Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Common Core

Our school system rolled out common core district wide, and so far I like it. Unlike some other school systems, we kept our GT program so what seems to be happening is "increased rigor" in the GT classes.

It's hard to know how it will play out. We have algebra 1 in 7th grade for GT and kids in the top 10-15 percentiles are eligible. But so far, so good.

Has anyone else started core curriculum? If so, how is your school district handling it with GT?

Our district is rolling out the common core math this year, and I think language arts and social studies next year.

Oh, your people are talking about rigor too. Ours never define what rigor is, but they say it a lot. The meetings for parents about the new math curriculum basically boiled down to the presenters saying "rigor rigor rigor" until the word lost all meaning. It got funny, but also weird and unconvincing.

They have purchased Math in Focus for elementary, replacing Everyday Math, likely an improvement. Pearson's Digits for the middle school, jury is still out on that one. The user interfaces for the online materials are VERY poorly designed from what we have seen so far, and the server's been down several times already at homework time. The high school curriculum will be phased in year by year, and we're not there yet, so I don't know about those materials yet.

All kids should now be getting the equivalent of algebra 1 (not called that, called Common Core 8) in 8th grade; identified-and-served GT kids will get it in 7th, unless they are grade-accelerated to move faster than that. They are saying they are going to increase access to the accelerated curriculum, which will be good, but there is still a problem in that the accelerated path still starts egregiously late, with many adept children champing at the bit until 4th grade. There will be three chances to accelerate in the new plan: compacting 4-5 into one year (in 4th); compacting 7-8 into one year (7th) and taking a double math period in high school. They have not said whether they would let someone do both of the first two compacting options; I assume they would if the child tested convincingly high.

The math teachers at the high school are strongly in favor of the Common Core, and really excited (about the rigor . Our family is willing to go along and give it a shot, knowing that our own kids will learn math no matter what, and we are prepared to speak up knowledgeably on behalf of all kids if we start to not like the way it looks.

DeeDee

Hopefully they will tell the kids all about rigor too so that they become properly socialized to the use of oversaturated buzzwords. You can't start too early.

That way when they get into the corporate meetings the overuse of buzzwords will bring them back to the happy, carefree days of their childhood.

Oddly enough, some of the HS math teachers in our district are against compacting and acceleration in MS. One HS math teacher made the comment, "We'll run out of math for them." (face palm) Some HS administration shun the idea of Algebra in 6th-7th grade as well knowing that by the time the student is a Jr. / Sr. in HS the district will be paying for that student to go to a local college to take Calc. II and or Calc III. This is when as a parent you've got to be the squeaky wheel and insist.

You're killing me here!!

Standards-based... skills... success... goal-oriented... increased.... leveraged... tool...benchmark... quality... self-reflection... orienting... outcomes...


ahhh, if only I'd had such early conditioning these terms would make me feel happy and secure rather than irritable.

********************************

Our school is just starting the rollout of CC. They are also replacing EDM, which I concur can probably only be a good thing. (snicker) It is unfortunate that they are replacing it with yet another (probably deeply flawed) Pearson math product. I've come to the conclusion that Pearson should stick to publishing science and humanities textbooks for primary and secondary, and leave the math to a publishing house that has a better idea how to teach the subject.

But I digress.

CC won't really impact us much since DD will be in her final year of high school next year. From what I can tell, the r-word keeps cropping up. What little I've seen, however, indicates that they have no better idea what constitutes "rigor" than they ever have.

Maybe they mean it in Latin instead of English? Hmm.

Well, that would certainly explain a great deal, I must say.

This is almost worth starting an Ultimate JonLaw-ism Thread (anyone may contribute provided a message is simultaneously satirically witty and directly on target).

Seriously, this one is worthy of recognition.

I tend to think that when they say rigor they really mean lots of homework.

Oh, I think they intend the Latin meaning. Harsh. Inflexible. Unyielding. Stoic and flinty.

Rubric. That seems to be the other r-word that I keep seeing/hearing during these conversations. It irritates me, too. Probably since it always seems to accompany yet another conversation about belling this particular cat and "tracking the program's success with measurable outcomes."

I'm sure that if I just meditate on a buzzword list, I can learn to appreciate this sort of rhetoric better. I can target self-improvement as my planned outcome. I'll evaluate that with self-reflection later. I wonder if I need a self-reflection rubric? I probably should see if any committees have provided a tool for me to use.

