are asked to speak and justify and not just guess, you know? This is a step in the right direction.
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I work with a seven and a ten year old, and they each need over an hour (often almost two hours to tcomplete their work each night, and that’s with help. Among my acquaintances, that seems not to be unusual. Since most people agree that the Common Core expands the curriculum, I would be shocked if homework did not increase.
I don’t love the Common Core much- I don’t think we’ll improve the education of children by mandating that students simply learn more. Actually, I think this is closely related to the ongoing devaluation and attempted automation of the teaching profession. Anybody, they think, can follow a checklist of criteria for passing the grade. But the real teachers I know, the ones with a good instinct for how kids learn,oming overwhelmed- not with how much they e must attempt to teach exactly, but for how dependent they have become on state approved curricula to get through it all. They don’t have much control over how they teach anymore. My uncle once told me that I was much too smart to think of being a teacher. What he meant was that teachers need only be mindless drones of course. And he was right about me being too smart, but that’s only because I am too smart to get waste my talents that way. Education Majors with a deeep interest in the most modern pedagogical trends (flipped classrooms, anybody?) seem to enjoy the Common Core quite a bit though. (Based on my own experiences and not on science)
Also, I’m sorry for any silly mistakes here. My phone just HATES commenting on Wr
WordPress for some reason
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“I don’t think we’ll improve the education of children by mandating that students simply learn more”
Yep.
“Actually, I think this is closely related to the ongoing devaluation and attempted automation of the teaching profession. Anybody, they think, can follow a checklist of criteria for passing the grade.”
Gold.
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Thank you, Elizabeth, this is very interesting.
” Actually, I think this is closely related to the ongoing devaluation and attempted automation of the teaching profession.”
– Yes, this is definitely an issue. But the knowledge and skill gap between people of different social classes is growing exponentially. This is an obviously flawed attempt to remedy that, but at least somebody trying.
Of course, if Common Core could be substituted in its entirety with the complete and utter prohibition of multiple choice and “projects”, that would be enough for me. 🙂
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Of course, I live in a very happy (pretend) place where teachers are driven by passion and treat their work professionally, so they can be trusted to decide what children must learn and how. This is obviously very, very realistic (sarcasm). (bonus: you can tell a person grows up working class when teaching is the absolute height of professional work)
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I think a lot of the resistance to common core is that IINM it’s designed to be introduced all at once so that currnet eight graders are expected to cope in 9th grade common core without preparation.
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I have not read the Common Core. However, I typically do not like things that attempt to standardize what pupils learn. This should properly vary from school to school and from teacher to teacher, within broad limits.
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“This should properly vary from school to school and from teacher to teacher, within broad limits.”
– That’s how it is right now. Depending on the school they attended, students demonstrate completely different levels of preparation. And I don’t think that’s right. If there is a state-issued high-school diploma, it should stand for something.
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But if Texas does not want to teach about Jefferson or Lincoln, say, then I don’t think other states should be, de facto by lack of time, prevented from teaching this history. And, in practice, Texas has a lot of power in setting cirricular standards.
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Here’s one: “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 of 8/9 is 2/3.'” In other words, the student must not only be able to do operations, but explain them at a meta-mathematical level. I’m sure I couldn’t answer that question, although I can divide fractions fine and am a pretty smart guy overall. Children who love math and are facile with it all of a sudden get frustrated with this kind of inane mind-reading exercise. Don’t be fooled by the appeal to go beyond rote memorization.
[Never mind, I got it now, but I think my point still stands.]
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I learned math this way in the era of new math and it is why I can do so much in my head. It also trained me for abstract thought in a way that I enjoy but that, of course, many find alien. The problem nowadays is that this seems to be combined with all these ideas about discipline, perfectionism, hard work, making standards, and general suffering … whereas for us, it was just how things were explained, some things that were shown us, not things we were tested on in a punitive way.
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The new math also brought forth howls of complaints and ridicule in the day. It was seen as a threat in the same way as teaching reading by whole word recognition, a threat to values and education. Ideas that sound really good on paper (“critical thinking”) can end up not working so well with real kids.
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For my tenure dossier, I’m expected to show that I take the students’ suggestions as to how my teaching can be improved to heart and modify what I do accordingly. But the biggest complaint I get is that I don’t use multiple choice. So I’m completely fixated on that and wish for nothing bigger than the complete disappearance of this evil form of testing. If the students are taught to reason and put their reasoning in words, that would be enormous.
