<p>"If the system in your state is working so wonderfully, why is California in the bottom third of SAT math scores? "</p>
<p>Because you can’t scale up success. The system in our state works horribly, however, our school district has a pretty good math curriculum (that’s to the parents from nearby university, who helicopter and push district to improve). </p>
<p>Common Core is a new common denominator. Obviously, it is made to serve underperforming schools. At the expense of decent programs, that will be discontinued now (for the lack of funding that is allocated to Common Core).</p>
<p>I see the math standards as very appropriate for high achieving schools as well, not just those in under-performing schools. The standards are not a program or a curriculum, but merely broad standards that the schools’ programs must meet. There is nothing in the way the standards are written that limits learning for any student.
The schools districts will still have the flexibility to accelerate students through their curriculum, just as they do now.</p>
<p>@Dread - The Common Core documentation might state students can advance ahead in math but read this from one of the reviewers of the high school CC: </p>
<p>Professor Milgram would not approve the high school math Common Core Standards and part of the reason was because they do not prepare students for success in a four-year college. At best, they will prepare students to enter a community college and not have to take a remedial math class.</p>
<p>Any teacher who cannot help a third grader to understand why 2x2 =4 and a fifth or sixth grader to calculate the area of a triangle without using the formula A=1/2(BxH) then he or she should not teach math.</p>
<p>From Milgram’s description, it looks like the Common Core math standards are no better or worse than what currently passes as math standards in the US. Must be the “math is too hard” types being afraid to raise the math standards. Or perhaps a fear that many current teachers may not be capable of teaching math better than they currently do.</p>
<p>So, in math, there will likely be, as exists today, significant disparity between the schools that teach math well, and the probably more common schools that meet only the minimum standards. But that defeats the purpose of having some common standard, which is to get the worse schools to raise their standards to an acceptable level.</p>
<p>“If it works, don’t mess with it”
“The system in our state works horribly”</p>
<p>hmmm.</p>
<p>Your district has been able to work with the “horrible system” in your state and fine tune it to make it work for you. But you don’t like the common core because you don’t think your district will be able to make it work for you.</p>
<p>It took years of advocating by parents to adjust curriculum in our district to something workable. Common Core brings us back to square one.</p>
<p>Yes, Common Core is a template curriculum for all schools in US. It is the lowest common denominator. If your particular school had something better than the lowest common denominator - Common Core erases it.</p>
<p>"But that defeats the purpose of having some common standard, which is to get the worse schools to raise their standards to an acceptable level. "</p>
<p>Have you seen the Common Core standards? They are much lower than the current ones! It is the race to the bottom, not to the top.</p>
<p>Yes, theoretically schools can teach more than Common Core. However, alignment with Common Core requirements currently sucks all energy, time, and recourses of school districts. They have to re-train teachers, make new curriculum, new worksheets, new tests. </p>
<p>Our school district already announced that it will drop some advanced math, because it has to accommodate Common Core reqs.</p>
<p>Yes - common core is the lowest common denominator. It doesn’t erase anything, it simply ensures that everyone is at least at that level. </p>
<p>Somebody is blowing smoke up your backside. There is nothing in the common core that would require schools to drop advanced classes. More likely they are looking to save money and are using cc as an excuse.</p>
<p>As for cc standards being lower than current standards, I don’t know about Cali, but that simply isn’t true for most of the US. In NY there is much crying because students are suddenly doing poorly on assessments because common core is much harder than what was in place before,</p>
<p>James Milgram (Prof. of Math, Common Core evaluation Committee)
Testimony to the Indiana Senate Education Committee</p>
<p>Mathematically, there is no good reason to adopt Common Core Math Standards over the Indiana Standards. Indeed, the Indiana standards were/are? one of the top 4 or 5 state standards in the country, and are approximately at the level of the top international standards. The Common Core standards claim to be “benchmarked against to international standards” but this phrase is meaningless. They are actually two or more years behind international expectations by eighth grade, and only fall further behind as they talk about grades 8 – 12. Indeed, they don’t even fully cover the material in an solid geometry course, or in the second year algebra course.</p>
<p>City plans AP expansion in high-need schools</p>
<p>"At a kickoff event this morning Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the expansion reflects the goals of the COmmon Core, which is aimed at getting students to think deeply and critically.</p>
<p>‘This will be Common Core-plus,’ Walcott told students from schools participating in the program. ‘What Advanced Placement does is just take it to the next level.’"</p>
<p>"RALEIGH — The sobering consequences of more rigorous classroom standards became clear Thursday when the state Board of Education revealed the dramatic drop in performance by students, schools and districts on standardized tests.</p>
<p>“The sobering consequences of more rigorous classroom standards became clear Thursday when the state Board of Education revealed the dramatic drop in performance by students, schools and districts on standardized tests.”</p>
<p>What standardized tests? How well are they designed? Is it possible to see these tests online? </p>
<p>If a student gets A in PreCal and 800 in SAT math 2, but scores poorly on the new Common Core test, I’ll blame the test, not the student.</p>
<p>I have a fifth grader that struggled with math in prior years to the point of panic attacks. When they did the projected common core test scores last year hers were “down”… but now she seems to understand math much better and I expect a big rebound. She has a comfort level with the math that I have never before seen with her and her actual competency is up. Not sure if it’s her or the teacher or the core…but data point.</p>
<p>1) The ACT doesn’t have a Subject Test. 2).<br>
2) About 22,000 kids take the ACT in Indiana compared to 48,000 SAT I test takes
3)
CA SAT Subject (Math 1 + 2) 41810 SAT 234767 17%
IN SAT Subject (Math 1 + 2) 1093 SAT 48476 2%
US 140690/1660047 8%</p>
<p>There is a 50-1 ratio of SAT’s to SAT Math tests in Indiana. Well below both the national average and California’s participation numbers.</p>
<p>Here’s the problem with the common core concept of middle school kids working in teams for math.</p>
<p>It depends a lot on how the kids are put in groups. If all the kids in a group don’t know how to do the work it’s the blind leading the blind. If the teacher puts a kid who knows how to do the work with kids who don’t then that kid ends up having to teach the others.
I believe that in general kids can become more confused about how to do the math by teaching each other rather than having the teacher teach the material.</p>
<p>I’ve already had 2 kids go through the middle school work in teams approach . Both hated it. One was an A math student the other was a B math student. My current middle schooler is lucky his math teacher realized the team approach doesn’t work and she has gone back to teaching the material and having each student do their own work. :)</p>