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2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math

35 points by unclebucknasty 12y ago

DanBC 12y ago
I don't know anything about "Common core" but parents wanting to learn new methods of teaching math and arithmatic may like "Maths for Mums and Dads" http://www.mathsformumsanddads.com/ http://www.mathsformumsanddads.com/
nodata 12y ago
Well what are the four ways to do addition?
- sirtel 12y ago
  1. 5+9=14 2. let 9=10-1, 5+9=10-1+5=15-1=14 3. let 9=5+4, 5+9=5+5+4=14 4. cann't make it up
  - ozh 12y ago
    I truly pity the youth in whatever country thought that is smart
  - ww2 12y ago
    you missed two most important methods: 5+9 = (((((((((5+1)+1)++1)+1)+1)+1)+1)+1)+1) 5+9 = 9 + 5 =...
- DanBC 12y ago
  1) "counting on". 19 + 7 is (starts counting on) 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 (realise that 7 fingers have been used, stop counting on) 26 1a) "partitioning" 8 + 7 is 8, jump 2 to 10, then jump 5 to 15. 2) "thinking and estimating". 3998 + 4997 is nearly 4000 + 5000 and is exactly 4000 + 5000 - 5 3) traditional columns with units, tens, hundreds, etc. Note that these are teaching small children how to manipulate numbers in their heads before they reach for paper and pencil. This builds up understanding of what numbers are, what the processes are doing, what the relationships between numbers are etc. these techniques are also building up skills for subtraction. Subtraction is not just "taking one number from another", it includes finding the difference between two numbers and techniques involve addition.
  - nodata 12y ago
    So they are being taught some optimisations that they'd normally learn later? Doesn't sound too bad.
    - ctdonath 12y ago
      Problem is some optimizations (like the "estimation" approach) require an innate grasp of non-optimized methods. If you don't understand what's being optimized, the optimization makes no sense.
hga 12y ago
Without reading the fine article except for searching for "calculus", I'll note that I've confirmed an accusation at the other end: the Common Core does not even reach precalculus by the end of high school. No student in a school solely based on it will be taking AP Calculus, let alone be able to attend MIT or Caltech (the former requires you to be ready to learn the calculus, the latter demands you've already learned single variable calculus). Students interested in STEM majors, or anything needing serious math, will join the current legions who didn't learn (enough) math in high school taking remedial classes and be that much behind in graduating. Perhaps America has too many people in STEM careers; absent supplementation by school districts that e.g. already teach AP Calculus and don't want to stop, this will help fix that.... (Well, outside of the states rejecting it; it was implemented in my home state of Missouri without the input of the legislature, and they're about to zap it, joining another state who's name I forget.)
- icolor 12y ago
  Article only mentions that learning to teach the common core addition/division/multiplication/subtraction is as difficult as 'learning' calculus. I'm sure that the current common core level for math ends around Trigonometry.
  - hga 12y ago
    You might, like I did, check out the online sources on this, from reports on a professor who was one of the drafters admitting it, to the official curriculum. It's enlightening.
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  AP Calculus has never been a standard part of the requirements for a high school diploma in any state in the union. Common Core did not change that. In fact Common Core has added to the requirements in math as it brought many states upwards to Trigonometry as a requirement. Remember, this curriculum is not for Advanced Placement, it's for common placement. No school is prevented from offering AP courses and they have quite a few incentives to do so.
- tptacek 12y ago
bovermyer 12y ago
I'd never heard of this before, but looking up some of the controversy, I found this article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/07/about-that-common-core-math-problem-making-the-rounds-on-facebook/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/07/abou... It actually makes some sense. I'm still skeptical, but it's sounding like it's just a significant departure from the rote memorization methods I grew up with.
- hga 12y ago
  If you don't learn your math tables by rote memorization, how are you ever going to be adept at algebra or anything based on it? If you can't just look at something like 2x = 4y and instantly simply it....
  - kasey_junk 12y ago
    It's anecdotal I know, but for me the math table rote memorization was extremely detrimental to my learning of mathematics. It forced a mind set that implied that to be good at math you needed to be able to remember senseless unrelated facts, when in reality most of the advanced mathematics this will lead you completely astray as you cannot keep every formula in your head and it is much better to be able to derive them. The book A Mathematician's Lament really registered with me due to this experience. So, while I don't know enough about educational theory or the Common Core mathematics curriculum specifically to say for sure that it is better than rote memorization, I can say my bias makes me think nothing could be worse. The math practices I see elementary school kids doing under Common Core seems to be way more like "real" mathematics than what I did at that age. I will say, I worry about the population of elementary school teachers who are asked to implement this, as a generalization they are the least likely to have taken advanced mathematics in university.
    - hga 12y ago
      It certainly has its detriments, but my point still stands: if you go into Algebra I without knowing your math tables, you're going to hit a brick wall. "Motivation" at a higher sense is something that's sorely lacking in US public school (free government school) math. Especially prior to real algebra, the teachers tend to be generalists who don't know to tell you "you need to learn X so you can learn Y which will allow you to solve problems like Z" and of course get you to understand why Z is neat and important. But that's a different sort of problem that just not making sure all students capable have the foundation they need.
sitkack 12y ago
Calculus can be taught to anyone independent of age. It is not a unit of difficulty. I think people are railing at teaching math to children because they themselves suck at math. Your inability to grasp subject matter is not proof that something is wrong or too hard. http://commonsensequantum.blogspot.com/2010/11/geometric-representations-of-higher.html http://commonsensequantum.blogspot.com/2010/11/geometric-rep...
- ctdonath 12y ago
  Seems the problem is those creating the curriculum likewise have a poor grasp of it and of how to present it to inexperienced minds. They know that "concepts" and "process" and "psychology" are important, but lack the Tufte- and Feynman-like grasp of how to present the complex in simple clear ways.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    I am not sure how true this is. Most of the public sentiment has been 3rd parties not able to understand the material. I think the adult population is vastly under-educated. The problem isn't the children, it is the parents. The parents can't understand their own child's homework. Whose failing is that? You see this in developing countries where the whole population is illiterate. It usually ends up that the children reach a level of proficiency that enables them to teach their parents.
Grue3 12y ago
You'd think they would be happy that their kids are taught something they can't do themselves. Instead they're whining in order to make their stupidity hereditary.
NateDad 12y ago
The parents rail against the new style of teaching because they were taught with the old style and never properly comprehended math other than by rote memorization. This is exactly the problem the new methods are trying to fix. I bet most people on HN are math-minded enough that they could pick up the new ways of doing things and actually understand how it is teaching total comprehension rather than just being able to get the right answer with no idea of why it's the right answer.