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I’m really glad I got to learn math in this conceptual and abstract way, it was a beautiful experience esthetically and intellectually, and I am smarter in all subjects because of it. Of course the parental generation thought it was too hard. My brother learned in another way in Spain and had trouble switching to the new math; maybe it is more attractive to the mathematically inclined (maybe I am mathematically inclined).
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My kids go to a school that refuses to be licensed by the state because its Montessori practices are philosophically against standardized testing — as am I. In order to be state licensed, you have to submit to the state’s testing, and the board of directors won’t submit.The school is phenomenal, and focuses on a classical liberal arts education. My Eldest used to have an hour (or more) of homework in kindergarten when he was at public school. The Montessori school has no homework, and yet, he has learned an incredible amount. He has severe ADHD — to the point where we thought maybe he was autistic, but he’s been tested several times and no one thinks he is. He just has severe ADHD and an expressive language disorder. Anyway. At the public school, he was bullied, shamed by the teacher, and made to feel like an outcast. At this Montessori school, the teachers play to his strengths, and the kids are much more kind. He’s able to stand up and use his body instead of sitting at a desk for 8 hours. He manages his time better. He knows when he needs to take breaks, and self-disciplines about it.
Honestly, I wish every kid could have the experience that my sons are having. I wish every school could be small (there are under 50 kids total in the school). I wish every student could get lots of one-on-one attention with a passionate teacher. It’s very expensive for us to spend the money on this school, but having seen the alternative, especially with Eldest’s issues, I can’t ethically send him back unless there is absolutely no alternative financially. My only concern, though, is that I don’t know what we’ll do about high school. I’m hoping that his education at this school (which will go to 8th grade) will be good enough that he’ll be able to time-manage his way through high school and find it fairly simple. We’ll see… He just turned 8, so we have lots of time.
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Good luck with the radio ad. I hope you get several new people as a result. Montessori is a great system.
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If people understood maths, they would understand how conceptual nothing imposes no limitations and is thereby, in fact, “everything”.
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My kids, 8 and 10, are the Common Core guinea pigs this year. It doesn’t seem to be impacting my 10-yr old one way or another, but the math homework my 8-yr-old is getting is wretched. (And yes, I agree. No homework before age 10!) Trouble is, you make new standards, and then all of a sudden you need new curriculum, and somebody does it up in a hurry. It’s extremely boring. On the plus side, there seems to be a greater emphasis on math facts, which has been lacking. Also on the plus side, it’s nice to have something that parents can look at and understand what their children are supposed to be learning.
There’s also been a shift in my 8-yr-old’s literature classwork. I volunteered in the same classroom last year, and the teacher had the class doing honest-to-goodness literary analysis. I am most impressed. Now they are reading canned texts and doing various vocabulary exercises, with less critical thought.
Most concerning is the push to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores, which means more “teaching to the test” and less time available for more interesting homework.
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Thank you, Kristin, this is very interesting.
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I was googling around to see if I was the only one that thought Ms. Rusiecki was a complete moron and I found your blog. I agree with you that most the teachers are extraordinary professionals but the point here is Ms. Rusiecki’s opinion gets room in a very important and influential information and I feel it’s not qualified enough.
I’ve asked my four daughters to draw the word nobody. Alejandra, five, was very happy because she has nothing to do; then she drew a house, a garden with trees and mountains at the distance… but no people. Claudia, seven, did more or less the same and included a significant empty chair. Sofía, twelve, drew several sketches picturing the Moon, a graveyard, a sea abyss and a disturbing shadow without owner, while her twin, Irene, drew the scene of Homer’s Odyssey where Ulises, who has told Polipheme his name is “Nobody”, hides behind a sheep to escape the cyclops cave.
After reading the N.Y.Times report and some of the comments in your blog I understand USA is enduring a process similar to the one we suffer in Spain. Our politicians try to change our educational system every four years. In Spain we are still escaping from the no-effort learning which produced a whole generation of functional illiterates back at the early nineties. Taking this subject out of the political arena would help educators a lot.
Still, I think the Common Core is a very good idea as a whole. Nobody should be disturbed for the difficulties in its deployment or for the faulty results of some initial exams. What I feel is that principals don’t want to have complaining parents or lower scores at their schools. In the long run, everybody will benefit from a stronger curriculum. The rest of the world is already there and our children will compete for high tech jobs with all of them.
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