Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Common Core

I see a great deal of negative comments in regard to Common Core here on the fire, various other forms of media, and from local people. Now I've been involved in the process on a district level, and I'm really not seeing a lot to be dissatisfied with other than that our particular MT version is poorly organized. The biggest complaint that I've heard from those involved is that it was implemented too quickly and the bugs aren't all worked out. Otherwise, the curricular content is virtually the same as what we had before. The curricular pacing is the only aspect of our curricula that we've had to adjust in any way. The SBAC test is online and has caused some districts problems if they lack bandwidth or available computers, but it will be much cheaper in the long run. Test results are expected to be much more useful in identifying areas of weakness in individual content areas. Where is all of this hype coming from? I just don't see it at all, and I'd be right there with every other dissatisfied individual if there were some sort of a push for a liberal slant to studies or a dumbing down of the curricula. Would someone please explain exactly why it is that you take exception to CC?

A statewide radio talk host has been on the case here in Louisiana. The gobbledegook with respect to math coming out of the mouths of proponents gives me a bad impression.

I earned a PhD in a hard science, and I have a very low tolerance for the product of Colleges of Education.

CC simply provides a baseline for what is taught. A quality school will exceed the requirements of CC in many cases, but can only go so far. One has to remember that a public school educates low aptitude children alongside those with high aptitude. AP classes and advanced electives are the means with which public schools are able to provide higher level learning in core subject areas. I'm not familiar with the gobbledegook you refer to, but I suspect that what you are hearing is your state's version of CC or possibly just that of an individual district. There is a lot of leeway when it comes to how CC is approached. I suspect everything that comes from this administration of being something heinous, like many here. With that in mind, however, all of the ridiculous things I've seen to date that have been attributed to CC, have been state or local efforts.

Here is the straight deal from a teacher. CC in many ways seeks to create a uniform curriculum that all teachers have to follow. We don't have latitude to teach the way that we see fit. Rather than worrying about students mastering content the teacher concentrates on skills and skill development. Some teachers try to teach skills through content but that doesn't always happen. I see the common core as a method to simplify the public education process and have those folks who are concrete sequential bleeding heart liberals as the end all and be all required to teach.

It seeks to create a learner who can follow directions, read and write at a level. Students and the routinues directed for the student learning seek to avoid questioning.

Even in the last 5-8 years the process has been started at the primary grades. Students no longer ask why the learning objective is relevant. They just do. Common core is hard to implement with setting the learning targets for the lowest students in the class. What this means is that the teacher seeks to spend a lot of time to make sure that every student masters the content. Smart students are going to correspondence or early college in droves. Bores the living hell out of them. School enrollment in larger comprehensive schools is dropping.

CC with an emphasis on building thinking and metacognition skills is actually pretty powerful. The problem is that when you can get the students to be creative, motivated and articulate they aren't tied to the pacing guide and are not as familiar with the formulaic test taking that the pinky administrators start having difficulties because you are not following the professional learning community objectives of having shared pacing, student data driven models developed by common assessment and common smart goals that are directed so all the teachers teach the same. Then just like in Chinese Red Communist the loudest, most brass and bossy nimwit who is the principal's favorite dictates policy for all of the other teachers. It is the peter principle at the finest. Its much like the Chinese Cultural Revolution where the "dumb" party leaders boss the more intelligent freethinkers with multiple levels of intimidation.

It will be Barry's most vicious and destructive legacy for our country. Much worse than socialized medicine.

I just call it "Little Red Father"
Sincerely,
Thomas

Why would I need anything more than a one or two page outline of topics to cover in a ninth grade algebra class?

When words like methodologies and learning styles show up, my BS detector starts going off.

Yea, I assume the job of a teacher is to teach.

