The internets have been abuzz with the parent who mocked common core math by sending his school a check written in “common core” form.
Pretty typically of reporting standards nowaday (IMO) none of the articles I have read have explained exactly what technique he is meant to be using on the check, and why it is used in place of more traditional methods. I am guessing it may a technique for long multiplication?
Any ideas?
Just a clarification, but the Common Core is a set of standards, along the lines of “by grade X, children shall be able to do Y”. It does not specify any particular method or teaching technique.
It began as a bipartisan effort by the National Governor’s Association to synch up stnadards between states in order to learn from best practices, make it easier to develop and share teaching mterials, and deal with some of the issues that come up when students transfer to a different state. Somewhere along the line, it got turned into a political bogeyman, and now people claim basically everything they don’t like is “Common Core.”
So this is not a “Common Core” technique, because such a thing does not exist.
The boxes on the “pay in the amount of” line is making fun of the array and area model, which you can see here, in a description of its use in New York’s Common Core programming.
http://greatminds.net/maps/math/video-gallery/array-and-area-models
Which was the way multiplication was done before the printing press was invented in many cultures.
Everyone says that and they can say it all day long but in practice it’s bullshit. My daughter gets math homework that I don’t understand and I majored in Math in college. Her homework says ‘common core’ at the bottom of the page. I can google it and find the exact same problems online (sometimes even the same worksheet). Many (most? all?) teachers around the country are using not just the same methods but the same exact homework.
Last year I would spend time helping my daughter with her homework just to see it get marked wrong because I didn’t understand it. She got it wrong because I misunderstood a webpage or watched a bad youtube video. I can’t tell you how many times I talked to (well, at) her teacher and said something along the lines of ‘you can’t give her this for homework if she doesn’t know how to do it, it’s so different then how ‘we’ learned it that I can’t help her with it’ or when I would just see red pen that said ‘wrong, please redo’ and I’d have to go, again, and speak to the teacher and tell her that if all she does is mark something wrong my kid still can’t fix it since she still doesn’t know what the problem is.
Anyways, that was partially a teacher issue, but it’s also a CC issue. If common core is ‘just a set of standards’ then they have to stop publishing worksheets and curriculums. And those effin dots. I’m so sick of dots. Every year, more dots. I know one of the problems with CC is that it slows down the more accelerated kids but I just can’t believe kids are getting anywhere with all these dots.
For example, right now she’s learning place values. So she has the number 6,345. She has columns labeled thousands, hundreds, tens and ones. No problem, respectively, she puts a 6 in the first column, then a 3, 4 and 5 in the others. But then, below that, she has to put 6 dots, then 3 dots, then 4 dots then 5 dots. WTF. Now, I really have an issue with intermediate steps, whether it’s a balance bike or puppy pads or using ‘place value disks’. IMO, that just slows everything down and makes them work so much harder.
I can keep going. But in the end, just WRT your comment, I understand what it’s supposed to be, but it’s not what it is. Listen to the parents of kids in CC schools. The system is terrible. It doesn’t matter if it’s just the way it’s being implemented, if it’s a systemic problem, if it’s over burdened teachers that don’t have time to come up with their own lessons any more (that’s what I hear from all the teachers in my family). Whatever it is, something is deeply wrong. In the end, the kids are, IMO, suffering over it. Just in my household, I can’t help my own kid with 4th (or even at the time 3rd) grade math anymore. I’ve given up. If she can’t answer it, I make a note on the worksheet or email the teacher to say that we couldn’t finish the homework because she didn’t understand it. I’m usually one of those ‘standing right by the door when the bell rings’ parents, so the teachers always have a chance to talk to me and they’re welcome to say ‘ya know, we did talk about this in class, she may have missed it or not understood it’. And I’m open to that and I’m happy to tell them that it’s totally possible, but they need to understand that us parents can’t help the kids when we don’t understand anything. I hope that other parents do similar things so that the complaints work their way up to TPTB.
If I had the money, I’d gladly toss my kid in a non-CC private school.
Even, I think you’ll recall that youtube rant a few years ago that really kicked this all off. That’s how they do math now, that’s how they ALL do it. Again, CC might be just a set of standards, but watch that youtube video, that’s ass-backwards way they’re teaching it now. To us parents at home, when we hear “common core” that’s all we think of. If it was just a set of standards, if it was just ‘Susie has to now X by grade Y’ but everything else stays the same, no one would care. Instead it now takes 17 steps to do 13 take away 10 because you have to draw a bunch of dots, and some lines and I think hop on one foot and summon a witch doctor if it involves carrying anything.
Sorry, I know, long rant, but this subject really annoys me. It really bothers me that I can’t help my daughter with a subject I was really looking forward to helping her with.
Here’s the video
Then what are the Xs and 0s on the right?
