Why common core is good

We were Able to see a few teachers several different years because our kids sometimes had the same teacher and they changed. When I tried to have a conversation with one of these teachers we knew well and had a good relationship with, asking what the deal was… I was looked down upon and probably seen as a challenging parent you know one of those parents. He is now learning amazing things while learning life skills like math, grammar, reading and comp.

He is also learning non biased things like govt. Now he learns math like I did. No BS like many fill in the blanks etc, he learns vocabulary but because he will probably never use it again he is honing in on basic math skills and learning to do them really well. He is learning long multiplication like I did one way of doing it and learning to do it well then he moves on..

Its completely unnecessary esp if your kid has been taught all day long. We go fishing instead. I just wish people stood up and I am not sure many do. We had good relationships with teachers and principles in our district but when we withdrew Three of our kids no one asked why. I did take it personal because we had given them our kids many years and we Pay taxes there.

Great article. Thanks, Jen, for your message. Much success to you and your kids! Cheers, Thomas Armstrong. I am a grandparent who is doing remote learning with my nine year old 4th grader. Common Core is a travesty! What idiot with nothing else to do thought this junk up? What was wrong with the old tried and true way of teaching math?

A pox on the idiots who shoved this into the school system! For years, perhaps generations, the education in our country, specially in MESA, has been falling behind as compared with other developed nations. But if that is not bad enough, many college students have the same problems: cannot manage a bank account or a credit card.

Thanks for your apt comments. I totally agree with you. Financial literacy should be a regular part of the math curriculum — in fact, all math instruction should be geared toward practical life skills, not for preparing ivory tower intellectuals to teach advanced calculus. Thanks for your passionate response! Math should really help kids understand the news, manage their money, and help them make sense of the numbers in our lives, not prepare them to be egghead professors in the math department of some college or university.

Thank you Mr. He is enrolled with an IEP, and math by itself is the biggest struggle, not only for him but for me too. He is in the 8th grade, and has been refusing school since the 2nd grade. Therefore he is not learning it. It is causing anxiety, stress and frustration. Thank you again for being a voice to many frustrated parents like myself. I wonder if you contact the school directly, and if he qualifies, they might be able to send a tutor out to help him.

Another potential solution would be to go to Khan Academy, online, which has 8 minute lessons on specific math skills, which your son could view over and over again until he gets it.

He could go back to earlier math levels since math builds on previous skills , and master them one at a time until he gets to the material being presented by the school. Good luck and I hope you enjoy my books! Thanks for writing! The latest of of these innovations has been Common Core.

My two sons went through school way before this common core nonsense and did very well. I teach elementary school. There is a test in most states, mine included, to access student mastery. These tests existed far before common core. I think we over test as a country, and is be all for removing a lot of these tests, but the tests and common core are separate. I agree we should have a financial literacy set of standards! I would love to add that to common core. My family moved a bunch when I was in elementary school and I got some ideas multiple times and skipped others all together.

In our increasingly mobile world, national learning standards are really helpful. To erin k. Math has no concepts. It only has rules. Use precise geolocation data.

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Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. As a former middle grades teacher of gifted students, I worry that above-grade-level standards will not be part of the formative and summative assessment process, leaving these students to languish unchallenged while their classmates struggle with materials and activities advanced students could have completed successfully years earlier.

We are seeing more and more of these students leaving public middle schools for the private, parochial, and charter schools that they and their parents believe will better accommodate their needs. Our schools cannot afford to lose these bright minds as we continue to nurture the intelligences of all our students.

Here are some guiding questions that might help us fill in the details as we wrestle with how we approach these standards:. Be sure to include faculty members from art, PE, music, and areas beyond the four main content areas in these discussions. Look for free online resources for middle grades students and teachers. How might we identify a few realistic SMART goals for the upcoming year, realizing that substantive change takes time?

Common wisdom is that it takes three to five years to fully implement a systemic change. Everyone involved will need to evaluate progress thoughtfully, regularly, and with integrity.

Using the guidelines of This We Believe , how might we ensure that we are using developmentally appropriate practices and content that addresses not just the cognitive needs but the affective needs of our students as well? In the end, the Common Core State Standards are neither good nor bad. How we decide to use them will determine their impact and meaning. The choice is ours. Search for:. If we look at the Common Core State Standards CCSS idealistically, we see a set of mutually agreed-upon standards based on valuable knowledge and skills that can lead to improved instruction and assessment.

The development of reliable and valid national criterion-referenced assessments which I believe will be a logical next step may save many states money that they can then use to target specific instructional needs. Teachers across the nation could work together to develop creative and engaging integrated lessons and units to share using cutting edge technology and e-tools.

A student who moves from seventh grade in Toledo, Ohio, to seventh grade in Omaha, Nebraska, or Syosset, New York, may not have to adjust to new learning expectations.

Clear grade-level standards in each content area will make it easier to accelerate the few exceptionally gifted students and to compact curriculum for other advanced students. For more information on how to use the Common Core with gifted students, check out www.