Indeed. The beatings will continue until morale improves. None of us liked math, so none of you will like it, either.

DeeDee

Oh, the secondary math teachers in our district have also been leading the charge against acceleration. Our elementary school high ability program used to "feed" about 30% of our kids into 6th grade Algebra...30% of our kids into 6th grade Pre-Algebra...and 30% of our kids into a "regular" 6th grade math class that was designed to lead into 7th grade Pre-Algebra (percentages are rounded...blah blah blah...I know that only equals 90%). Our high school math teachers started complaining that kids weren't developmentally ready for Algebra as 6th graders and that they were "topping out" of math classes too soon since they were still required by the state to have four math classes in high school. We (as the elementary GT teachers) were told by the high school math teachers that the only kids who would need the highly-advanced math classes in high school available to kids who had started with Algebra in 6th grade were kids who were going into advanced math-related careers, and 5th grade was way too early for kids and parents to be making the decision to travel down that path. So, back to a math curriculum that is an inch deep and a mile wide for most of those kids in 4th and 5th grade. My district loves rigor, but only rigor that is convenient for administrators and doesn't require additional expenditures and class sizes of fewer than 20 students.

Our school district here in the northwest suburbs of Chicago has done the same. The exception is the Magnet program which my daughters in. Almost all those 6th graders take algebra. Mine is in fifth grade and takes pre-algebra. There are also neighborhood kids probably 10% in sixth grade taking pre algebra. This is actually a step up for the district. One of the junior highs(seventh and eight grade)actually teaches the advanced algebra you take before Calculus. I thought this was crazy but my daughter knows a sixth grade boy in her homeroom class that had algebra last year and has Geometry this year. They bus him to the junior high. Also the high school course offerings correspond with what the K-8 school district is doing,

I'd advise you to e-mail administration with great praise concerning what you've written, it's unusual and admirable. Also beware in a couple of years of the backlash from the HS on just what a couple of us have discussed, HS math teachers trying to make a case to get rid of such acceleration using statements unsupported by data or studies.

We were blessed, the whole school district that both our DSs went / go to school in is on one campus, 4 elementary schools, 1 intermediate school (5-6) 1 MS (7-9) and 1 HS with a Community College right across the street....which all simplifies subject / grade acceleration as well as students at the HS taking college classes when they've topped out on a subject.

I'm a social studies teacher, and my adjustment to my existing curriculum to accommodate the Common Core literacy standards in my class involved changing the word "stance" to "claim".

Officially, my school neither confirms nor denies that it provides any services to allegedly gifted students. Unofficially, the Common Core will streamline my instructions on Challenge Assignments for students who are trying to stretch from Proficient to Advanced.

Our state has adopted Common Core, which is supposed to make things uniform across the country. Our districts are providing the ability in some cases for the students to take 7th grade Algebra. However, each district has its own requirements on the requirements for the 7th grade Algebra -- one district, for example, is compacting 6th/7th curriculum, while another has compacted 5th and 6th. If you move one county over in middle school, your kid has the potential to be hosed!

According to the College Board, which collects fees for AP tests taken, a sign of "increased rigor" is more students taking AP exams, as they explain at http://apreport.collegeboard.org/goals-and-findings/increasing-rigor .

We fielded some inquiries from one of the HS teachers about "why we were pushing DS ahead," but once she got to know him a little and was made aware of his test scores, she understood his deal and had no objections to his acceleration plan. Indeed, she became a strong supporter. She warned me that we might have similar inquiries from other folks at the HS about what he will be doing there as a seventh grader.

Apparently there are lots of parents in our district who really do push their kids past what the kids can do into situations where they can't quite keep up with the math they've been accelerated to. Probably a regular feature of living in a high SES, tiger-momming district these days. I think this is a genuine reason for districts to take care with each child's placement-- I have seen the parents pressuring the kids, and it's pretty horrifying-- but not an appropriate reason for districts or high schools to be dogmatically against acceleration.

Nuanced policy appears to be hard for people.

DeeDee

Master of none, I started a thread last spring about the meaning of rigor. It's the new buzz word for the common core, and as far as I can tell, it now lacks meaning.

The switch from "mile wide and an inch deep" to "an inch wide and a mile deep" is problematic for those kids who, given and inch, will take a mile.

