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In my experience, what Common Core is really doing is allowing (and giving cover for) teachers who don't know the subject they're teaching. They cheat, because
by candiodari 10y ago
In my experience, what Common Core is really doing is allowing (and giving cover for) teachers who don't know the subject they're teaching. They cheat, because the only alternative is to actually become decent and fast in the subjects themselves, and that requires more knowledge and work than they'll ever put in. My kids math teacher tried to defend for >20 minutes to me that you cannot ever differentiate an equation with matrices instead of numbers. Well ... I made sure my kids double check with me if something sounds odd, and I'm forcing them to go through khan academy exercises.
This is probably exactly what administrators want, though. Cheap teachers, and damn the consequences.
- throwaway729 10y ago> This is probably exactly what administrators want, though. Cheap teachers, and damn the consequences. Are you kidding? Administrators live or die on test scores, and the non-brain-dead ones realize that good teachers are the best way to get those test scores. They don't really have a choice, though -- they work with what they're given in tax money and in many states don't even have any autonomy in compensation (NEA). IMO the problem is way earlier in the pipeline, anyways. Even if administrators deeply cared about quality, they'd find a shallow pool. As a good rule of thumb, people who are good at mathematics don't become teachers. They become engineers or go into finance and consulting or write software. And it's all about pay and quality of work environment. I'd teach high school math in a heart beat if the working conditions were more reasonable and it paid even half as well as my other options.