8 ms·

A ridiculous Common Core test for first graders

43 points by Steko 13y ago

BadCookie 13y ago
This test is so, so bad. If this is how I had been exposed to math when I was in the first grade, I hate to think how my life would have been different. (I have two degrees in mathematics.) I've heard stories of my first grader niece crying while trying to complete her daily homework. I'm starting to understand why.
- anaphor 13y ago
  I think grade school math curriculums are incredibly bad in most of the world, though. I know it's awful here in Ontario. Everything I learned about mathematics was from non-textbooks (e.g. Dover math books), lectures, papers and blog posts. School didn't teach me a thing. I think the only decent "textbook" I have is Concrete Mathematics, and that's not even close to most textbooks. It's probably been posted a million times before on here, but http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
  - revelation 13y ago
    Wonderful article, but one verdict turns out to be wrong: Translating from one base to another is an utterly useless thing. If you can do it, maybe it's entertaining; if you can't do it, forget it. There's no point to it.
    - anaphor 13y ago
      Well, it was written before writing things in octal or hex was common, I think, so you'll have to cut him some slack there.
    - jerf 13y ago
      Do not mistake "tradition" for "useful", and especially in the context of a math cirriculum. It is useless to learn it in school. For that fraction of a percent that goes on to not only program computers, but also routinely dabble in bit-bashing, let them take the time to learn it (and they'll probably only learn special cases anyhow). Don't jam it down everyone's throat, and pile on one more reason on the already voluminous pile of reasons to hate math and think it's useless. (A conclusion that our school system does its level best to make the rational conclusion based on the evidence!)
    - pmiller2 13y ago
      I'd say it's still a generally true statement. Other than base 2, 8, or 16, there isn't much use for translating from one base to another.
      - impendia 13y ago
        The purpose of working in number bases other than 10 is to reinforce the meaning of place value, and to implicitly teach students that the way we write numerals is (1) very logical and sensible, but (2) an accident of biology. What we should really do is make students add and multiply in Roman numerals. Quick, what's LXXVII x XLIV? Attempting that will make you appreciate decimal notation real quick.
    - mturmon 13y ago
      It's inevitable to link to this now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA It's Tom Lehrer, about 50 years ago, explaining subtraction in the context of the "new" math (the base-8 stuff starts at 2:40). Worth a listen.
  - NAFV_P 13y ago
    Dover maths books are good readin'. In Blackwells in Oxford (UK) there used to be a budget section with loads of old Dover books. I remember one about Fourier series that was translated from a Russian text.
Aloha 13y ago
oh god. I hate math, but I'm very very good at basic math, if I had had to learn like this, I cant see how I would have learned anything except that I didnt want to learn more.
- anaphor 13y ago
  The only thing I ever learned from math in high school was "I don't care why it's true, just give me the right answer" (the attitude of every single student other than myself).
aspensmonster 13y ago
>Take a look at question No. 1, which shows students five pennies, under which it says “part I know,” and then a full coffee cup labeled with a “6″ and, under it, the word, “Whole.” Students are asked to find “the missing part” from a list of four numbers. Wat. Edit: http://roundtheinkwell.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/the-math-test.pdf http://roundtheinkwell.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/the-math-... ; That's the actual test, apparently. I still think "Wat" is an appropriate response though.
- blueblob 13y ago
  This test was clearly written in a time in which a cup of coffee was $0.06. :-) In all seriousness it took me like 5 readings to figure out what was being asked for this question.
- rallison 13y ago
  Some of those questions are fine. Some of those questions I hope have some surrounding context. And some of them are pretty ridiculous. I went in expecting (hoping) to see some above grade level questions that simply let the really good students excel. I left disappointed. That said, thank you for the link to the actual test.
  - ktsmith 13y ago
    Some probably do have surrounding context and in the case of #3 the kids were probably provided with manipulatives so they could literally use cubes to solve the problem. The test is still terrible.
tptacek 13y ago
How much of this is the "backmapping" of 12th grade skills to 1st grade, and how much of it is simply incompetent test and exercise authorship?
- ktsmith 13y ago