A basic area grid like the one on the left of the check would just be teaching basic multiplication to a younger kid, right? Visualizing 5x2 as two rows of 5 dots doesn’t seem too mind bending to me.
So the problem is 5x2 so you write
xxxxx
xxxxx
5x2=10
and you get it right.
However, if the problem is 5x2 (same as above) and your 7 year old writes
xx
xx
xx
xx
xx
5x2=10
or
xxxxx
xxxxx
10
or
5+5=10
or
2+2+2+2+2=10
or anything else that wasn’t exactly
xxxxx
xxxxx
5x2=10
it would be marked wrong, period.
Might seem easy, but remember this is for a 7-9 year old. On top of that, if it’s part of a word problem, they have to figure out which way to make the array. Get backwards, the problem is wrong.
I sort of feel bad for the teachers that had to count all these dots which, since they’re drawn by little kids, aren’t in a straight line, get tighter as they close to the end of the page, run up into the words or wrap to the next line as they hunt for more space, are half erased because they made to many etc. It must be a royal PITA.
That doesn’t explain why there are four Os and three Xs next to the grid.
Hugs and kisses for the teacher. 
I’m sorry that you and your daughter are having a right time, but that still doesn’t change the facts around the Common Core.
“They” don’t publish anything besides the standards themselves. What you are seeing are worksheets and videos that someone created that they claim is aligned with the Common Core. Stamping “Common Core” on something doesn’t really mean much, and any publisher is basically free to do so (and every publisher does). All “Common Core” stamped on something means is that the publisher is marketing it as such.
Your school has every option in the world to teach them the old way, the new way, with an abacus, with Roman numerals, in Pig Latin, whatever they choose as long as long as they are teaching the basic concepts at the right time.
For reference, here are the 4th grade standards:
http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/4/introduction/
That’s it. No dots. No worksheets. Just a set of standards. Schools are free to use whatever methods they choose to reach them. All decisions on curriculum are made at the state or local level.
There are people out there that are using falsehoods about the Common Core to distract from the actual problems in education. It’s a shame, because the actual Common Core is a common sense, bipartisan, state-led effort.
The good news is, if your school is using crappy curriculum, you don’t need to fight the Common Core. You just need to get your state or district to choose a bit better.
I’m thinking that was just his way to write ‘and no cents’ and make it look even more complicated. I’m not a fan of taking things to far like that. It hurts your cause.
Be that as it may, as I said earlier in this thread and in other threads, it really doesn’t matter what they’re allowed to teach, I’m telling you what they ARE teaching. It’s difficult for the students, it’s difficult for the teachers (from the ones I’ve spoken to) and it’s difficult for the parents. It looks like CC was adopted around the time my kid got into kindergarten. When did all these new ways of teaching math come about? If they started years earlier, that’s one thing. If they came about with CC, who do we blame?
Something’s gotta give. A while back, someone I was talking to about this said the rec center was doing a class on math, for parents, to help their grade school kids. I told her I’m not going taking a remedial night school math class to get me to a 3-4th grade level. Sorry. Either they can do a better job of teaching it in the schools or scrap the program. The parents sure as shit shouldn’t have to relearn how to, literlly, add and subtract 1 and 2 digit numbers because we don’t know how to do it the ‘right’ way anymore.
Poking around online, I see her worksheets say “commoncore.org”. Going to that site redirectes you to greatminds.net. Greatminds has no mention whatsoever of Common Core. CC’s site is corestandards.ord. So, you’re right, they are basically ‘tricking’ you into thinking it’s CC.
I dunno, blame them for the problem. I’m still not sure how to fix it, the worksheets that so many teachers use seem to be part of the new curriculum and talking to teachers even they don’t like the new way math is done, but it seems to come from the district.
You had a kid recently, right? Are you living in the US? Maybe you’ll understand in a few years that no matter how loud you say ‘it’s just a set of standards’ it doesn’t matter when your kid is sitting at home crying because she doesn’t understand her math homework and apparently you don’t know how to do basic subtraction anymore or don’t know which way to make the dots or have never heard of a math sentence or a tape diagram. Again, I get it, it’s just a set of standards, but somehow it got pretty closely integrated with a new way of teaching and it’s causing a huge disconnect between parents and schools.
I can’t imagine it can go on for too much longer before something breaks.
Except for this part:
Which says kids do have to learn the arrays and area models.
If you don’t like the textbooks, then blame the textbook publishers. But it’s a bit odd that you didn’t complain about them before, because most of them haven’t actually changed their teaching methods. Most of what’s complained about as “common core math” is the same techniques that kids have been taught for at least three decades.
They (at least my kid) don’t have text books. Just worksheets. Also, I’m 34 and certainly didn’t learn these techniques.