Our district is not starting CC math at the elementary level until next week, because training for the teachers didn't start until last week, finishing up today. So already, my 2nd grader is getting less math by nature of the inch wide, but at least with a month less of instruction time.


We're finding that DD has to prove herself every year, and we're not yet dealing with the high school. It's sad to think that the high school teachers don't trust the elementary school administration's judgment, particularly considering how conservative they are in allowing accelerations.


This jury is back from deliberations with two thumbs down. It's very similar in approach to Everyday Math, made worse by online pre-algebra homework where half the questions are multiple choice. Multiple choice is the cop out for a poorly implemented system in my book. Worse, reference materials (formerly known as a textbook) are now scattered across two sections of the website, a workbook, and the teacher notes - to be downloaded from a different website.

That approach has been around for a loooooong time. Even within schools, implementation has been patchy. With Common Core it may be more of a case of allowing good instruction than pushing it, but a great deal still depends on the administration of the district and school or the training and personal philosophy of the teacher.

Our science classes have always been taught that way, and our school district just agreed to implement Common Core last spring - so it's no where near being rolled out to actual classrooms. I'm wondering if the difference you've seen is really CC, or is it a difference in a marginal vs good science teacher?

polarbear

This is the first year for CC in our district too. I don't have much to compare it too--we came in March from a Montessori school and dd11 finished 5th grade here, which was not challenging, and has skipped to 7th. My impression is that for the advanced content classes, it really hasn't changed that much. I think the teachers were already approaching their subjects this way. The only real difference seems to be math, but I believe HS math already goes through MV calc. and AP statistics, and I suspect if a kid was beyond that they would be open to some kind of independent study or something. My dd is in the 3rd level (out of 4) of math so as long as she does well this year she will take algebra in 8th.

For dd5, the change in kindergarten is no more centers (?). I don't know exactly what that looked like last year, but parents are bummed because apparently during center time they had parent volunteers to facilitate and because of CC they aren't doing that anymore, so parents don't get as many opportunities in the classroom. I am biding my time to ask about what assesments they have done and how they are differentiating. Dd seems happy so far, and seems to actually be learning some new things.

I learned that our district is adopting Common Core for math next year. I'm a little concerned reading this thread that it is just the latest trend. I recall 5-6 years ago that everyone was switching to Investigations and Everyday Math. Now, "poof" those are out and CC is in. Don't get me wrong, I won't be sad to say good-bye to Investigations. I'm just worried that this is another stab in the dark with my kids as guinea pigs.

Welcome to the world of American edumacation. Remember whole language reading? Math problems with no right answer? Freeform writing (or whatever they called it) where correcting spelling and grammar mistakes would damage a child's precious self-esteem?

The US education system is based on a deeply flawed set of ideas. For example, schools and NCLB push the dogma that everyone can achieve age-grade level standards. When it becomes clear that some kids aren't achieving grade-level standards at the "correct" age, the problem must be the curriculum.

It couldn't possibly be that some kids need to work more slowly.

Of course not.

Because that would be something that can't be "fixed" easily. Er-- or not with the current system, anyway.

So what if following the latest fad diet isn't a solution for students?

Atkins Common Core isn't about that. It's about rigor.

Rigor henceforth shall be designated that process by which administrators and peripheral education staffers are kept happy and productively engaged doing... things... and being paid.

My impression was that Common Core is not a curriculum (although it will surely trigger publication of new textbooks), per se, but a set of common standards. In that case, comparing it to Everyday Math is an apples to oranges comparison. Previously, states (and districts) each developed their own standards of learning expectations for each grade level. In addition to making movement between districts or states smoother, it (Common Core) may also be motivated by assessment. The next step is new standardized tests based on the Common Core Standards - for us, this test will replace the NCLB test our state has been using for years. Thus, it will be possible to compare test scores between districts and states, using the same tests and knowing they have targeted the same set of standards.

I really wish this turns out to be true. But I'm dubious, because the political and other stakes are too high. The cynic in me thinks "The same people are still in charge; they've mostly found ways to get around attempts at meaningful evaluation in the past, and they'll find a way to get around it again with Common Core."

A new curriculum (or set of standards; whatever you want to call it) and buzzwords like RIGOR! won't change deeply flawed mindsets like everyone can be proficient at the same stuff at the same age and everyone should go to college.