  I showed the test to my wife who is a 2nd grade teacher in a school district implementing common core. She was appalled both at the grading and the test itself. Then I showed her that it was from Pearson and she exclaimed "That's your problem right there."
  - mturmon 13y ago
    Exactly. The concepts are appropriate (maybe not for this age though, I was unaware that NY first-graders could be only 5 in October), but the test is crap.
    - ktsmith 13y ago
      > I was unaware that NY first-graders could be only 5 in October That surprised me also. Here in Nevada the cut off is in September and so any child in first grade would be at least six years old by October. A month or two doesn't make a huge difference so perhaps their cutoff is in October or November.
colomon 13y ago
As the father of a five-year-old, two things puzzled me here: 1) "In the United States, students begin Grade 1 at the age of 5 or 6." Say what? In our part of Michigan, kids begin kindergarten at 5 or 6, leaning towards 6. 2) I see people here complaining about the math on the test, but what boggles me is the reading! Are beginning first graders really expected to be able to handle word problems? Maybe it's just been too long since I was there myself, but I thought we were just learning to read "See Spot run" at that point in school. For sure it seems like an insane amount of reading skill to ask of a five-year-old.
- ktsmith 13y ago
  > Are beginning first graders really expected to be able to handle word problems? My wife thought that the test might have been for second grade when she saw it (2nd grade teacher) but you are correct in thinking the language is not appropriate for beginning of first grade.
- anaphor 13y ago
  Good point, it does seem like a lot of reading. Personally I remember being able to read around that level in 1st grade, but I'm pretty sure I was a huge exception. I doubt most kids have reached a high enough level of reading ability to understand this crap. And I should point out that children to do not acquire the ability to read, it's a purely _learned skill_ so it's kind of like asking them to be extremely good at one thing in order to do something only tangentially related.
- GICodeWarrior 13y ago
  1) For the 2013-14 school year, NYS children need to be 5 by December. The exact date in December varies from city to city. So (for NYS at least) the kindergarten starting age is 4 or 5. 2) Yes, it is that intense. I am glad this is getting some publicity. It is especially rough for students with special needs who are often held to the same standards.
  - ktsmith 13y ago
    > It is especially rough for students with special needs who are often held to the same standards. This is an issue with the law. A student that is behind for any reason be it disability, language barrier, etc, that is in a mainstream classroom must be provided with grade level instruction and materials. If they have an individualized education plan (IEP) they'll also typically get individualized instruction from supplemental sources and/or their teachers. If they are just behind it's really up to the teacher to present the student with materials that they can handle and to find ways to help the kids close the gap. The best teachers will do this all the time, decent teachers will do it some, and crappy teachers won't do it at all. You can probably imagine that schools will be comprised of all three types. As far as grading and evaluation goes the teachers don't have a choice but to hold all the kids to the grade level standards, again due to the legal issues.
carsongross 13y ago
When I didn't have kids, I thought homeschooling was for nut jobs. Hi. I'm a nut job.
- noonespecial 13y ago
  I am also a nut job. The first thing people do when they learn this is ask me "oh, you're religious then?". I say no, the opposite. It would require religious faith at this point to believe that those schools could teach a kid anything at all.
- pcmonk 13y ago
  These kinds of things are exactly why I am so glad that my parents homeschooled me.
- tillinghast 13y ago
  Nut job here, too. Common core is terrifying. Glad it's getting some bad press.
  - ktsmith 13y ago
    Why is common core terrifying?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- Natsu 13y ago
  They're simply trying to get kids to use more abstract thought. The wording is strange, but there's nothing particularly mystifying about the answers. The abstractions are absurdly simple, but I'm not surprised that there are adults confused by this. I used to work for a factory and was constantly dismayed by how many adults are unable to read a tape measure.
  - anaphor 13y ago
    Don't you think they should understand the most concrete instances of it before they're made to understand abstractions? Don't you think they should understand it with marbles and sticks before they understand it with very abstract concepts like arithmetic operators?
    - Natsu 13y ago
