The push to nationalize the content taught in public schools across the country should be of great concern to state leaders. The Common Core national standards effort represents a massive federal overreach into what is taught in local schools, further removing parents from the educational decision-making process, and likely to cost state taxpayers $16 billion over seven years just to implement.
As more details emerge about the content and quality of the Common Core national standards backed by federal funding and the Obama Administration, questions about the coherence, international competitiveness, and the college readiness level of the standards also loom. Many experts conclude that the math standards are vague and incoherent. Writing in Education Week, curriculum expert Grant Wiggins notes:
…the mathematics components of the Common Core State Standards Initiative are a bitter disappointment. In terms of their limited vision of math education, the pedestrian framework chosen to organize the standards, and the incoherent nature of the standards for mathematical practice in particular, I don’t see how these take us forward in any way.
Wiggins goes on to include several examples of hazy language in the standards, including “make sense of problems and persevere in solving them,” “reason abstractly and quantitatively,” and “use appropriate tools strategically.”
Wiggins isn’t alone in his skepticism. A recent Education Next article cites concerns from Professor William McCallum, one of the three authors of Common Core’s math standards, who has said that “overall standards wouldn’t be very high” and “not up to the standards of other nations.”
His opinion was supported by Jonathon Goodman, a professor at New York University, who also raised questions about the standards from an international comparison: “The proposed Common Core standard is similar in earlier grades but has significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries.”
Mathematician Ze’ev Wurman, a former official in the U.S. Department of Education, also pointed out that the Common Core fails to equal other international competitors in terms of required course load for college readiness:
The enrollment requirements of four-year state colleges overwhelmingly consist of at least three years of high school mathematics including algebra 1, algebra 2, and geometry, or beyond. Yet Common Core’s “college readiness” definition omits content typically considered part of algebra 2…they do not expect algebra to be taught in grade 8 and instead defer it to high school, reversing the most significant change in mathematics education in America in the last decade, supported by the 2008 recommendations of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, and contrary to the practice of our international competitors.
The content shortcomings bring more concern to an already frightening federal overreach. Spearheaded by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Common Core national standards have been backed with federal funding, and the assessments were directly financed by the Obama Administration. Race to the Top grants and No Child Left Behind waivers were conditioned on states’ adoption of common standards.
It’s one more reason state leaders should reject this federal overreach and work to strengthen their state standards. Ceding that authority to national organizations and Washington bureaucrats won’t improve academic outcomes and will be a costly loss of educational liberty.
Evan Walter is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm
Her is the thing about math…it's an exacting process. There is only one right answer to any problem. The phrases being used by our current administration to describe the new math issues is the perfect example of what is wrong in government. They use phrases like "use appropriate tools strategically" that is code for using numbers to lie, or doing the math wrong. That is what has lead us to this dysfunctional economy. Just because someone builds a pretty spreadsheet doesn't make it accurate, even though they used a strategy to create it. It is the use of strategies, and not math that has got us in trouble.
Everything this presihas done needs to be thrown out, because it is more about strategies than the one correct answer!
Quadratic equations have two answers.
Shh. Don't let that out of the bag, Bill. Sometimes there are multiple solutions to problems, and not just because of the degree of a polynomial.
But KJinAZ shouldn't fret: the Common Core is no more about process than the rest of the bilge that traditionalists have been serving up as gospel for 100+ years. There is lip-service paid to such ideas, but it's nothing more than that. The conservatives allowed it to get support from NCTM, but the latter is fooling itself if it seriously thinks the the corporate interests who are actually behind this whole enterprise care in the least about "process" standards. This is about two things: money, and more money. More tests. More expensive tests. More books. More expensive books. More top-down "professional development" for everyone. At an enormous price.
But at their heart, these "standards" are just as bad as everything we've always had. Traditional, bloodless mathematics teaching is safe for another couple of decades.
Not to worry, they just lower the standards when too many can't pass the tests. We wonder why are falling further and further behind on the world stage. Gee the same people that can't figure that out must be making the standards as well.
More money for more failure?! I don't think so! it's best to the states and best the federal government learn to respect their own position and even better to respect the peoples' constitution!
Best to keep the government control of hidden agendas without recourse, away from everything constitutional as respectful men of the past have!
In Massachusetts, it is surely a dumb-down. In the grade I teach, many topics are omitted.
"are more than 1 ways to skin a cat"? How about going back to ELEMENTARY to learn the concept of proper English before you teach others?
I am NOT in favor of "dumbing down" our math in Indiana! Our 'core' excels this stupid dumbed down obamamath program…. Indiana should have said NO THANKS and we are beginning to work hard here to undo this stupid core math!
Obamamath? Don't tell that to the right-wingers who helped write this drek. They were already hard at work when Obama was in the US Senate. This is, like everything at the federal level regarding education a "bi-partisan" effort. NCLB had strong support from idiots on both sides of the aisle, in case you didn't realize. Education is the one issue where neo-libs and neo-cons seem to be able to work together in harmony to help their rich friends get richer.
Apparently that news hasn't yet made its way to your area of Indiana. Nor has the fact that there are plenty of Mathematically Correct/HOLD types involved in the process. H.H. Wu, Dick Askey, Wilfried Schmidt, Roger Howe, and other players aren't exactly NCTM-reform supporters.
The sad reality is that EVERYONE will lose with this nonsense except for the corporate interests who stand to make billions off of it. Teachers, parents, and kids will be the biggest losers.