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.

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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.