I have to say, the more I dig into the Common Core Standards, the more questions I have. There are impassioned people on both sides of the fence, but I see many, many more angry parents against them. Many cite the abusiveness of the standards. One father invited Arne Duncan to come to his house and watch as his 12 year old son cried over his math homework and called himself stupid because he couldn't solve a math problem that took his tutor, a math professor, twenty minutes to solve.
It's easy for me to be fairly unaffected because, while the math is proving to challenging for the first time for ds11, though he is grade-skipped and in compacted math so maybe the challenge is the missed material, the rest is fine. I think if I had a student whose gifts were not so academic I might be looking at these standards and expectations, particularly those of the early years, abusive as well.
In a perfect world, we would have the curriculum meet a variety of abilities without frustrating and turning off students. I just don't know if this is the answer...I'm still digging in and trying to push past the lobbyists for a clearer view of what the CCS are. And while I like some things so far, the explanations of why things work mathematically for instance, the jury is still out, I guess.
Last edited by KADmom; 11/19/13 01:29 PM.