- unclebucknasty 12y ago
  You nailed it. On the other hand, it's a bit double-edged. As I am the parent with the CS degree, my wife is already referring our second-grader to me for help with math homework. Sure, after calc I-III, diff-EQ, linear algebra, etc. I can readily pick up on what they are doing and why. I also absolutely agree that they need to go beyond rote-memorization and help kids with a fundamental understanding of numbers, their relationships, etc. But, here's the other side: I don't know that, say, a first or second-grader is really ready to grasp some of the concepts (at least as they are currently being taught). My daughter "handles" it pretty well and can get the job done, but it sometimes seems that they are simply moving the rote-memorization ball, so to speak. That is, now, instead of just remembering tables, she may be simply remembering these new methods of arriving at the answer. I'm not sure she really knows why though. And, it can actually be kind of difficult to test where their level of true understanding is. For instance, asking them to explain gets into their verbal skills as much as math. So, they may actually understand it, but are unable to really explain it. One clue is the kind of mistakes they make, but it's still kind of murky. In any case, in the end, I'm not altogether sure that her comprehension has been expanded. And, it sometimes seems that the result is that she simply has to labor harder to arrive at the same answers. On a side note, what's funny is that I learned the "old-school" way, yet I somehow managed to comprehend and am now trying to help my daughter understand the "new school" way. Something ironic about that.
  - NateDad 12y ago
    Glad to hear from someone currently going through it. My older daughter is only 3, so I haven't gotten there yet. I hope the new way works, I'd like our kids to understand math better than we did, and I'm not averse to learning something new in order to help with that. I find it funny that these parents get so upset at how hard it is.... if the curriculum is designed for your third grader.... you should be able to learn it pretty easily, if you just try. My guess is that a lot of the parents aren't actually trying to teach themselves the new way, and then get mad they can't help with the homework.
Delmania 12y ago
As a parent with a a first grader and child in kindergarten, my observations of the Common Core isn't that the basis, or theory, is unsound, it's more that the teachers were not given adequate training on it.
- tomswartz07 12y ago
  As a person who works with K-12 educators, I agree wholeheartedly.
- ja27 12y ago
  Absolutely. I'm sure the companies behind Common Core are licking their chops to provide that training for everyone.
coldcode 12y ago
Funny how today's leaders in math and programming all learned basic math the old fashioned way; now it's not good enough. Yet no one preaches teaching kids economics, basic taxation and interest rates, and how investing works. So we wind up with people who know math but get fooled by politicians and scammers.
- dec0dedab0de 12y ago
  Personal accounting should be required from kindergarten.
  - fixermark 12y ago
    Really, "home economics" should be a required skill learned by high school (at least in the US). The US is a capitalist society. We do a significant disservice to our citizenry by failing to teach fundamentals of how money works in the public education system.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Yet no one preaches teaching kids economics, basic taxation and interest rates, and how investing works. No one preaches it for much the same reason that no one preaches that people should breath regularly -- its not in dispute. What you ask for has been a standard, noncontroversial part of the curriculum for decades (at least in CA.) Certainly, people do debate whether the way its taught is effective, or that it should be taught earlier or in more depth, as they do with most subjects in the curriculum.
- thomasahle 12y ago
  Because the same mathematicians and programmers haven't changed anything else in the way they are taught?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Funny how today's leaders in math and programming all learned basic math the old fashioned way Evidence? Just because they were school age when that was standard doesn't mean that that's how they learned it. School isn't the only place people learn, not all schools follow the normal curriculum (which is, after all, what is mandated for public schools), and even in schools that follow the normal curriculum as a base, not all instruction is limited to it.
cLeEOGPw 12y ago
I think this summarizes all the rails against common core pretty well: http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/21zdln/the_common_core_is_corrupting_school_mathematics/ http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/21zdln/the_common_core...
- philbarr 12y ago
  Well I'm in the UK and it seems I was taught the "Common Core" way of doing things. All makes sense to me! Right down to using the quadratic formula to solve equations. The "Old" way just looks weird...
  - adambard 12y ago
    The joke is that the new "Common Core" standards are presented as the "Old-Fashioned" way, and vice-versa.
  - zo1 12y ago
    Read the comments in the Reddit link. It was apparently posted on the 1st of April. Now I'm seriously confused.
  - fr0sty 12y ago
    Publishing date of that post was April 1st, for what it's worth...
- zo1 12y ago
  I just had a look and all the methods that were listed were taught to me as a kid. Then again, I went to "British" schools in the third world when I was a kid, so that might have something to do with it. The methods that the Reddit user was saying was the "normal" way were completely alien to me. Both because they had no instructions, and because I wasn't taught them as a kid/ever.
- gjjhjjjhhh 12y ago
  OP describes himself as a professional mathematician and then fails to notice that common core produces an identical result in the third picture. (-5/2)-sqrt(57/4) vs (-5-sqrt(57))/2 Looks like op is biased towards one side. So why downvote my comment if it is apparently an April fools post?
syvlo 12y ago
There was this really great documentary talking about the way kids should learn math (and also how useful maths are in today's society): http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1etsod_how-i-came-to-hate-math-comment-j-ai-deteste-les-maths-2013-trailer-english-subs_shortfilms http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1etsod_how-i-came-to-hate-... I don't know if there is an english version of the whole documentary, but if there is, I strongly recommend it (plus, there are strong contributions by Villani who won Fields medal).
FeloniousHam 12y ago
I have experienced this first hand with my daughter (2nd grade). She's doing 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction by breaking the problem into chunks (I tried to cook up an example, but I don't remember how they do it exactly). I learned the "carry way", so the chunk thing seems cumbersome (and I didn't really know how to help her, since I keep reverting to my own proclivities), but it seems to work, and I see the value in the way she deconstructs the problem instead of just doing the mechanics.
- tomswartz07 12y ago
  I think your experience is exactly how all of these other parents are reacting. It seems that the parents are getting frustrated because they don't understand it, and would rather insist on using their methods. Don't get me wrong, it's valuable to know how to do something simply, but I think that the underpinnings of doing it the 'chunk' way show students how to break very large, seemingly overwhelmingly complex problems into smaller bits.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  It may be steep at first, but almost every problems involve breaking them into manageable chunks, let's hope it pays on the long run.
  - zo1 12y ago
    These are peoples' lives they are affecting. "Hope" and "politics" shouldn't be a part of the decision making process.