The common core website ( http://www.corestandards.org/ ) touts it as only skill/learning outcomes. From their Q&A:
Q: Will the common core state standards keep local teachers from deciding what or how to teach?
A: No. The Common Core State Standards are a clear set of shared goals and expectations for what knowledge and skills will help our students succeed. Local teachers, principals, superintendents and others will decide how the standards are to be met. Teachers will continue to devise lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms. Local teachers, principals, superintendents, and school boards will continue to make decisions about curriculum and how their school systems are operated.

Or, for that matter, that every group of two or more educators requires at least one full-time administrator to tell them what to do, and when, and how. Every year.

I have just learned that DD's math curriculum is Common Core- based. For some reason I am hating the way the book is written this year when I had no problems with it last year (same series). It's not about the actual problems, but poor writing style. However, I think the pace and material covered are pretty good. DD is working exactly a year ahead.

Through Googling, I have learned that this book is hated by teachers for moving too fast and being too hard. So maybe not great for most kids, but it may be that Common Core is indeed a step up in terms of rigor? (rigor rigor rigor)

At the parent meetings about Common Core here, the parents of slower learners were in a panic because their kids *were* being shoved ahead faster in the new curriculum, and the transition is going to be very rough on those kids. (They were in "slower moving classes" before and will now be thrown in with everyone else. How is that going to be for them? They are starting behind.) I think that concern is very real in how CC is being implemented here.

And the parents of faster learners were worried that the path to calculus in high school was still not smooth enough for kids not IDd as gifted. Also valid from how I see the details of the implementation.

The district is not treating CC as lockstep, but even so, it does hold most kids to a higher/faster standard than it did previously, and yes, I think that is more or less what is meant by rigor. (igor igor). Algebra 1 by 8th grade for most kids. They want all kids through Algebra II by the end of high school.

They have put in some 25 min. of extra class time a day at the MS for the kids who need extra support. I hope that works to keep most people on track, because I think it will be stressful for the kids for whom it doesn't.

I am interested in developing a flexible, humane educational system that has standards but also admits of individual need and individual difference. In all ways.

DeeDee

Sounds good to me.

I really don't envy teachers. At all. It must be very difficult to constantly readjust to these new systems being thrown at you every other week.

The teachers seemed to feel that they were getting adequate training and would deal.

I'd say fully 90% of the parents at these meetings were disgruntled, confused, or terrified. This in a district that, by and large, for most populations*, does a good job of producing educated kids.

To me, that says that even here, parents aren't sure what's going on in their school, are unsure of what their kids need and how to get it. The overall level of anxiety about education in this country is so high.

Ech.

DeeDee

*I won't get started on the exceptions here.

MON, fascinating. I will be watching for that. We have heard not a word about the discovery method. We have heard about a cycle of direct instruction, practice, testing of mastery, repeat as needed, which sounds like the opposite of discovery method.

I believe Common Core does not mandate how the content is to be taught, only specifying what should be mastered by the end of each grade-- the teaching method seems like something that districts can choose.

DeeDee

My younger kids (4th/5th) have been doing parts of speech since first or second grade. I don't know if their school will get heavy into grammar in 6th grade. When I was a kid in a public school system in New Hampshire, we started serious studies of grammar in 5th grade and continued through 10th.

My eldest has had next to no grammar instruction (apart from in French at a French immersion school that follows the French national curriculum). We found a CTY course that's advertised as focusing heavily on grammar and writing grammatically correct essays. It starts Monday; the textbook is very grammar-intensive.

I find it very odd that schools have de-emphasized this subject.

Interesting. I recall virtually no grammar instruction, other than what I learned in French class. Parts of speech, yes. There was a brief unit on diagramming sentences, which I found annoying.

Of course, we did a lot of writing 5-paragraph essays, and we edited each others' work. But serious studies of grammar? Not at all.

Grammar instruction during my own public school career (mostly 70's) was brief and evidently taught during the gifted pullouts in elementary school.

I was mystified later that my non-GT classmates seemed to all have had such instruction, and my GT peers and myself had (universally) none.

This probably varied regionally/with school district. My daughter hasn't had a lot of grammar instruction, but she'd well and truly outstripped mine by the time she reached 6th grade. I don't even know some of the terms she is expected to know. Gerund?? What the heck is THAT? LOL.