<sarcasm> No no no, every step of the process must be dictated, followed and documented to make sure kids are treated equally. After all, all kids learn the same way and at the same rate and all teachers teach the same way. Any flexibility or latitude in challenging a student or catering to the student's method of learning is inherently unjust and amounts to invidious discrimination. After all, we're all the same. </sarcasm>

My wife has a Masters and has been in education for 23 years. CC is far more than "simply a baseline",it also involves significant data collection on every student to be tracked from K thru college.
Math ....it's not the answer it's the steps used, same with division . A right answer is wrong without the "steps" and a wrong answer is right with the "steps". Why does my daughter need to know 4 different ways to multiply in a 7 day timeframe ?
If you think it's just a baseline ... it's also tied in to "AGENDA 21". Research this .

Yep, the math examples I've seen are BS (I'm not a math major but am an engineer, so know a little bit about math myself). My wife is a high school dance teacher, and I asked her if they used common core in school here. She checked and told me no. Found this when I googled -

"Seeking to maintain local control of education, Texas legislators recently prohibited the use of Common Core standards in Texas classrooms."

Another reason for me to love Texas!

Still trying to get to the bottom of my daughter's math issues (haven't had the meeting with her teacher yet) but had I have known they were using buckets & boxes instead of letters for variables, I wouldn't have bothered to jump start her algebra education using the antiquated methods of the 80's.

Apparently kids are having a hard time using letters in math problems? Need a different methodology.

I won't get into the "language arts" worksheet she had to dissect that was a propaganda piece on successes of the President....

I was a D & F math student in high school. I couldn't do algebra to save my life. In college, I was a B & A student in Algebra. The difference? The teacher. In high school, the teacher called me lazy. In college, the teacher recognized how badly I wanted to understand and took the effort to get me there. There was this Ah-ha moment when it fell into place. I don't believe there is any place in modern education for the kind of student I was, getting the actual "teaching" they need. When structure takes over, there will eventually be a situation where the "State" determines which students go on to higher education. Not only that, but they will be told which degree programs are open to them.

The corporate world has gone the same direction. Train to the level of the lowest ability employee.

Bring down your brightest children and you eventually reach the goal.

Watch the movie, "IDIOCRACY".

I've talked extensively about this with a former 7th grade math teacher of both my kids. This guy has been teaching for over 25 years, kids like him, and parents request him as a math teacher because he is good.

He has grown very tired of a system where the bottom of the class is where he finds out if he meets CC requirements. Some of these kids barely make it to school, and have almost no intention of finishing, and don't care, yet his success hinges on them.

He spends most of his time meeting with parents from the bottom of the class while the kids who are doing average and up are left alone.

When the correct answer for 5+5 can be 9,10,or 11, or any other number the teacher wants to accept... is this right?

All of the above are correct answers with Common Core!

I always thought part of the purpose of math was to teach kids that there is such a thing as precision...at least at some level.

apparently the current purpose is to promote validation or vindication of your reasoning, even if its wrong.

Telling.

CC is a cop out for the school and lazy teachers

Absolutely!


used to burn me up that Education majors got 6 credits for college trigonometry but us Geoscience majors only got 3 credits for it.

reminds of that Retard Truckers Institute commercial "special classes for slow learners"

Nate a cousin of mine down in Miles City showed me her daughters math homework and from what she showed me their new CC ciriculum has a phugged up way of doing simple addition, it throws subtraction in wth how you do it adding steps to the process.....extrapolate that out to calc and your gonna need 4 pages front and back to show your work on one problem....

This is the problem with public education in general. You either deal with the slow learners at this point or they leech off of society later on. In a school with limited staff to deal with those unable to maintain pace, this can mean that regular ed. classroom time is burned trying to keep these students at par with the baseline learner. Tying teacher pay, etc, to student success in a public school is a poor idea. This is particularly true in smaller schools where a statistically significant number of students in any given class may not have a background that promotes success and/or they lack the ability to be successful. Look to the oilfield and inner city schools to see this type of learner. Very difficult to measure student success when the prominent culture rejects those who are academically successful, therefore the majority of students lack motivation in regard to standardized testing.

The stuff that talks up Obama's accomplishments, etc. is totally a local/state issue. Nothing to do with CC. From what I have seen of the math standards, the idea is to create a greater familiarity with all of the processes, as well as to promote multiple ways of looking at a given type of problem. Not perfect by any stretch, and possibly an unnecessary complication, but not a dumbing down of curricula.