      Actually, no. In this case, the link between numbers and objects and linking addition and subtraction to telling the "stories" of real activities is an important thing for them to know. Far better they realize that and see the importance, than that they memorize the one digit addition and subtraction tables but think them useless and forget them entirely during summer vacation.
  - greenyoda 13y ago
    I'm not sure whether most 5-6 year old kids even have brains that have developed sufficiently to deal with abstract thought.
    - Natsu 13y ago
      Never seen one imagine a cardboard box as a rocket ship, or such? That's simply abstract thought of another kind. To be honest, I feel more like rote schoolwork beats it out of them than the opposite, given how many children I've seen that are more capable than the adults, but that's a bit of a tangent. For the record, it's not actually that hard to teach younger kids advanced mathematics. Just turn it into a game. I managed to teach a ~10 year old about mutually tangent circles, after all. And I was certainly never bound by the imaginary limits of what kids were "supposed" to learn at a certain age. Roughly the first half of the "advanced" branches of math is giving funny names to things and learning a few tricks. Basic set theory, for example, would not be all that hard to teach to a young child, but most don't see any value in it. Anyhow, yes, that test is fairly confusingly worded (partly just from stupid and partly because we lack the context of the lessons). In particular, I agree that coins & coffee cups are a bridge too far, so they could certainly do better. But I guess people would rather WTF over the strange wording and downvote and such rather than consider whether little kids should be taught that there's more to addition than rote memorization of the addition tables? (For the record, yes, they should memorize the tables, too.) I found it quite simple to discern that they were taught to split the problems into the part they know and the whole thing, then look for the missing piece and turn the problems into "stories" connecting the numbers to real objects. Would everyone rather that kids learn that math is a bunch of boring number facts to memorize that have no (apparent) application to real life? Or is it the feeling that the way you were taught is plenty good and nobody should ever try to improve it, especially in a way that you don't understand? Or does this whole line of thinking simply make people uncomfortable and cause them to reject the thought entirely?
ghshephard 13y ago
Question 1 was bizarre. I'm not even sure what they were trying to ask. Question 2 "There are 8 Jars. 6 Jars have Jelly. The rest have peanut butter. How many Jars have Peanut Butter." The first thing that occurred to me is that we didn't specify the Jars with Jelly don't have peanut butter. Horrible question. Question 3,4 I can live with. Question 10 was greek. Question 11 - Once again, nothing states that the others aren't red as well. Reinforcing poor logical thinking. Question 12 "Related Subtraction Sentence?" No wonder these kids are crying. I couldn't read any further. This is how they are trying to teach kids math?
- seniorsassycat 13y ago
  I don't agree with your complaints about 2 or 11, assumptions are a part of everyday communication. Anyway, wouldn't the question would be unanswerable if some of the jelly jars could have peanut butter? We know the question is answerable, therefor no jelly jars can have peanut butter.
  - glenra 13y ago
    > Anyway, wouldn't the question would be unanswerable if some of the jelly jars could have peanut butter? No, the question is answerable but it's answerable with a range rather than a specific number. > We know the question is answerable How do we know that? Lots of real-world questions aren't answerable and even if the author meant this one to be, textbook authors are fallible. So I don't think that's a fair assumption. And yeah, I nitpicked exactly like that back when I was in grade school too. :-)
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    Could you accept that these assumption are frequently made incorrectly? Let us say I went shopping, and I know that I purchased eight jars of sandwich spread. I know that six of the jars had a mixed peanut butter/jelly stuff that you can squeeze out, and I remember the other two had peanut butter in a glass jar, but I can't remember if they were mixed or not, and I say, of those eight jars, "Six of the jars had jelly, the rest had peanut butter" - because that's all I was certain of - that somebody then inferring that the six jars did NOT have peanut butter, and that the other two jars did NOT have jelly -would be wrong in doing so? It's entirely possible that the question was poorly put together, and the answers provided were not sufficient to correctly answer the question. Test makers aren't all perfect beings - as clearly demonstrated by this test.
ryanhuff 13y ago
I have an 8 yo going through the common core transition now. What I would recommend parents do is teach the traditional fundamentals after school. Give your kid regular work. Its not worth being an experiment.