The science standards were developed separately from math and english.... They enlisted a panel including actual scientists to devise a framework for the standards, and then started working on the standards. Due to this process, the science standards are not yet complete. They released a draft in May 2012 for public comment and are now revising. Oh, and for some reason they are not called "common core" officially, but rather " Next Generation Science Standards." But functionally they are common core for science.

I am looking at Common Core for gr. 3 and I can tell you that those standards were not met in my DD's classroom last year (grade 2, doing gr. 3 math using a gr. 3 Common Core-based book). They didn't complete the book, though. But they came pretty close, IIRC, and no way did they cover all that.

So far, I found common core to be a step backwards for the gifted track in both middle and elementary. This track will do all of the same things as the regular track so all children can be on the "common core." A year focusing on pronouns seems extreme for sixth grade. Wow, I must have missed all of that instruction growing up.

They've cut the literature down to make room for short non-fiction pieces, as defined in the "common core." I'm not impressed at all. Rigor is subjective. Maybe common core is an improvement for some in failing or dismal school systems, but I'm not seeing it for my children. I see it as the new fad - it will go the way of mullets and blue tuxedos (no offense to those with mullets - just blue tuxedos). Unfortunately, we will have to suffer through it first. I feel sorry for the teachers implementing this new fad. Meh, maybe I'll be surprised by the rigor part-way through the year - maybe when they get to "it" or "they" the curriculum will really take off.

Ditto.

When we were reviewing Round Three of state content standards, I heard someone from the state department of ed. say that content standards should represent 50-80% of what you teach in the classroom during the year, not 125% of what you might possibly teach in a year. I would agree with that, but it means that quite a bit of content is determined by the individual teacher. Your mileage will vary!

As standards, they are supposed to represent a floor, a *minimum* of what will be taught, but there is nothing keeping a district from treating them as a ceiling instead.

DeeDee

Out here in California, the kids take the STAR test yearly. Next year, that is being phased out in favor of some ill-defined Common Standards Test.
I've been very underwhelmed by our STAR test (and I imagine it will be like this Common Standards). For end of the year second graders, they had a clock and they picked what time it is ("3:00, 2:00, 1:00"). They also would show the back of a quarter and they picked what it was.
I was kind of like, really??? Can we set the bar any lower? My son aced it both years and got "Advanced" on reading and math. I'm happy, although I think I'd be really worried if he didn't!!

Wow!

Did you see those as part of the actual STAR set of questions for last year??

My son took it last year. I didn't ask about what he got on the test (and I wasn't privy to test info), but I helped transfer answers from booklets to scantron sheets when our 2nd graders took their first round of STAR preparation tests (yep, this system is insane, but I guess you can't start preparing them for the SAT early enough, right?) and didn't see anything that easy in there.

Nothing along those lines in the 2nd grade released questions either. They do mention that they have questions at a mix of difficulty levels for each grade, but the released questions are supposed to showcase that too.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/cjc0914bezw.html
ZE’EV WURMAN AND BILL EVERS
Out of the Equation
California courts educational failure if it does away with eighth-grade algebra.
City Journal
14 September 2012

A bill sitting on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk would upend 15 years of achievement in mathematics by California students. Sponsored by Oakland Democratic senator Loni Hancock, Senate Bill 1200 would consign the Golden State’s eighth-grade students to a weakened, one-size-fits-all, pre-algebra curriculum prescribed by the Common Core national standards. No longer would qualified California eighth-graders have the opportunity to take Algebra I, as do their peers in high-performing countries. SB 1200 is so wrongheaded, in fact, that it would prohibit schools from offering any options in mathematics, even to high school students. The bill insists that only “one set of standards” be offered at “each grade level” across the entire K–12 span.

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Is this true? It sounds wacky even for California.

Is this supposed to save them money somehow?

I think it's not true. I found the bill and it doesn't say anything about putting everyone in lockstep, though it does mention that "One set of standards is adopted at each grade level."

Here's something from an article I found (dated late July):Former State Superintendent Bill Honig chairs the Instructional Quality Commission... and insists that many students will continue to take Algebra, and he points to the guidelines that the State Board passed on Wednesday for the just-appointed framework committee. They direct the Committee to present school districts with options for an “acceleration path” so that students capable of handling Algebra I can progress to it by eighth grade.

"Grade level" hopefully means "8th grade math is THIS," and algebra is 9th grade math and some kids will take 9th grade math in 8th grade. If my interpretation is correct, it's probably a good thing.