    - hga 12y ago
      They could have at least pretended to do some experiments, maybe even with proper controls (yes, that's a radical concept in education "research", e.g. how phonics were tossed in the middle of the last century, resulting in a massive decline in literacy), that showed the Common Core was good before imposing it on the entire nation.
monkmartinez 12y ago
We choose my son's school based on the curriculum. They use Saxon maths, Spalding Reading (which includes phonograms), traditional teaching methods and the children wear uniforms. Its a Charter school and we love it. My son (kindergarten) is loving math and has 2 or 3 worksheets of math a night as homework. A lot of it is just repetition from previous days concepts, but he feels really good showing us how well he knows "1st grade math." Its not really 1st grade math, but its more advanced than the public school kids that live in our neighborhood... AND way less frustrating it seems. I have yet to hear anything good about Common Core from my friends who deal with it on a regular basis. Basis is a school here in Tucson that is one of the top 5 in the country. They use Saxon math as well: http://educationnext.org/high-scores-at-basis-charter-schools/ http://educationnext.org/high-scores-at-basis-charter-school... If my son wants to go to Basis after grade school he will be prepared. If not... he will be so far ahead of the CC kids, we will probably just sign up for classes at the community college. We go here: http://www.legacytraditional.org/district-home/northwest-tucson/ http://www.legacytraditional.org/district-home/northwest-tuc...
- zo1 12y ago
  I can't tell if you're serious, or trolling?
dkhenry 12y ago
You know when I in my job try something new and it doesn't work out my company might lose a contract or in a really bad case I lose my job. When we as a society decide unilaterally that we are going to change a few century's worth of teaching style for something new we risk raising a generation of children who can't do simple math. I am not worried about if this method is "better" according to research. I am worried if it works, because if it doesn't we will have an entire generation unfit to do anything but manual labor.
- gnaritas 12y ago
  You're being ruled by fear. Fear is not a place from which good logical decisions are made; if the research says it's better, then it's better; you don't keep doing the worse way just because you're used to it and fearful of anything new.
  - dkhenry 12y ago
    This isn't a place for "some research points to this being better" we currently raised millions of children who _can_ do math just fine the current way. Do you want to just change it because someone says they might have found a better way. This is the kind of change that should have happened over _decades_ slowly to prove its self not as one big political push with no real world example of broad success. What happens when it turns out a combination of poor training of teachers and lack of exposure by parents combines to produce an entire generation that can't do the most basic of math problems. Who will be do the STEM work in this country when we don't have enough students who know basic math let alone calculus and beyond. Your betting the future of the American economy and society on this change you better have more proof for it then "we did a study"
    - hga 12y ago
      That was exactly how phonics were tossed in the middle of the last century, resulting in a huge cohort of people no longer being able to read, as scathingly detailed in the 1955 Why Johnny Can't Read (followed in 1958 with a small item in the Reader's Digest, "Why Johnny Can Read in Joplin", my home town; read that in the early-mid '70s from ones my grandmother saved). From memory, it was justified with a study of students at a University of Chicago associated school, i.e. lots of children of professors, they were obviously in the fairly large cohort that just pick up reading on their own. Those who don't were left to the tender mercies of Dick and Jane and their running dog Spot as Jerry Pournelle likes to put it, his wife used to successfully teach reading to the hardest of hard cases, juveniles in criminal detention.
bglazer 12y ago
I think this quote from a parent at the very end of the article is quite telling: "To me, math is numbers, it's concrete, it's black-and-white. I don't understand why you need to bring this conceptual thing into math — at least not at this age." I am not a professional mathematician, but I get the overwhelming impression from professional mathematicians that "this conceptual thing" is really quite important in the big picture of math. To me this reflects a parent who hasn't used mathematical concepts in a real way and who doesn't understand the value in anything but arithmetic. It's the same mindset as people who throw their hands up at algebra because suddenly letters are mixed with numbers and they aren't doing multiplication tables anymore. Edit: I don't mean this as a personal attack. It's just a problem of educating parents. People need to understand that conceptual math and abstract reasoning may seem like strange things to teach children, but that they will, in fact, provide the competitive edge for our kids. Perhaps the Common Core way of teaching this is terrible and makes children cry, but we shouldn't throw it out based on poor implementation.
- j2kun 12y ago
  I am a professional mathematician, and yes, the parents in these articles will almost always say things that reveal their own fears and misunderstandings of math. This doesn't make the Common Core implementation any better, and part of the reason is that these same parents (people of equivalent mathematical experience) are the ones teaching the kids and writing the state-wide tests and writing the textbooks.
j2kun 12y ago
Why are we worried that elementary school children might misunderstand arithmetic? This is the problem with the Common Core math standards, that they think you need to have a perfect understanding of something before you can move on, and if you have moved on then you have a perfect understanding of everything that came before it. That's just not how math works at any level! Understanding counting and arithmetic and numbers is a continuously evolving process. Children should be exposed to these things: the difference between a number and its representation, alternative ways to understand counting, etc., but to require every student understand all of them before moving on is ridiculous. And likewise, in later grades (even in high school!) one should revisit the concepts they thought they mastered from the different perspectives that their more mature coursework allows them to. There are important things to say about counting and arithmetic from first grade all the way through a PhD.
- hga 12y ago
  To take this further, isn't one of the most consequential bits of math done in recent times Gödel's (in)famous incompleteness theorems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_...), which are based on the natural numbers?
  - j2kun 12y ago
    Not to mention the myriad of open problems in number theory, and the fact that "combinatorics" (the mathematics of counting) is a huge field all by itself.
- j2kun 12y ago
  My favorite example is this one, in which a man tries to teach the binary number system to third graders http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html The point is he focuses on challenging their understanding of numbers vs representations of numbers, despite the fact that they thought they mastered simple counting in first grade. They come away from this not with a mastery of binary arithmetic but with a better understanding of their usual decimal counting system.
todd8 12y ago
