Core Standards Update 4/1/10

A group of math educators from across the U.S. has issued a strongly critical statement about the proposed math standards, titled "A Plea for Critical Revisions to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics." (See: http://commoncorematheducatorsrespond.blogspot.com/). The statement was drafted by Susan Jo Russell of the Education Research Collaborative (TERC) and Steven Leinwald of the American Institutes for Research.

A few excerpts:

We do not support standards that require earlier and more formal mastery of key mathematical skills before students have sufficient instruction and experience to develop the conceptual basis for those skills. In some places, the draft that promises “fewer” standards actually overloads the conceptual development expectations. The promise of making sense of mathematics gets lost in a curriculum packed with skill mastery. Unfortunately, despite several rounds of feedback and months of discussion in which such concerns have been raised repeatedly, the March 2010 Public Review Draft of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics remains seriously flawed in this regard, particularly at the K-5 level.

In our view, the goal of adopting “higher” standards must be implemented as the reasonable and rational placement of content that permits high performance standards, rather than teaching more and harder math at earlier grades. “Higher” standards require carefully constructed learning progressions through which students learn the basics of mathematics over the course of enough instructional time, experience, and practice to develop this critical foundation. By simply pushing requirements for skills earlier, content standards become empty goals rather than a set of performance standards that are reasonable to expect all students to attain. We have serious concerns that, because of these grade placements, these standards will privilege a small percentage of students and result in a large percentage of students unnecessarily classified as remedial.

The kindergarten standards for base-ten numeration are unrealistic. Neither research nor practice supports the idea that 5-year-olds can understand that 10 is both a unit of ten and 10 ones or that the 8 in 89 represents 8 tens. These standards are mismatched with the realistic CCSS kindergarten standards for counting objects to 20 and solving addition and subtraction problems within 10. We know that we can get young students to parrot phrases such as “ 89 is 8 tens and 9 ones”; this parroting is not the same as understanding and using the fact that the 8 in 89 represents 80.

Catherine Gewertz mentions this critique in her Education Week blog, but seriously misstates the authors' position, falsely reporting that they find the proposed math standards "well-designed and comprehensive." In fact, they say just the opposite.

For an interesting view of the absurd process that led to the creation of these absurd standards, read this commentary by John Fensterwald of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation: http://educatedguess.org/blog/2010/01/17/common-core-standards-under-fire/.