My kid is in 4th grade, at one point (last year?) they were taught how to do ‘normal’ addition that involved carrying a one…the next week an apology was sent home by the teacher for going beyond the scope of the class. I don’t think she’s yet been taught ‘normal’ subtraction and I’m sure she hasn’t done any kind of subtraction that involves borrowing.
I get so frustrated each year when I see her first set of math homework show up, open it and see a worksheet full of dots and arrays and basic addition and realize it’s the same crap she’s been doing for years.
Common Core/Great Minds is a not for profit company that has contracts with various states to make educational material that meets Common Core standards. Basically (and I’m oversimplifying here), New York State adopted Common Core and then realized that they didn’t actually have any way to teach it. They did, however, have a federal Race to the Top grant. So the New York State education department offered like 28 million in grants to develop a Common Core curriculum. The big textbook companies didn’t bite, partly because it takes a while to design a textbook and partly for financial reasons, so these four companies: Expeditionary Learning, Core Knowledge, Great Minds, and Public Consulting Group, most of whom didn’t really have much experience in curriculum design, came up with educational material for New York to meet the standards.
New York adopted it, and so did a bunch of other states, because, hey, those companies were putting stuff out and most other places weren’t, and New York State had already signed off on it, so, you know, they couldn’t be too terrible. So that’s how those four companies managed to corner the Common Core materials market.
People are pretty much always are going to have difficulty understanding a method that’s different than the way they learned. I remember when my poor kids were in grade school and my mother would try to help them with their homework. They learned one way at school, and came home and had Grandma showing them something different. And then I’d walk in , and didn’t understand any of it because I had learned using a third method.
I’m sure that back in the early '70s , my mother had just as hard a understanding intersecting and empty sets, and base 6 and all that other stuff as today’s parents have understanding today’s methods. I’m equally sure that plenty of my contemporaries couldn’t understand why our kids spent so much time learning how to estimate when they could have just actually done the math and gotten the right answer, dammit.
Joey, some of the stuff you describe seems a little crazy to me - like
xxxxx
xxxxx
5x2=10 is correct but
xx
xx
xx
xx
xx
5x2=10 is wrong - but there were crazy teachers before common core and in subjects other than math. My personal favorite was the social studies teacher whose assignments consisted of reading a chapter and answering the questions at the end- but after each answer, the students had to give the page, column and paragraph where they found the answer. No reason to think your daughter’s teacher would be any less picky about acceptable answers in the absence of Common Core.
So why couldn’t they adopt the standards (which aren’t unreasonable from the little I’ve glanced at them over the years) with textbooks/worksheets/curriculum that didn’t overhaul the way math is taught?
Maybe the ‘something that’s gotta give’ will be a new player in the market that will go back to the old way, but still meet the new standards.
But it’s not just the way math is taught, I’ve spoken to plenty of teachers that hate CC. Many of them say they spend more time doing CC related paperwork and testing than actual teaching. I know some that have brought on TAs just to help out with that. My aunt, that’s been teaching for 25ish years (and can’t wait to retire) said she’s seen many brand new, fresh out of school, teachers end up quitting after a few semesters because they can’t stand it. They don’t like the paperwork, they don’t like teaching ‘for the tests’, the stress of the CC system is to deal with and they get burned out very quickly.
It bugged me too because multiplication is commutative. But this is the arrays that were spoken of earlier. 5x2 is 5 rows of 2, not 2 columns of 5, so the second example is wrong. IMO, it shouldn’t matter since they’re learning multiplication not matrices. There were quite a few times when my daughter would be working on a problem such as 5x2 and start counting in 2,4,6… and I’d say ‘what’s easier 2+2+2+2+2 or 5+5, it’s the same, you can do it either way’. With such basic multiplication, again IMO, they should be taught that you can turn it around to make it easier. However, they never got to the ‘you don’t have to show your work’ point. I’m not sure who to blame that one on, but being a ‘math person’, I’ll teach her the tricks so at least she can come up with the answer she knows she needs to work towards or to check her work.
There are well over a hundred publishers with textbooks/worksheets/curriculum that are aligned to the standards now. A few big outfits have an outsize share of the market, but there are plenty of other options. Unfortunately, a lot of schools go for “the one everyone else is using” or “the one with the good salesman.”
Most of that isn’t “CC” paperwork; it’s NCLB (No Child Left Behind). Parents and politicians DEMAND that schools are seen to be doing well (which, of course, isn’t quite the same thing as actually doing well). Showing that the school is making Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB requires data, and that means paperwork and testing.
Teachers can lose their jobs, and schools can be shuttered, if they don’t make good scores on the tests. That means the tests have become the goal. They are what matters.
2014 was the “deadline” year when all districts were supposed to be able to show all students performed at grade level. (In reality, pretty much every state got some sort of waiver.) That deadline roughly coincides with the adoption of Common Core in many states, but the two really aren’t related.