- ams6110 13y ago
  I'd recommend you send your kids to a school with a sane curriculum. The only thing these public school morons will understand is when they start losing students (and corresponding dollars that go along with that). The public school system here is up in arms about a quite limited voucher program, because their funding is based on the number of bodies in the classroom. So they see it as taking "their" money, rather than thinking "I wonder why those parents don't want their kids to go to our schools."
  - ryanhuff 13y ago
    That's a great idea, but with two kids in grade school, the local private schools would cost me about $30k per year. I would rather invest 15 minutes a day with augmenting what they are doing in the classroom. If you have the resources to go private, more power to you.
RougeFemme 13y ago
One of my favorite stories regarding an elementary level Standards of Learning (SOL) test in Virginia. . .Students are taught how to estimate relatively simple sums, difference, products and quotients in their heads. Students are required to select the "correct" estimate. One of the questions accidentally (I guess) included the actual answer among the choices. My son selected the actual answer rather than the "correct" estimate and it was marked wrong. OK, technically he didn't follow directions. . .the question asked for the estimate. But. . .really. . .you penalize a kid for calculating the correct answer and selecting that over the correct estimate??
- Zancarius 13y ago
  First, I should apologize for relating a personal anecdote, because it doesn't have anything to do with Common Core. It does provide something of a benchmark for the state of education 25-ish years ago, and it's troubling to me that we're continuing a downward spiral. Your story made me think immediately of this. When I was in 2nd grade sometime toward the late 1980s, I was subjected to a science test with the following question: "Which of the following is the closest star to Earth?" The answers provided were "the sun," "the moon," "Venus," and "Mars." I selected "the sun." I was marked off, and the teacher had returned the test with "the moon" circled as the correct answer. I don't recall being bothered so much by having marks taken off for providing an answer I knew with certainty was the truth. Following receipt of the test, I distinctly recall my mum heading off to the school with me the following day to dispute this "fact." The teacher in question and the school's principal both provided the bothersome answer "Well, it's marked as 'the moon' in the answer sheet, so that's what we have to go by." While I don't recall what became of that particular test or my final grade, it stands out as one of my earliest negative experiences in public education. I can only imagine what these poor kids are feeling when faced with questions that make no reasonable sense. It upsets me to think what memories they might harbor in the years to come, because kids certainly do NOT forget. And to think that education has only gotten worse since. Troubling times ahead indeed!
  - greenyoda 13y ago
    "Well, it's marked as 'the moon' in the answer sheet, so that's what we have to go by." Or, in other words: "We were just following orders. We are not allowed to think for ourselves." It's tragic that these are the attitudes of the people entrusted to educate children.
NAFV_P 13y ago
I was caught out by "number sentence" at first, I'm used to hearing the word "expression". Is this a re-emergence of the new maths?
- judk 13y ago
  A number sentence is an equation. A number phrase is an expression. This has been true for over a thousand years.
  - NAFV_P 13y ago
    That's very interesting, because I wasn't taught that in school.
- bane 13y ago
  I agree, I've never heard that phrase and I have a degree in Mathematics.
  - NAFV_P 13y ago
    Cheers... I am an amateur mathematician, but these days I focus more on imperative programming languages. I tend to use the term expression for both equations and expressions, since in computing an expression returns a value of any type, not just numerical types.
gph 13y ago
It seems like they tried to dumb down certain words like "equation" into "number sentence", but only succeeded in making it confusing and ridiculous. And on top of that these are problem solving questions introduced way too soon. What's wrong with just asking a kid some addition and subtraction questions without all the fluff? I know it's trying to tease out whether they understand the fundamental concept and all that, but it's horribly done and kids of that age shouldn't have to be self-aware of their own learning.
- ktsmith 13y ago
  > And on top of that these are problem solving questions introduced way too soon. While those questions weren't appropriate for a first grader at the beginning of the school year introducing problem solving is a big part of common core.
dancole 13y ago
One penny-cup. That is the answer to the first question. The answers needed units.