This appears to be the bill in question:
http://legiscan.com/gaits/view/404443

The problematic language seems to be the requirements that "One set of standards is adopted at each grade level" and "Redundant mathematics standards are eliminated".

If the bill were passed into law in this form and strictly adhered to, I guess it would then take a grade acceleration or subject pull-out to take algebra before the standard time. One might think that this is really no problem-- if you have enough people in a grade ready to take algebra I, you could lump them together and form a new math class that was nominally a higher grade-level class, even though composed of only the lower-grade students. However, screening students for entry might be problematic in the face of slavishly applied single standards for each grade. Maybe I'm just too nervous, and the bill if implemented wouldn't hinder subject pull-outs at all, or even gifted classrooms with math that happened to adhere to the standard for a higher grade.

I think it's a straightforward bill that was introduced to specify mechanisms for diverging from Common Core standards by committee, but that it was obviously drafted without the needs of accelerated/gifted students in mind. Hopefully it will be tweaked appropriately before any adoption.

There is a lively discussion of this question in the comments section of the article

http://www.edsource.org/today/2012/state-board-now-can-wade-back-into-eighth-grade-math-debate
State Board now can wade back into eighth grade math debate
September 5th, 2012
By John Fensterwald

I've figured out precisely why I'm skeptical about the common core standards. It's because they're vague and therefore susceptible to being gamed by textbook writers, districts, and teachers.

Here's an example. You can read the standards for proofs in geometry on this page. If you click on the links about proofs, you'll see that they just say "Prove theorems about (stuff)." The precise meaning of the word prove is open to interpretation.

As a working example of how vague words can be interpreted, take the California standards: Scroll to page 6 to see what I've copied here:


The standard says WRITE proofs. It doesn't say DEVELOP THEM FROM SCRATCH. Yes, I know: most or all people here will interpret write as "develop from scratch." But the standard has clearly been interpreted differently. The Holt Geometry book my son used last year is a popular book in the state. I don't recall a single exercise in that book (and I looked) that required the kids to write a proof from scratch. Instead, they just had to fill in the blanks. The book typically listed the reasons and students had to copy stuff to a piece of paper and then fill in the appropriate theorem or postulate. Presto! They were writing proofs.


Exactly. The teacher certainly never asked the kids to develop them, either. Her tests were always fill-in-the-blank style when they had proofs, which they often didn't.

Yes-- and that Holt product is not alone in this respect. The Pearson product that my own child used for Geometry similarly required not ONE deductive proof.

My husband and I were:

a) appalled (seriously?? how can this even qualify as basic Geometry without this piece??) and,

b) irked (this was the bit of math education that revealed the sheer beauty of higher mathematics and tethered it to the Socratic method and the ancient Greeks and Arabic traditions of learning... why... why... why...)

in pretty much equal measure.

We had her do a few anyway, just because we personally felt so strongly about the whole thing.

As it turns out, my daughter's school is more "rigorous" (grinding my teeth when I hear this word now... This word... I do not think it means... what you think it means...) than most, since they at least did do some "proofs" under the standard that Val cites above... they FILLED IN THE BLANKS IN A PRECONSTRUCTED PROOF. With memorized theorems. Yup. Fill.in.the.blank. = "writing" evidently.

I honestly never saw the point of geometry, to tell you the truth.

I don't think I even know what a geometric proof *is* or any "why" to go along with geometry.

I was tutored in it so that I could get to Calculus, which I suppose I understand a little better, meaning that i can auto-generate the answer pretty well in a very short period of time. Well, I used to be able to do that.

I think that is my point and Val's, though, Jon.

That without that emphasis on applied deductive reasoning, it is just sort of a jumble of memorized formulae having to do with areas and distances of plane figures.

That isn't what geometry should be teaching.

I'm guessing that you first saw the subject some time after 1990? That seems to be when this shift first occurred.

WITH that part of things, geometry becomes a marvelous puzzle game-- rather like those logic puzzles that the LSAT contains. It's terrific fun. Well, okay-- it's hard. But hard in a really GOOD way for GT students.

This is a large part of the reason why I regard initiatives like "Common Core" with a certain amount of disdain to begin with. I feel that they are enormously misguided at their very foundations. Not everyone probably can pass a good Geometry course. Even among those who can, not everyone will find it an epiphany.

