Common Core - US education

[trottigy]

http://www.corestandards.org/

 

So, people constantly complain about the education system in America and when the government attempts do something about it - people complain more. If they did nothing - they would complain. It seems there is no real way to satisfy the masses.

 

I have heard a lot about this from "conservative" radio and thought - I should investigate for myself.

 

After looking over the standards, I do not see what all their fuss is about. This seems to be a really good guide to try and get all the schools across the US teaching up to minimal standard. A standard that they should have already been teaching to, but have been greatly lacking in.

[Qapla]

I will agree that there are things taught in school these days that were not taught when I went to school .... partly because some of these things didn't exist then. That said, I noticed some real disparaging things when my children were in school.

 

I had algebra when I was in school. We had to solve the problems and do the checks. We got graded on both the solving of the equation and the check.

 

My kids only had to solve the equations. Since they did not have to do the checks, many kids didn't and therefore did not know until the paper was graded if their answer was right. Also, some of the steps we had to do they did not.

 

I asked my oldest teacher about this. I wanted to know that, since I was the one she would turn to when she needed help and I did the steps/problems different then the teacher, would she mark it wrong if my daughter did it the way I showed her .... after some thought she decided that she would allow it.

 

One day my daughter was having some real difficulty with her homework. She came and asked for some help. They were working on complex equations with two or more variables. I asked her what she had tried. She really couldn't explain what she was trying to do.

 

I then asked her, what is the first thing you need to do before you can calculate the answer? She looked at me with a blank stare. I tried to rephrase the question but she still had no idea what I was getting at. I finally asked her simply, don't you move the variable you are trying to find to the left of the "=" and everything else to the right? Then solve for the variable?

 

She told me that they did not have to do that. They could have the "X" on either side of the "=" it didn't have to be on the left. So I asked if that meant that if the answer was "5" that they could have "X=5 or "5=X" and it would be correct? and she said yes ..... don't know about you, but that would have been wrong when I was in school since x can equal 5 but 5 is not always equal to x.

 

Anyway, I told her to try it my way. To do every problem by first moving her unknown variable to the left and solve for the answer to the right. She was amazed! She found out that what she thought was so hard was actually quite easy.

 

It seems that in their attempt to be "politically correct" and allowing the variable to be on either side of the "=" it gave the kids no idea of where to start in solving the problem, no direction, no order to follow.

 

Such a simple thing and it lowered the quality of that algebra class since many of the kids had problems getting past these types of problems ... at least they did till my daughter told them her "secret".

Edited September 5, 2013 by Qapla

[trottigy]

I recently saw an great article articulating both sides of this discussion in the US - > http://blogs.rgj.com/renorebirth/2014/03/25/the-common-core-debate-nevada-supporters-detractors-talk/

 

It was Nevada specific but dealt with most of the issues nationwide.

[bohemian]

A school n the UK (400+students from 50 countries!) has started to teach "English As A Foreign Language" to ALL students, even the English ones, because their English is so bad, especially their grammar!

[kejedo]

New York's Gov Cuomo has determined the 'common core' standards/expectations to be sorely lacking and stated that no student or teacher will be adversely affected by results of their taking tests based on 'common core.' Wow, all that time spent testing, for nothing.  According to TV reports here in NY, he and others have stated that the 'common core' was recognized as a complete disaster, and needs a total  overhaul.

 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/common-core-corrective-action-cuomo-article-1.1587225  

[pnutts]

Those who can't do, Teach. If they don't know, they Can't teach, but get paid to teach nothing. Sounds like the over paid glorified baby sitters in Canada, I mean teachers.

[Witness1970]

On 9/5/2013 at 6:39 PM, Qapla said:

 I finally asked her simply, don't you move the variable you are trying to find to the left of the "=" and everything else to the right? Then solve for the variable?

She told me that they did not have to do that. They could have the "X" on either side of the "=" it didn't have to be on the left. So I asked if that meant that if the answer was "5" that they could have "X=5 or "5=X" and it would be correct? and she said yes ..... don't know about you, but that would have been wrong when I was in school since x can equal 5 but 5 is not always equal to x.

 

Actually, according to the commutatime property in math, if X=5, then 5=X is also true. 

But I agree with you point about putting the variable on one side of the equal sign and everything else on the opposite side.  Technically, you could put the variable on the right and everything else on the left but that would be difficult to work with. 

Your way is best.