43 points by Steko 13y ago

This test is so, so bad. If this is how I had been exposed to math when I was in the first grade, I hate to think how my life would have been different. (I have two degrees in mathematics.) I've heard stories of my first grader niece crying while trying to complete her daily homework. I'm starting to understand why.

anaphor 13y ago
I think grade school math curriculums are incredibly bad in most of the world, though. I know it's awful here in Ontario. Everything I learned about mathematics was from non-textbooks (e.g. Dover math books), lectures, papers and blog posts. School didn't teach me a thing. I think the only decent "textbook" I have is Concrete Mathematics, and that's not even close to most textbooks. It's probably been posted a million times before on here, but http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
- revelation 13y ago
  Wonderful article, but one verdict turns out to be wrong: Translating from one base to another is an utterly useless thing. If you can do it, maybe it's entertaining; if you can't do it, forget it. There's no point to it.
  - anaphor 13y ago
    Well, it was written before writing things in octal or hex was common, I think, so you'll have to cut him some slack there.
  - jerf 13y ago
    Do not mistake "tradition" for "useful", and especially in the context of a math cirriculum. It is useless to learn it in school. For that fraction of a percent that goes on to not only program computers, but also routinely dabble in bit-bashing, let them take the time to learn it (and they'll probably only learn special cases anyhow). Don't jam it down everyone's throat, and pile on one more reason on the already voluminous pile of reasons to hate math and think it's useless. (A conclusion that our school system does its level best to make the rational conclusion based on the evidence!)
  - pmiller2 13y ago
    I'd say it's still a generally true statement. Other than base 2, 8, or 16, there isn't much use for translating from one base to another.
    - impendia 13y ago
      The purpose of working in number bases other than 10 is to reinforce the meaning of place value, and to implicitly teach students that the way we write numerals is (1) very logical and sensible, but (2) an accident of biology. What we should really do is make students add and multiply in Roman numerals. Quick, what's LXXVII x XLIV? Attempting that will make you appreciate decimal notation real quick.
  - mturmon 13y ago
    It's inevitable to link to this now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA It's Tom Lehrer, about 50 years ago, explaining subtraction in the context of the "new" math (the base-8 stuff starts at 2:40). Worth a listen.
- NAFV_P 13y ago
  Dover maths books are good readin'. In Blackwells in Oxford (UK) there used to be a budget section with loads of old Dover books. I remember one about Fourier series that was translated from a Russian text.

Aloha 13y ago

oh god. I hate math, but I'm very very good at basic math, if I had had to learn like this, I cant see how I would have learned anything except that I didnt want to learn more.

anaphor 13y ago
The only thing I ever learned from math in high school was "I don't care why it's true, just give me the right answer" (the attitude of every single student other than myself).

aspensmonster 13y ago

>Take a look at question No. 1, which shows students five pennies, under which it says “part I know,” and then a full coffee cup labeled with a “6″ and, under it, the word, “Whole.” Students are asked to find “the missing part” from a list of four numbers. Wat. Edit: http://roundtheinkwell.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/the-math-test.pdf http://roundtheinkwell.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/the-math-... ; That's the actual test, apparently. I still think "Wat" is an appropriate response though.

blueblob 13y ago
This test was clearly written in a time in which a cup of coffee was $0.06. :-) In all seriousness it took me like 5 readings to figure out what was being asked for this question.
rallison 13y ago
Some of those questions are fine. Some of those questions I hope have some surrounding context. And some of them are pretty ridiculous. I went in expecting (hoping) to see some above grade level questions that simply let the really good students excel. I left disappointed. That said, thank you for the link to the actual test.
- ktsmith 13y ago
  Some probably do have surrounding context and in the case of #3 the kids were probably provided with manipulatives so they could literally use cubes to solve the problem. The test is still terrible.

tptacek 13y ago

How much of this is the "backmapping" of 12th grade skills to 1st grade, and how much of it is simply incompetent test and exercise authorship?