Neither is a reason to make it unavailable to those who can and should be engaging with that material. Unfortunately, that is precisely what happens with initiatives like this. Under the twin guises of "pragmatism" and "standardization" various courses are watered down until anyone everyone can master the material.

:sigh:

No, I think I had the applied deductive reasoning thingy with proofs. I just didn't see the point of proofs generally or the applied deductive reasoning.

Geometry seemed quite boring me, which is why I just wanted to get through it and move on.

My general approach to math was as something that I could absorb and do faster than other people to beat them in math competitions.

Which was kind of my approach to school in general.

My purpose wasn't to learn, rather it was to win.

Yes, well, that certainly seems to be what my DD got out of geometry the way it is taught with Common Core (and similar initiatives) in mind.

At least a few people back in the day got more than that out of it, though-- and that's now virtually impossible since there is no longer any... THERE, there.

Yes, exactly. We water down the courses and then water them down some more and everyone smiles and pretends that our students are "learning geometry." They aren't. They're memorizing factoids so that they can pass simplistic multiple choice tests. And then everyone wonders why so many students end up in remedial math classes when they go to college. Please don't tell me that the colleges should have told the kids to study first: someone two or three months out of four years of solid high school math should be able to manage a bare scraping pass on a basic placement test, regardless of whether or not he spent some time the week before studying. Seriously.


And all the while, the effects of this dumbing down are creating or exacerbating terrible problems in our society (e.g. two years of student loans paying for remedial coursework; the needs of bright and gifted students being sidelined) while people put the same hackneyed solutions in a shiny new box and label it "Rigor (tm)!"

I can't recall a single time that I used anything that I recalled from geometry class, itself in the engineering undergrad.

Trigonometry, sure.

Geometry, no.

What's funny is that I just looked up trigonometry on wikipedia and learned that it dealt with triangles and the relationship between their sides.

It's amazing how many degrees you can get without learning basic things like what the word "trigonometry" means.

I just threw it into that box of "things with sines and cosines".

It's amazing how much completely disconnected and jumbled things I have learned over the years for no apparent purpose.

College math placement tests are pretty "simplistic" too, and they do not require students to write proofs. Students who get high enough scores on the math sections of the SAT or ACT place out of remedial math, and those exams have short answer and multiple choice questions.

I really don't understand the way math is structured in the US.

I studied geometry (and algebra) as part of the standard math curriculum starting in 6th grade in my home country. And in the math/science strand we certainly covered calculus in 12th grade (possibly starting in 11th grade) -- we needed those concepts for physics! But there was still geometry involved in 12th grade (and trigonometry).

And where does the idea that proofs are limited to geometry come from?!?

Math and multiple choice questions. How... sad.

Geometric proofs were my favorite part of math. (I'm not great at math. Really. I worked hard for a B+ in trig, the hardest class I ever took.) They were definitely NOT taught as fill in the blank when I took geometry as a 9th grader in 1988.

Yes to everything you wrote.

The better mathematics textbooks in the US have proofs outside of geometry as well. Unfortunately, the mainstream textbooks in this category tend to be older. For example, the high school math textbooks by Richard Brown include proofs outside of geometry (see Algebra 2 here) . Newer programs like AoPS are outstanding math courses and textbooks.

College placement tests for math (and English) are *all* multiple choice questions.

I have been taking classes here and there at the local community college. I passed the English placement test with flying colors (qualified for the honors program, although after hearing me ask for information the exam proctor tried to redirect me to the ELL placement test, ah!). To validate an associate degree I would need to either test out of math or take the one math class I never took in my previous educational career (statistics). That multiple choice test scares me. I am rusty, forgot a lot of theorems, and am used to working on long proofs for everything (slow!)... but landing into remedial math would be a huge blow to my pride .

But you are presumably way more than 10 weeks out of secondary school, unlike most people who take that test. Obviously, someone who's been out of school for a while should have to study, but IMO, someone who just finished four years of math several weeks ago shouldn't have to study to pass (not get an A on) the placement test.

Yes-- it's just that in the US, high school geometry was a sort of last bastion of the form (constructing proofs, I mean).

Seeing it pass from core instructional practice even there is beyond the pale for me personally.

I do not find mathematics "easy" by any means, either.