I suffered through this sort of math with my kids. I'm afraid that this may end up being flamebait, but here goes... These reformed Math programs are a tremendous mess being foisted on us by "Education" professionals and academics. Instead of teaching one, well-tested method of performing operations (addition, subtraction, etd.), these programs present a number of alternative "algorithms". In Everyday Math (the program my own kids were taught), the standard methods for multiplication and division were not taught and years of drill using alternative (and inferior) methods were used. This leads to tentative confusion over the way to solve problems. Proficiency with basic multiplication and so forth is downplayed and instead proficiency with calculators is developed. The Education majors (teachers and professors of Education) aren't STEM people themselves. I remember how we, the parents, were lectured (during the parent introduction to these programs) on mathematics and how, we were informed, "there is more than one way to get to an answer" as if this was some astonishing revealed truth. How there was (are you ready for this?) more than one way to do multiplication. Then the teachers would illustrate some method (for example, the Lattice method of paper and pencil multiplication) and with wide and astonished eyes exclaim, "see it gives the SAME result". Now, for those that don't know the Lattice method, its just a method of doing multi-digit multiplication that keeps the intermediate products, which will eventually be summed, in a grid. Many years ago I was taught the standard methods for computing the basic operations because after centuries of use they have become the prefered methods by people that have to work with numbers. That's why adults haven't bothered to learn the Russian Peasant method or the Egyptian method or whatever. So while our kids will struggle with some new text book, fat and full of colorful pictures that will have pictures of ancient pyramids, the kids in Singapore will by using thin, little black and white books full of exercises, written in English. And then, the kids in Singapore will go on to absolutely kick our asses in mathematics. I've used these Singapore math books, somewhere around the summer after third grade, to reteach my own daughter mathematics. A couple of days ago, she just took the Calculus AP exam after her Junior year in high school, no thanks to Everyday Math. Not everything about Everyday Math nor Common Core is bad, but some of it is really bad. It's argued by the people putting these programs in place that they know better and that their programs are supported by research. Have you looked at this supposed research? It's not good. Few well controlled studies done by people in Education departments[1]. The first (so called) research paper listed on the Everyday Math program web site uses Knuth Vol. 3 as justification for studying so many algorithms. It completely misses the point of Vol. 3. It's a book about sorting and searching algorithms. Almost every one of them has some reason for it's use: easy code, fast average performance, fast worst case, works well with a limited number of tape drives (wow!), and so on. This has nothing to do with the desirability of teaching inferior methods of basic calculation to our kids. This paper, which is used to justify some of the core principles of the Everyday Math program is an example of the poor foundation for these reforms to math education in the US. [1] How Brainy Is Your Major: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einstein/201108/how-brainy-is-your-major http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einstei... [2] Algorithms in Everyday Math http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/about/research-results/algorithms.pdf http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/about/research-results/algo...
Shorel 12y ago
It doesn't seem efficient, or very useful to aid understanding. It replaces one operation by many operations. It trades one abstraction by increasing the memory requirements (external memory, in the paper). At least I had finished the subtraction in my head way before I was reading halfway through the 'new' method, in all examples. It would be useful if they students could each design their own favourite subtraction algorithm, and compare notes with fellow students, instead of having to memorize 3 or 4 cookie cutter algorithms.
tokenadult 12y ago
Ooh. 28 submission points for 104 comments. I'm glad that the submitter submitted the article. On the other hand, it may be correct (as is apparently the judgment of most participants here) that the article just isn't that informative. See an important article from The Atlantic, "Confusing Math Homework? Don’t Blame the Common Core: States, districts, and schools are actually in charge"[1] for more on what's really going in classrooms around the country. Some of the comments here refer to a period of "reform math" instruction BEFORE the introduction of the Common Core State Standards in mathematics,[2] which are actually quite recent. Implementation of the Common Core in school classrooms in the United States is only a year or two old today. The Common Core was an attempt to introduce coherency and logical progression into the mishmash of topics that characterized "reform math" textbooks such as Everyday Math (which is probably the best and most mathematically sound of the reform math textbooks) and TERC: Investigations, among other titles. The Common Core standards are generally regarded, as curriculum standards, as a plain improvement over what most states set as mathematics curriculum standards before.[3] On the other hand, many of the mathematics who criticized the preceding period of "reform math" instruction (basically most United States school practice in the twenty-first century) think that the current Common Core textbooks and teacher training courses still don't go far enough in improving instruction. As a parent, I expect and welcome school instruction in any topic that is better and more research-based than what I received as a child. The quotations from parents in the article kindly submitted here along the lines of "Why should my child be expected to learn things I don't understand?" seems like a very bizarre approach to parenting to me. (As a homeschooling parent, I used the Miquon Math[4] and Singapore Primary Mathematics series[5] with great success in helping my four children learn their elementary mathematics. They have been able to go on to more advanced mathematics study with relative ease. I had to learn new topics and new techniques to use those materials, but that is good for me. I was lucky that my wife, educated in Taiwan, largely understands the approach taken in the Singapore materials, but so far both of our older two sons have gone well beyond the mathematics study level of either of their parents. Education is supposed to improve from generation to generation, or what are schools for? (That's why we homeschool--we lay a good foundation for our children with the best available curricular materials to get them ready for classes with teachers who know what they are doing for our children's secondary education.) [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/confusing-math-homework-don-t-blame-the-common-core/360064/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/confusi... [2] http://www.corestandards.org/Math/ http://www.corestandards.org/Math/ [3] http://educationnext.org/the-common-core-math-standards/ http://educationnext.org/the-common-core-math-standards/ [4] http://miquonmath.com/ http://miquonmath.com/ [5] http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_US_Ed_s/39.htm http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_US_Ed_s/39....
chrismcb 12y ago
I don't know much about core math, but what are is the "context" the parents are missing? It seems to me that the homework is going to pretty hard to solve if it doesn't contain the complete "context." Or is he referring to some terminology that the parents probably don't know? Why is this context missing, or not available to the parents, if nothing else via the text book or handouts? And how many different ways is there to add two numbers?
Rusky 12y ago
The goal of Common Core is a good one. But the research was not nearly thorough enough. The curriculum was adopted all at once instead of giving it any testing. And at least in my area, students must take the math class at their age level, at least through elementary school. Now students that excel at math get bored and hate it, and students who need extra help can't get it. That is the wrong way to improve education.

