I'm curious whether I am the only one whose child is being allowed not to show work. I really do mean that. She can hand in papers with nothing but the answer, even in cases where one pretty inevitably does "work", such as those involving multidigit x multidigit multiplication (DD often will scratch these out on some random scrap of paper that is handy and not pollute her HW with it). Not only that, the teacher will sometimes instruct them to cross out portions of the HW that enforce tedious work-showing.
I also recently found out that kids in this class can take pretests and test out of any math unit (they get computer work instead). DD just hadn't bothered to tell me this. I don't always hear much from her!
This is indeed very unusual. Your DD has a unusual teacher and has not been corrupted by the commmon core standard. Explaining your work has been taken to a whole new level with common core. It literally means using English to explain your reasoning for every little thing from Kindergarten math and up. All in the mistaken view of this somehow teaches deeper understanding.
At the same time, showing the relevant steps in math calculation and particularly in word problems are good and often necessary when the problems get hard. I have no issues with that and will encourage my child to do that.