What is the name of the math placement test? Two commonly-used tests are the Accuplacer and Compass. There are resources to prepare for these tests. Can you test out with a high-enough score on the SAT or ACT or SAT Math subject test (level 1 or 2)? There are tons of study materials for these tests.

I'm going to attempt to tread lightly here and suggest, with all due respect, that learning to construct mathematical proofs (and I mean authentically learning it, not filling in blanks with the right theorem/postulate, but actually constructing the logical progression one's self); results in a kind of global learning of a different way of thinking or approaching material.

It's that mindset which is most directly utilized in every physical science. Less so, certainly, in engineering disciplines than in their companion sciences, because of the difference between engineering and science. Still, it's that gestalt that is what students should be getting out of math instruction. It's a metaphorical toolbox to keep things in. While it may not seem as though one uses the tools labeled "geometry" one may well use other tools in that box-- as you note, trigonometry, for example. All of that belongs in that toolbox; what students gain from working proofs isn't a single, simple skill such as "the ability to use algebraic concepts to compute vector quantities with precision." It's more about the toolbox.

In short, I believe you when you say you haven't used any THING that you learned in geometry. But I'm also a bit skeptical that nothing you got out of geometry was even indirectly useful in support of other study.

It's rather like learning literacy. "Reading" is such a roomy toolbox that at some point it ceases to be a thing of its own, and becomes a box to hold all kinds of other specific tools.

I can't remember what geometry was about.

I just know that I had to take it to take the upper level algebras.

Whatever I do, I generally do automatically. I normally can't show my work because I can't tell you what I did. I just know that the answer is accurate because it feels accurate.

This is why I *loved* math multiple choice tests. All I needed to do was pick the right answer, and it was generally obvious.

So, teaching is not an ideal profession for me.

Yes, I perhaps should have clarified that the emphasis is less overt in the one than in the other. The focus in the science disciplines is on the process itself (with considerable reflection/feedback related to that process), whereas in engineering it is on the solution to _____ problem, and the feedback tends to be more binary. If that makes sense, and notwithstanding the cliches regarding engineers who can't see the forest for the stand of trees they happen to be navigating... which mostly seems to be exemplary of BAD engineers, from what I can tell. Just as kcab notes, good engineering requires a big picture (forest) too.

I think that is why engineers can lose sight of the fact that the same logical framwork scaffolds both things, though. Focus on outcomes rather than process allows the process to disappear.

Of course, I didn't see any actual STAR test questions. I have downloaded before old actual STAR test questions, which the state of California releases. They really do ask about telling time on the second grade (end of the year) test!
I'm not surprised if they are dumbing down even more math requirements for California. So many kids can't do basic math. I guess the solution is to make the standards lower so everyone will pass!
My kids will likely take two years of AP Calculus in our California public high school, when they get there. So I'm not going to worry if the other kids can't even pass Algebra!

Here they say they have shifted things around a lot, so that the content of the courses is no longer what you would expect from the names. That said, I will be watching closely to make sure that "common core 8" really does look like "algebra 1" to me, as promised.

And yes, based on reading the above, going to be watching geometry extra closely too. I value the logic teaching that is supposed to come with math. Sigh.

MON, here, the shift was moving material earlier in the curriculum, not later. The shift you describe sounds like the opposite of what our district claims to be doing. To meet the same standards. Curiouser and curiouser.

DeeDee

From our perspective (DD has completed through Algebra II) the answer is "yes."

While I realize that this isn't very helpful, it's hard to say exactly what has just been shifted elsewhere versus what has been omitted entirely. The cynic in me feels that it is a deliberate shell game being played in order to give the appearance of greater competence while simultaneously making each course "more accessible" to struggling students, but I suppose it could be coincidental. Just.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/science/fewer-topics-covered-more-rigorously.html
With Common Core, Fewer Topics Covered More Rigorously
By KENNETH CHANG
New York Times
Published: September 2, 2013


I really wonder about this practice. In the groups the brighter and better prepared children may just tell their classmates what the answer is.

Can I just tell you all how much better you are making me feel? I got into a Common Core discussion in my home area and the moms would only talk politics - that it was Obama's plan, that it was only serving to make textbook companies rich, that it was forcing students to lose their freedoms and be forced to learn the same things, and on and on. There was no discussion of the actual meat of the program or any real philosophical discussion, they kept sending each other to politically charged websites. Thank you for having a more evidence based discussion.