DanBC 12y ago

I don't know anything about "Common core" but parents wanting to learn new methods of teaching math and arithmatic may like "Maths for Mums and Dads" http://www.mathsformumsanddads.com/ http://www.mathsformumsanddads.com/

nodata 12y ago

Well what are the four ways to do addition?

sirtel 12y ago
1. 5+9=14 2. let 9=10-1, 5+9=10-1+5=15-1=14 3. let 9=5+4, 5+9=5+5+4=14 4. cann't make it up
- ozh 12y ago
  I truly pity the youth in whatever country thought that is smart
- ww2 12y ago
  you missed two most important methods: 5+9 = (((((((((5+1)+1)++1)+1)+1)+1)+1)+1)+1) 5+9 = 9 + 5 =...
DanBC 12y ago
1) "counting on". 19 + 7 is (starts counting on) 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 (realise that 7 fingers have been used, stop counting on) 26 1a) "partitioning" 8 + 7 is 8, jump 2 to 10, then jump 5 to 15. 2) "thinking and estimating". 3998 + 4997 is nearly 4000 + 5000 and is exactly 4000 + 5000 - 5 3) traditional columns with units, tens, hundreds, etc. Note that these are teaching small children how to manipulate numbers in their heads before they reach for paper and pencil. This builds up understanding of what numbers are, what the processes are doing, what the relationships between numbers are etc. these techniques are also building up skills for subtraction. Subtraction is not just "taking one number from another", it includes finding the difference between two numbers and techniques involve addition.
- nodata 12y ago
  So they are being taught some optimisations that they'd normally learn later? Doesn't sound too bad.
  - ctdonath 12y ago
    Problem is some optimizations (like the "estimation" approach) require an innate grasp of non-optimized methods. If you don't understand what's being optimized, the optimization makes no sense.

hga 12y ago

Without reading the fine article except for searching for "calculus", I'll note that I've confirmed an accusation at the other end: the Common Core does not even reach precalculus by the end of high school. No student in a school solely based on it will be taking AP Calculus, let alone be able to attend MIT or Caltech (the former requires you to be ready to learn the calculus, the latter demands you've already learned single variable calculus). Students interested in STEM majors, or anything needing serious math, will join the current legions who didn't learn (enough) math in high school taking remedial classes and be that much behind in graduating. Perhaps America has too many people in STEM careers; absent supplementation by school districts that e.g. already teach AP Calculus and don't want to stop, this will help fix that.... (Well, outside of the states rejecting it; it was implemented in my home state of Missouri without the input of the legislature, and they're about to zap it, joining another state who's name I forget.)

icolor 12y ago
Article only mentions that learning to teach the common core addition/division/multiplication/subtraction is as difficult as 'learning' calculus. I'm sure that the current common core level for math ends around Trigonometry.
- hga 12y ago
  You might, like I did, check out the online sources on this, from reports on a professor who was one of the drafters admitting it, to the official curriculum. It's enlightening.
kasey_junk 12y ago
AP Calculus has never been a standard part of the requirements for a high school diploma in any state in the union. Common Core did not change that. In fact Common Core has added to the requirements in math as it brought many states upwards to Trigonometry as a requirement. Remember, this curriculum is not for Advanced Placement, it's for common placement. No school is prevented from offering AP courses and they have quite a few incentives to do so.
tptacek 12y ago

bovermyer 12y ago

I'd never heard of this before, but looking up some of the controversy, I found this article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/07/about-that-common-core-math-problem-making-the-rounds-on-facebook/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/07/abou... It actually makes some sense. I'm still skeptical, but it's sounding like it's just a significant departure from the rote memorization methods I grew up with.

hga 12y ago
If you don't learn your math tables by rote memorization, how are you ever going to be adept at algebra or anything based on it? If you can't just look at something like 2x = 4y and instantly simply it....
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  It's anecdotal I know, but for me the math table rote memorization was extremely detrimental to my learning of mathematics. It forced a mind set that implied that to be good at math you needed to be able to remember senseless unrelated facts, when in reality most of the advanced mathematics this will lead you completely astray as you cannot keep every formula in your head and it is much better to be able to derive them. The book A Mathematician's Lament really registered with me due to this experience. So, while I don't know enough about educational theory or the Common Core mathematics curriculum specifically to say for sure that it is better than rote memorization, I can say my bias makes me think nothing could be worse. The math practices I see elementary school kids doing under Common Core seems to be way more like "real" mathematics than what I did at that age. I will say, I worry about the population of elementary school teachers who are asked to implement this, as a generalization they are the least likely to have taken advanced mathematics in university.
  - hga 12y ago
    It certainly has its detriments, but my point still stands: if you go into Algebra I without knowing your math tables, you're going to hit a brick wall. "Motivation" at a higher sense is something that's sorely lacking in US public school (free government school) math. Especially prior to real algebra, the teachers tend to be generalists who don't know to tell you "you need to learn X so you can learn Y which will allow you to solve problems like Z" and of course get you to understand why Z is neat and important. But that's a different sort of problem that just not making sure all students capable have the foundation they need.

sitkack 12y ago

Calculus can be taught to anyone independent of age. It is not a unit of difficulty. I think people are railing at teaching math to children because they themselves suck at math. Your inability to grasp subject matter is not proof that something is wrong or too hard. http://commonsensequantum.blogspot.com/2010/11/geometric-representations-of-higher.html http://commonsensequantum.blogspot.com/2010/11/geometric-rep...

ctdonath 12y ago
Seems the problem is those creating the curriculum likewise have a poor grasp of it and of how to present it to inexperienced minds. They know that "concepts" and "process" and "psychology" are important, but lack the Tufte- and Feynman-like grasp of how to present the complex in simple clear ways.
- sitkack 12y ago
  I am not sure how true this is. Most of the public sentiment has been 3rd parties not able to understand the material. I think the adult population is vastly under-educated. The problem isn't the children, it is the parents. The parents can't understand their own child's homework. Whose failing is that? You see this in developing countries where the whole population is illiterate. It usually ends up that the children reach a level of proficiency that enables them to teach their parents.

Grue3 12y ago

You'd think they would be happy that their kids are taught something they can't do themselves. Instead they're whining in order to make their stupidity hereditary.