ktsmith 13y ago
I showed the test to my wife who is a 2nd grade teacher in a school district implementing common core. She was appalled both at the grading and the test itself. Then I showed her that it was from Pearson and she exclaimed "That's your problem right there."
- mturmon 13y ago
  Exactly. The concepts are appropriate (maybe not for this age though, I was unaware that NY first-graders could be only 5 in October), but the test is crap.
  - ktsmith 13y ago
    > I was unaware that NY first-graders could be only 5 in October That surprised me also. Here in Nevada the cut off is in September and so any child in first grade would be at least six years old by October. A month or two doesn't make a huge difference so perhaps their cutoff is in October or November.

colomon 13y ago

As the father of a five-year-old, two things puzzled me here: 1) "In the United States, students begin Grade 1 at the age of 5 or 6." Say what? In our part of Michigan, kids begin kindergarten at 5 or 6, leaning towards 6. 2) I see people here complaining about the math on the test, but what boggles me is the reading! Are beginning first graders really expected to be able to handle word problems? Maybe it's just been too long since I was there myself, but I thought we were just learning to read "See Spot run" at that point in school. For sure it seems like an insane amount of reading skill to ask of a five-year-old.

ktsmith 13y ago
> Are beginning first graders really expected to be able to handle word problems? My wife thought that the test might have been for second grade when she saw it (2nd grade teacher) but you are correct in thinking the language is not appropriate for beginning of first grade.
anaphor 13y ago
Good point, it does seem like a lot of reading. Personally I remember being able to read around that level in 1st grade, but I'm pretty sure I was a huge exception. I doubt most kids have reached a high enough level of reading ability to understand this crap. And I should point out that children to do not acquire the ability to read, it's a purely _learned skill_ so it's kind of like asking them to be extremely good at one thing in order to do something only tangentially related.
GICodeWarrior 13y ago
1) For the 2013-14 school year, NYS children need to be 5 by December. The exact date in December varies from city to city. So (for NYS at least) the kindergarten starting age is 4 or 5. 2) Yes, it is that intense. I am glad this is getting some publicity. It is especially rough for students with special needs who are often held to the same standards.
- ktsmith 13y ago
  > It is especially rough for students with special needs who are often held to the same standards. This is an issue with the law. A student that is behind for any reason be it disability, language barrier, etc, that is in a mainstream classroom must be provided with grade level instruction and materials. If they have an individualized education plan (IEP) they'll also typically get individualized instruction from supplemental sources and/or their teachers. If they are just behind it's really up to the teacher to present the student with materials that they can handle and to find ways to help the kids close the gap. The best teachers will do this all the time, decent teachers will do it some, and crappy teachers won't do it at all. You can probably imagine that schools will be comprised of all three types. As far as grading and evaluation goes the teachers don't have a choice but to hold all the kids to the grade level standards, again due to the legal issues.

carsongross 13y ago

When I didn't have kids, I thought homeschooling was for nut jobs. Hi. I'm a nut job.

