Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Common Core website updated

The Common Core website has been updated, and no longer states that CCSS are "internationally benchmarked". Rather it now states that CCSS are "Informed by other top-performing countries to prepare all students for success in our global economy and society". The names of the countries are not provided.

The math page describes math through grade 8, and high school math expectations are not listed.

Addressing high school expectations, R. James Milgram and Sandra Stotsky authored a paper in Sept 2013, Lowering the Bar: How Common Math Fails to Prepare Students for STEM. Milgram and Stotsky are two of the committee members who did not sign off on common core.

The Common Core website lists a set of facts/myths, about which some have said each myth is a straw man.

A different set of facts/myths can be downloaded and read here.

Thanks for this post Indigo. I read "Lowering the Bar" with my morning coffee. Common Core aims high school kids at Algebra II as their final secondary math class? And uses community college admissions standards as the trajectory for all of the required course sequences? I have heard a lot of rumblings about Common Core in the last year but mainly in the area of idiotic math worksheet questions. I haven't really paid attention because my kids go to private school and my state hasn't adopted Common Core (yet.)

Everyone should read this paper. It is chilling. Our schools are "racing to the top" of community college and almost every state is buying textbooks written to these standards. The ripple effect across education will be unavoidable.

Now David Coleman, the architect of Common Core, is rewriting the SAT to align it with Common Core. Lower level math, less abstruse vocabulary questions (too easy to prep!), more reading and construing "foundational documents." It's not clear what the SAT will test when all is said and done, but it may only show community college readiness.

Depressing. I think homeschooled kids are going to have a distinct educational advantage in the coming years.

That is easily demonstrated untrue. Common Core contains standards for post-Algebra II concepts like trig functions, vector math, and statistics.

Also, just because it doesn't describe a standard for derivatives, doesn't mean the school can't teach calculus. When we're talking about standards, we're talking about minimums. We're describing a floor, not a ceiling.

The Pioneer Institute has a known political bias, so keep that in mind.

I've been looking for sources, can you point me to where you find these standards?

I've been looking for statements along those lines from common core, but have found none. Instead the message I have found from common core is a video which values uniformity. If you have found statements from common core sources which state the standards are a floor, not a ceiling, would you please share them?

http://www.corestandards.org/Math/


http://wunc.org/post/fact-check-clearing-7-common-core-claims


If you look in the standards, you'll see that Algebra I is described as 8th grade math. Traditionally, anyone expecting to take calculus in high school would have to take Algebra I no later than 8th grade.

Beyond 8th grade, everything is simply described as "high school math," and broken down by concepts rather than course descriptions. That leaves the discretion to the curriculum developers and states/school districts over which concepts will be taught in which courses.

The problem with minimum standards in education is that they rapidly become the goal. With a lack of funding across the board, schools focus their money on meeting the minimums and cut everything that doesn't have to do with that. That's how NCLB became No Child Gets Ahead.

Here's all I have to say about CC at this point. Get the high school and middle school kids (who actually ARE a college material) ready for college, but don't feed it to the little elementary kids who should first learn to love learning and not be compared to benchmarks all year long.

Just to add. I don't really have a problem with CC standards themselves, I don't find them at all too demanding. But I have serious issues with how they are implemented, especially when it comes to teaching little kids.

Here's how it went down in my district: The curriculum folk and the math leaders heard the pomp and circumstance of "rigor" and "depth" and *freaked out*. They saw it as being way too hard for the kids in this district (44% rate IDd as cognitively or academically gifted by state standards). They therefore put the kids on the absolute slowest track such that you can't get much past Algebra II without either (1) placing into gifted in 3rd grade (~5% of students), or (2) passing a tough test in 6th grade to take a 2-year class that they tell the kids over and over again will Be Really Hard and A Lot Of Work. About 10% of kids elected that route.

I'm sitting here with undergrads wanting to major in STEM fields, and they can't get the prerequisites done to even start the major. And now, at least for the implementation here, only a small fraction of our very smart kids will enter college with the math they need to even consider these majors.


Implementation is done very locally. While I will rant and rave endlessly at the decisions our district made for 6-12 implementation, they did a great job in K-5. Kids are thriving, with access to interesting and challenging work when they're ready, supported with stepping stones to understanding until then.

Standards are not curriculum.

That phrase, out of context, would give me pause as well.
Some may say the duplication of assigning Algebra I to 8th grade and 9th grade makes 8th grade Algebra 1 a useless placeholder, rather than a clear steppingstone to more rigorous curriculum. That said, common core has changed its website several times, possibly in response to such feedback.

Agreed!