NateDad 12y ago

The parents rail against the new style of teaching because they were taught with the old style and never properly comprehended math other than by rote memorization. This is exactly the problem the new methods are trying to fix. I bet most people on HN are math-minded enough that they could pick up the new ways of doing things and actually understand how it is teaching total comprehension rather than just being able to get the right answer with no idea of why it's the right answer.

unclebucknasty 12y ago
You nailed it. On the other hand, it's a bit double-edged. As I am the parent with the CS degree, my wife is already referring our second-grader to me for help with math homework. Sure, after calc I-III, diff-EQ, linear algebra, etc. I can readily pick up on what they are doing and why. I also absolutely agree that they need to go beyond rote-memorization and help kids with a fundamental understanding of numbers, their relationships, etc. But, here's the other side: I don't know that, say, a first or second-grader is really ready to grasp some of the concepts (at least as they are currently being taught). My daughter "handles" it pretty well and can get the job done, but it sometimes seems that they are simply moving the rote-memorization ball, so to speak. That is, now, instead of just remembering tables, she may be simply remembering these new methods of arriving at the answer. I'm not sure she really knows why though. And, it can actually be kind of difficult to test where their level of true understanding is. For instance, asking them to explain gets into their verbal skills as much as math. So, they may actually understand it, but are unable to really explain it. One clue is the kind of mistakes they make, but it's still kind of murky. In any case, in the end, I'm not altogether sure that her comprehension has been expanded. And, it sometimes seems that the result is that she simply has to labor harder to arrive at the same answers. On a side note, what's funny is that I learned the "old-school" way, yet I somehow managed to comprehend and am now trying to help my daughter understand the "new school" way. Something ironic about that.
- NateDad 12y ago
  Glad to hear from someone currently going through it. My older daughter is only 3, so I haven't gotten there yet. I hope the new way works, I'd like our kids to understand math better than we did, and I'm not averse to learning something new in order to help with that. I find it funny that these parents get so upset at how hard it is.... if the curriculum is designed for your third grader.... you should be able to learn it pretty easily, if you just try. My guess is that a lot of the parents aren't actually trying to teach themselves the new way, and then get mad they can't help with the homework.

Delmania 12y ago

As a parent with a a first grader and child in kindergarten, my observations of the Common Core isn't that the basis, or theory, is unsound, it's more that the teachers were not given adequate training on it.

tomswartz07 12y ago
As a person who works with K-12 educators, I agree wholeheartedly.
ja27 12y ago
Absolutely. I'm sure the companies behind Common Core are licking their chops to provide that training for everyone.

coldcode 12y ago

Funny how today's leaders in math and programming all learned basic math the old fashioned way; now it's not good enough. Yet no one preaches teaching kids economics, basic taxation and interest rates, and how investing works. So we wind up with people who know math but get fooled by politicians and scammers.

dec0dedab0de 12y ago
Personal accounting should be required from kindergarten.
- fixermark 12y ago
  Really, "home economics" should be a required skill learned by high school (at least in the US). The US is a capitalist society. We do a significant disservice to our citizenry by failing to teach fundamentals of how money works in the public education system.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Yet no one preaches teaching kids economics, basic taxation and interest rates, and how investing works. No one preaches it for much the same reason that no one preaches that people should breath regularly -- its not in dispute. What you ask for has been a standard, noncontroversial part of the curriculum for decades (at least in CA.) Certainly, people do debate whether the way its taught is effective, or that it should be taught earlier or in more depth, as they do with most subjects in the curriculum.
thomasahle 12y ago
Because the same mathematicians and programmers haven't changed anything else in the way they are taught?
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Funny how today's leaders in math and programming all learned basic math the old fashioned way Evidence? Just because they were school age when that was standard doesn't mean that that's how they learned it. School isn't the only place people learn, not all schools follow the normal curriculum (which is, after all, what is mandated for public schools), and even in schools that follow the normal curriculum as a base, not all instruction is limited to it.

cLeEOGPw 12y ago

I think this summarizes all the rails against common core pretty well: http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/21zdln/the_common_core_is_corrupting_school_mathematics/ http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/21zdln/the_common_core...

philbarr 12y ago
Well I'm in the UK and it seems I was taught the "Common Core" way of doing things. All makes sense to me! Right down to using the quadratic formula to solve equations. The "Old" way just looks weird...
- adambard 12y ago
  The joke is that the new "Common Core" standards are presented as the "Old-Fashioned" way, and vice-versa.
- zo1 12y ago
  Read the comments in the Reddit link. It was apparently posted on the 1st of April. Now I'm seriously confused.
- fr0sty 12y ago
  Publishing date of that post was April 1st, for what it's worth...
zo1 12y ago
I just had a look and all the methods that were listed were taught to me as a kid. Then again, I went to "British" schools in the third world when I was a kid, so that might have something to do with it. The methods that the Reddit user was saying was the "normal" way were completely alien to me. Both because they had no instructions, and because I wasn't taught them as a kid/ever.
gjjhjjjhhh 12y ago
OP describes himself as a professional mathematician and then fails to notice that common core produces an identical result in the third picture. (-5/2)-sqrt(57/4) vs (-5-sqrt(57))/2 Looks like op is biased towards one side. So why downvote my comment if it is apparently an April fools post?

syvlo 12y ago

There was this really great documentary talking about the way kids should learn math (and also how useful maths are in today's society): http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1etsod_how-i-came-to-hate-math-comment-j-ai-deteste-les-maths-2013-trailer-english-subs_shortfilms http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1etsod_how-i-came-to-hate-... I don't know if there is an english version of the whole documentary, but if there is, I strongly recommend it (plus, there are strong contributions by Villani who won Fields medal).

