When one reads the list of Common Core guidelines for each grade, one may form one opinion, for or against, etc. As a teacher, I don’t think the list of standards (per grade) looks unreasonable.
BUT!!!!!...when you see the actual convoluted materials (or lack thereof) and long-winded, batty, and unnecessary “strategies” created to instill those same guidelines, or to “prove” whether a child meets the standards, that’s where I feel the true insanity begins. Not to mention, the materials have lazy errors within them that many a 7 year old has found on his or her own. No extra points for that :-/
Then come the state tests...questions that are hidden from public to avoid discussion and parsing. As if that’s not enough, then there are the rubrics used to grade those tests. One year there may be a fairly reasonable test, but a draconian rubric. Another year, a very confusing test, but a generous rubric. Year to year, there can be any combination or degree of those factors, across all districts, each time with entirely different tests per grade and subject, and new students (mostly) in each grade.
Then, after the fact, even after grading, the state may decide to discard certain questions due to too many complaints (if enough people can remember what they were, and bother to contact officials). In the middle of tests, there are also extra questions that were never meant to count, but are being “field tested”. Nobody knows which questions those are.
Schools are NOT given detailed feedback on exactly which questions each student got wrong, or which wrong answers they chose. Just think about that.
Schools are compared to each other even if one has a full magnet program and the other is heavy on special education. It is the same test for all.
Standards for spelling and grammar are not even tested, at least not in lower grades. There are virtually no materials given or time allotted to teach parts of speech/grammar, etc. I have seen an administrator throw a suggested (by a teacher) workbook across a room, saying workbooks do not work, language must be absorbed through reading.
Agree? Disagree? In any case, that’s the climate.
I could go on, but I’ll stop now.
Thanks for listening.
M4L CommieCore
To OP
Bottom line: talk to the teachers and parents if you really want to know how Commie Core is affecting the system and the students.
One kid in middle school, one kid in elementary school. Both hate common core math.
I actually blew up at a teacher when we did third grade math multiplication 58x58 the traditional way
58
x58
And the teacher counted it wrong, because we did not use the new fangled “matrix” method I didn’t understand.
The right answer was wrong, because we didn’t use the new method.
And the schools haven’t necessarily been handing out translation sheets to explain that we’re asking your kid to estimate, add, subtract, divide. You have to translate what the instructions are asking the kids to do, and it is very hard to find FREE detailed explanations of how to use their new methods to do math.
That isn’t a surprise, though, that curriculum companies would devise new more abstract and complicated ways to do math problems in elementary school. They have copyrighted digital text books parents can’t see and now control the text book market for districts that adopt it. They’ve rendered all existing math practice workbooks by other companies obsolete while cornering the Common Core practice workbook materials market for themselves.
And the groups that control common core are the same ones that sit on the SAT board and other standardized test administrators. So you HAVE to at least use their expensive materials at some point to prepare kids for government standardized tests to pass high school and get into college, even if you use other tests, too.
They also get to charge for all the assessment tests to measure how kids are progressing throughout the year, turning the curriculum into a massive money maker at its roll out (everyone buys new materials, from parents to school districts to tutoring centers) to ongoing cash flow (semi-annual testing fees).
When we were going to vote in spring primaries, our kids asked why we cared about this candidate versus that candidate.
My kids didn’t care about any of the stuff until I said I didn’t vote for this person whose sign we passed because she supports common core.
Both of my children started to sound off on what they hated. Lots of tests, little information on what you got wrong, confusing methods, punished for using the old ways - and they didn’t even get the political issues insinuating into it like Islam is all peace and Christianity is bad, climate change will kill us all worship mother earth, white guys did everything bad.