noonespecial 13y ago
I am also a nut job. The first thing people do when they learn this is ask me "oh, you're religious then?". I say no, the opposite. It would require religious faith at this point to believe that those schools could teach a kid anything at all.
pcmonk 13y ago
These kinds of things are exactly why I am so glad that my parents homeschooled me.
tillinghast 13y ago
Nut job here, too. Common core is terrifying. Glad it's getting some bad press.
- ktsmith 13y ago
  Why is common core terrifying?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Natsu 13y ago
They're simply trying to get kids to use more abstract thought. The wording is strange, but there's nothing particularly mystifying about the answers. The abstractions are absurdly simple, but I'm not surprised that there are adults confused by this. I used to work for a factory and was constantly dismayed by how many adults are unable to read a tape measure.
- anaphor 13y ago
  Don't you think they should understand the most concrete instances of it before they're made to understand abstractions? Don't you think they should understand it with marbles and sticks before they understand it with very abstract concepts like arithmetic operators?
  - Natsu 13y ago
    Actually, no. In this case, the link between numbers and objects and linking addition and subtraction to telling the "stories" of real activities is an important thing for them to know. Far better they realize that and see the importance, than that they memorize the one digit addition and subtraction tables but think them useless and forget them entirely during summer vacation.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  I'm not sure whether most 5-6 year old kids even have brains that have developed sufficiently to deal with abstract thought.
  - Natsu 13y ago
    Never seen one imagine a cardboard box as a rocket ship, or such? That's simply abstract thought of another kind. To be honest, I feel more like rote schoolwork beats it out of them than the opposite, given how many children I've seen that are more capable than the adults, but that's a bit of a tangent. For the record, it's not actually that hard to teach younger kids advanced mathematics. Just turn it into a game. I managed to teach a ~10 year old about mutually tangent circles, after all. And I was certainly never bound by the imaginary limits of what kids were "supposed" to learn at a certain age. Roughly the first half of the "advanced" branches of math is giving funny names to things and learning a few tricks. Basic set theory, for example, would not be all that hard to teach to a young child, but most don't see any value in it. Anyhow, yes, that test is fairly confusingly worded (partly just from stupid and partly because we lack the context of the lessons). In particular, I agree that coins & coffee cups are a bridge too far, so they could certainly do better. But I guess people would rather WTF over the strange wording and downvote and such rather than consider whether little kids should be taught that there's more to addition than rote memorization of the addition tables? (For the record, yes, they should memorize the tables, too.) I found it quite simple to discern that they were taught to split the problems into the part they know and the whole thing, then look for the missing piece and turn the problems into "stories" connecting the numbers to real objects. Would everyone rather that kids learn that math is a bunch of boring number facts to memorize that have no (apparent) application to real life? Or is it the feeling that the way you were taught is plenty good and nobody should ever try to improve it, especially in a way that you don't understand? Or does this whole line of thinking simply make people uncomfortable and cause them to reject the thought entirely?

ghshephard 13y ago

Question 1 was bizarre. I'm not even sure what they were trying to ask. Question 2 "There are 8 Jars. 6 Jars have Jelly. The rest have peanut butter. How many Jars have Peanut Butter." The first thing that occurred to me is that we didn't specify the Jars with Jelly don't have peanut butter. Horrible question. Question 3,4 I can live with. Question 10 was greek. Question 11 - Once again, nothing states that the others aren't red as well. Reinforcing poor logical thinking. Question 12 "Related Subtraction Sentence?" No wonder these kids are crying. I couldn't read any further. This is how they are trying to teach kids math?

seniorsassycat 13y ago
I don't agree with your complaints about 2 or 11, assumptions are a part of everyday communication. Anyway, wouldn't the question would be unanswerable if some of the jelly jars could have peanut butter? We know the question is answerable, therefor no jelly jars can have peanut butter.
- glenra 13y ago
  > Anyway, wouldn't the question would be unanswerable if some of the jelly jars could have peanut butter? No, the question is answerable but it's answerable with a range rather than a specific number. > We know the question is answerable How do we know that? Lots of real-world questions aren't answerable and even if the author meant this one to be, textbook authors are fallible. So I don't think that's a fair assumption. And yeah, I nitpicked exactly like that back when I was in grade school too. :-)
- ghshephard 13y ago
  Could you accept that these assumption are frequently made incorrectly? Let us say I went shopping, and I know that I purchased eight jars of sandwich spread. I know that six of the jars had a mixed peanut butter/jelly stuff that you can squeeze out, and I remember the other two had peanut butter in a glass jar, but I can't remember if they were mixed or not, and I say, of those eight jars, "Six of the jars had jelly, the rest had peanut butter" - because that's all I was certain of - that somebody then inferring that the six jars did NOT have peanut butter, and that the other two jars did NOT have jelly -would be wrong in doing so? It's entirely possible that the question was poorly put together, and the answers provided were not sufficient to correctly answer the question. Test makers aren't all perfect beings - as clearly demonstrated by this test.

ryanhuff 13y ago

I have an 8 yo going through the common core transition now. What I would recommend parents do is teach the traditional fundamentals after school. Give your kid regular work. Its not worth being an experiment.