FeloniousHam 12y ago

I have experienced this first hand with my daughter (2nd grade). She's doing 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction by breaking the problem into chunks (I tried to cook up an example, but I don't remember how they do it exactly). I learned the "carry way", so the chunk thing seems cumbersome (and I didn't really know how to help her, since I keep reverting to my own proclivities), but it seems to work, and I see the value in the way she deconstructs the problem instead of just doing the mechanics.

tomswartz07 12y ago
I think your experience is exactly how all of these other parents are reacting. It seems that the parents are getting frustrated because they don't understand it, and would rather insist on using their methods. Don't get me wrong, it's valuable to know how to do something simply, but I think that the underpinnings of doing it the 'chunk' way show students how to break very large, seemingly overwhelmingly complex problems into smaller bits.
agumonkey 12y ago
It may be steep at first, but almost every problems involve breaking them into manageable chunks, let's hope it pays on the long run.
- zo1 12y ago
  These are peoples' lives they are affecting. "Hope" and "politics" shouldn't be a part of the decision making process.
  - hga 12y ago
    They could have at least pretended to do some experiments, maybe even with proper controls (yes, that's a radical concept in education "research", e.g. how phonics were tossed in the middle of the last century, resulting in a massive decline in literacy), that showed the Common Core was good before imposing it on the entire nation.

monkmartinez 12y ago

We choose my son's school based on the curriculum. They use Saxon maths, Spalding Reading (which includes phonograms), traditional teaching methods and the children wear uniforms. Its a Charter school and we love it. My son (kindergarten) is loving math and has 2 or 3 worksheets of math a night as homework. A lot of it is just repetition from previous days concepts, but he feels really good showing us how well he knows "1st grade math." Its not really 1st grade math, but its more advanced than the public school kids that live in our neighborhood... AND way less frustrating it seems. I have yet to hear anything good about Common Core from my friends who deal with it on a regular basis. Basis is a school here in Tucson that is one of the top 5 in the country. They use Saxon math as well: http://educationnext.org/high-scores-at-basis-charter-schools/ http://educationnext.org/high-scores-at-basis-charter-school... If my son wants to go to Basis after grade school he will be prepared. If not... he will be so far ahead of the CC kids, we will probably just sign up for classes at the community college. We go here: http://www.legacytraditional.org/district-home/northwest-tucson/ http://www.legacytraditional.org/district-home/northwest-tuc...

zo1 12y ago
I can't tell if you're serious, or trolling?

dkhenry 12y ago

You know when I in my job try something new and it doesn't work out my company might lose a contract or in a really bad case I lose my job. When we as a society decide unilaterally that we are going to change a few century's worth of teaching style for something new we risk raising a generation of children who can't do simple math. I am not worried about if this method is "better" according to research. I am worried if it works, because if it doesn't we will have an entire generation unfit to do anything but manual labor.

gnaritas 12y ago
You're being ruled by fear. Fear is not a place from which good logical decisions are made; if the research says it's better, then it's better; you don't keep doing the worse way just because you're used to it and fearful of anything new.
- dkhenry 12y ago
  This isn't a place for "some research points to this being better" we currently raised millions of children who _can_ do math just fine the current way. Do you want to just change it because someone says they might have found a better way. This is the kind of change that should have happened over _decades_ slowly to prove its self not as one big political push with no real world example of broad success. What happens when it turns out a combination of poor training of teachers and lack of exposure by parents combines to produce an entire generation that can't do the most basic of math problems. Who will be do the STEM work in this country when we don't have enough students who know basic math let alone calculus and beyond. Your betting the future of the American economy and society on this change you better have more proof for it then "we did a study"
  - hga 12y ago
    That was exactly how phonics were tossed in the middle of the last century, resulting in a huge cohort of people no longer being able to read, as scathingly detailed in the 1955 Why Johnny Can't Read (followed in 1958 with a small item in the Reader's Digest, "Why Johnny Can Read in Joplin", my home town; read that in the early-mid '70s from ones my grandmother saved). From memory, it was justified with a study of students at a University of Chicago associated school, i.e. lots of children of professors, they were obviously in the fairly large cohort that just pick up reading on their own. Those who don't were left to the tender mercies of Dick and Jane and their running dog Spot as Jerry Pournelle likes to put it, his wife used to successfully teach reading to the hardest of hard cases, juveniles in criminal detention.

bglazer 12y ago

I think this quote from a parent at the very end of the article is quite telling: "To me, math is numbers, it's concrete, it's black-and-white. I don't understand why you need to bring this conceptual thing into math — at least not at this age." I am not a professional mathematician, but I get the overwhelming impression from professional mathematicians that "this conceptual thing" is really quite important in the big picture of math. To me this reflects a parent who hasn't used mathematical concepts in a real way and who doesn't understand the value in anything but arithmetic. It's the same mindset as people who throw their hands up at algebra because suddenly letters are mixed with numbers and they aren't doing multiplication tables anymore. Edit: I don't mean this as a personal attack. It's just a problem of educating parents. People need to understand that conceptual math and abstract reasoning may seem like strange things to teach children, but that they will, in fact, provide the competitive edge for our kids. Perhaps the Common Core way of teaching this is terrible and makes children cry, but we shouldn't throw it out based on poor implementation.

j2kun 12y ago
I am a professional mathematician, and yes, the parents in these articles will almost always say things that reveal their own fears and misunderstandings of math. This doesn't make the Common Core implementation any better, and part of the reason is that these same parents (people of equivalent mathematical experience) are the ones teaching the kids and writing the state-wide tests and writing the textbooks.

j2kun 12y ago

Why are we worried that elementary school children might misunderstand arithmetic? This is the problem with the Common Core math standards, that they think you need to have a perfect understanding of something before you can move on, and if you have moved on then you have a perfect understanding of everything that came before it. That's just not how math works at any level! Understanding counting and arithmetic and numbers is a continuously evolving process. Children should be exposed to these things: the difference between a number and its representation, alternative ways to understand counting, etc., but to require every student understand all of them before moving on is ridiculous. And likewise, in later grades (even in high school!) one should revisit the concepts they thought they mastered from the different perspectives that their more mature coursework allows them to. There are important things to say about counting and arithmetic from first grade all the way through a PhD.

hga 12y ago
To take this further, isn't one of the most consequential bits of math done in recent times Gödel's (in)famous incompleteness theorems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_...), which are based on the natural numbers?
- j2kun 12y ago
  Not to mention the myriad of open problems in number theory, and the fact that "combinatorics" (the mathematics of counting) is a huge field all by itself.
j2kun 12y ago
My favorite example is this one, in which a man tries to teach the binary number system to third graders http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html The point is he focuses on challenging their understanding of numbers vs representations of numbers, despite the fact that they thought they mastered simple counting in first grade. They come away from this not with a mastery of binary arithmetic but with a better understanding of their usual decimal counting system.

todd8 12y ago

I suffered through this sort of math with my kids. I'm afraid that this may end up being flamebait, but here goes... These reformed Math programs are a tremendous mess being foisted on us by "Education" professionals and academics. Instead of teaching one, well-tested method of performing operations (addition, subtraction, etd.), these programs present a number of alternative "algorithms". In Everyday Math (the program my own kids were taught), the standard methods for multiplication and division were not taught and years of drill using alternative (and inferior) methods were used. This leads to tentative confusion over the way to solve problems. Proficiency with basic multiplication and so forth is downplayed and instead proficiency with calculators is developed. The Education majors (teachers and professors of Education) aren't STEM people themselves. I remember how we, the parents, were lectured (during the parent introduction to these programs) on mathematics and how, we were informed, "there is more than one way to get to an answer" as if this was some astonishing revealed truth. How there was (are you ready for this?) more than one way to do multiplication. Then the teachers would illustrate some method (for example, the Lattice method of paper and pencil multiplication) and with wide and astonished eyes exclaim, "see it gives the SAME result". Now, for those that don't know the Lattice method, its just a method of doing multi-digit multiplication that keeps the intermediate products, which will eventually be summed, in a grid. Many years ago I was taught the standard methods for computing the basic operations because after centuries of use they have become the prefered methods by people that have to work with numbers. That's why adults haven't bothered to learn the Russian Peasant method or the Egyptian method or whatever. So while our kids will struggle with some new text book, fat and full of colorful pictures that will have pictures of ancient pyramids, the kids in Singapore will by using thin, little black and white books full of exercises, written in English. And then, the kids in Singapore will go on to absolutely kick our asses in mathematics. I've used these Singapore math books, somewhere around the summer after third grade, to reteach my own daughter mathematics. A couple of days ago, she just took the Calculus AP exam after her Junior year in high school, no thanks to Everyday Math. Not everything about Everyday Math nor Common Core is bad, but some of it is really bad. It's argued by the people putting these programs in place that they know better and that their programs are supported by research. Have you looked at this supposed research? It's not good. Few well controlled studies done by people in Education departments[1]. The first (so called) research paper listed on the Everyday Math program web site uses Knuth Vol. 3 as justification for studying so many algorithms. It completely misses the point of Vol. 3. It's a book about sorting and searching algorithms. Almost every one of them has some reason for it's use: easy code, fast average performance, fast worst case, works well with a limited number of tape drives (wow!), and so on. This has nothing to do with the desirability of teaching inferior methods of basic calculation to our kids. This paper, which is used to justify some of the core principles of the Everyday Math program is an example of the poor foundation for these reforms to math education in the US. [1] How Brainy Is Your Major: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einstein/201108/how-brainy-is-your-major http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einstei... [2] Algorithms in Everyday Math http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/about/research-results/algorithms.pdf http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/about/research-results/algo...

Shorel 12y ago

It doesn't seem efficient, or very useful to aid understanding. It replaces one operation by many operations. It trades one abstraction by increasing the memory requirements (external memory, in the paper). At least I had finished the subtraction in my head way before I was reading halfway through the 'new' method, in all examples. It would be useful if they students could each design their own favourite subtraction algorithm, and compare notes with fellow students, instead of having to memorize 3 or 4 cookie cutter algorithms.

tokenadult 12y ago

Ooh. 28 submission points for 104 comments. I'm glad that the submitter submitted the article. On the other hand, it may be correct (as is apparently the judgment of most participants here) that the article just isn't that informative. See an important article from The Atlantic, "Confusing Math Homework? Don’t Blame the Common Core: States, districts, and schools are actually in charge"[1] for more on what's really going in classrooms around the country. Some of the comments here refer to a period of "reform math" instruction BEFORE the introduction of the Common Core State Standards in mathematics,[2] which are actually quite recent. Implementation of the Common Core in school classrooms in the United States is only a year or two old today. The Common Core was an attempt to introduce coherency and logical progression into the mishmash of topics that characterized "reform math" textbooks such as Everyday Math (which is probably the best and most mathematically sound of the reform math textbooks) and TERC: Investigations, among other titles. The Common Core standards are generally regarded, as curriculum standards, as a plain improvement over what most states set as mathematics curriculum standards before.[3] On the other hand, many of the mathematics who criticized the preceding period of "reform math" instruction (basically most United States school practice in the twenty-first century) think that the current Common Core textbooks and teacher training courses still don't go far enough in improving instruction. As a parent, I expect and welcome school instruction in any topic that is better and more research-based than what I received as a child. The quotations from parents in the article kindly submitted here along the lines of "Why should my child be expected to learn things I don't understand?" seems like a very bizarre approach to parenting to me. (As a homeschooling parent, I used the Miquon Math[4] and Singapore Primary Mathematics series[5] with great success in helping my four children learn their elementary mathematics. They have been able to go on to more advanced mathematics study with relative ease. I had to learn new topics and new techniques to use those materials, but that is good for me. I was lucky that my wife, educated in Taiwan, largely understands the approach taken in the Singapore materials, but so far both of our older two sons have gone well beyond the mathematics study level of either of their parents. Education is supposed to improve from generation to generation, or what are schools for? (That's why we homeschool--we lay a good foundation for our children with the best available curricular materials to get them ready for classes with teachers who know what they are doing for our children's secondary education.) [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/confusing-math-homework-don-t-blame-the-common-core/360064/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/confusi... [2] http://www.corestandards.org/Math/ http://www.corestandards.org/Math/ [3] http://educationnext.org/the-common-core-math-standards/ http://educationnext.org/the-common-core-math-standards/ [4] http://miquonmath.com/ http://miquonmath.com/ [5] http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_US_Ed_s/39.htm http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_US_Ed_s/39....

chrismcb 12y ago

I don't know much about core math, but what are is the "context" the parents are missing? It seems to me that the homework is going to pretty hard to solve if it doesn't contain the complete "context." Or is he referring to some terminology that the parents probably don't know? Why is this context missing, or not available to the parents, if nothing else via the text book or handouts? And how many different ways is there to add two numbers?

Rusky 12y ago

The goal of Common Core is a good one. But the research was not nearly thorough enough. The curriculum was adopted all at once instead of giving it any testing. And at least in my area, students must take the math class at their age level, at least through elementary school. Now students that excel at math get bored and hate it, and students who need extra help can't get it. That is the wrong way to improve education.