ams6110 13y ago
I'd recommend you send your kids to a school with a sane curriculum. The only thing these public school morons will understand is when they start losing students (and corresponding dollars that go along with that). The public school system here is up in arms about a quite limited voucher program, because their funding is based on the number of bodies in the classroom. So they see it as taking "their" money, rather than thinking "I wonder why those parents don't want their kids to go to our schools."
- ryanhuff 13y ago
  That's a great idea, but with two kids in grade school, the local private schools would cost me about $30k per year. I would rather invest 15 minutes a day with augmenting what they are doing in the classroom. If you have the resources to go private, more power to you.

RougeFemme 13y ago

One of my favorite stories regarding an elementary level Standards of Learning (SOL) test in Virginia. . .Students are taught how to estimate relatively simple sums, difference, products and quotients in their heads. Students are required to select the "correct" estimate. One of the questions accidentally (I guess) included the actual answer among the choices. My son selected the actual answer rather than the "correct" estimate and it was marked wrong. OK, technically he didn't follow directions. . .the question asked for the estimate. But. . .really. . .you penalize a kid for calculating the correct answer and selecting that over the correct estimate??

Zancarius 13y ago
First, I should apologize for relating a personal anecdote, because it doesn't have anything to do with Common Core. It does provide something of a benchmark for the state of education 25-ish years ago, and it's troubling to me that we're continuing a downward spiral. Your story made me think immediately of this. When I was in 2nd grade sometime toward the late 1980s, I was subjected to a science test with the following question: "Which of the following is the closest star to Earth?" The answers provided were "the sun," "the moon," "Venus," and "Mars." I selected "the sun." I was marked off, and the teacher had returned the test with "the moon" circled as the correct answer. I don't recall being bothered so much by having marks taken off for providing an answer I knew with certainty was the truth. Following receipt of the test, I distinctly recall my mum heading off to the school with me the following day to dispute this "fact." The teacher in question and the school's principal both provided the bothersome answer "Well, it's marked as 'the moon' in the answer sheet, so that's what we have to go by." While I don't recall what became of that particular test or my final grade, it stands out as one of my earliest negative experiences in public education. I can only imagine what these poor kids are feeling when faced with questions that make no reasonable sense. It upsets me to think what memories they might harbor in the years to come, because kids certainly do NOT forget. And to think that education has only gotten worse since. Troubling times ahead indeed!
- greenyoda 13y ago
  "Well, it's marked as 'the moon' in the answer sheet, so that's what we have to go by." Or, in other words: "We were just following orders. We are not allowed to think for ourselves." It's tragic that these are the attitudes of the people entrusted to educate children.

NAFV_P 13y ago

I was caught out by "number sentence" at first, I'm used to hearing the word "expression". Is this a re-emergence of the new maths?

judk 13y ago
A number sentence is an equation. A number phrase is an expression. This has been true for over a thousand years.
- NAFV_P 13y ago
  That's very interesting, because I wasn't taught that in school.
bane 13y ago
I agree, I've never heard that phrase and I have a degree in Mathematics.
- NAFV_P 13y ago
  Cheers... I am an amateur mathematician, but these days I focus more on imperative programming languages. I tend to use the term expression for both equations and expressions, since in computing an expression returns a value of any type, not just numerical types.

gph 13y ago

It seems like they tried to dumb down certain words like "equation" into "number sentence", but only succeeded in making it confusing and ridiculous. And on top of that these are problem solving questions introduced way too soon. What's wrong with just asking a kid some addition and subtraction questions without all the fluff? I know it's trying to tease out whether they understand the fundamental concept and all that, but it's horribly done and kids of that age shouldn't have to be self-aware of their own learning.

ktsmith 13y ago
> And on top of that these are problem solving questions introduced way too soon. While those questions weren't appropriate for a first grader at the beginning of the school year introducing problem solving is a big part of common core.

dancole 13y ago

One penny-cup. That is the answer to the first question. The answers needed units.