More about Common Core, Number Lines and the "Frustrated Parent" Bullshit

Well, the Independent Journal Review has resurrected the story of the Frustrated Parent and the Common Core math problem. The writer, Caroline Schaeffer, writes the story as if this were new news, ignoring the fact that the story is already seven months old.

The IJReview has an axe to grind with Common Core, as this Google search illustrates. The problem is that all of the examples they cite are NOT examples from Common Core. They are straw men. We've been through this argument before: Common Core is not a curriculum; it's only a set of standards. The IJReview, like so many other CC opponents, ignores this fact. They build up their own straw men, knock them down, and say "See? Common Core is bad."

If the writers (and the editors) at the IJReview would read the real Common Core stuff at the official CC website, they would understand. A little research with an open mind can dispel an awful lot of ignorance.

But enough of that. Right now, I want you to remember way, way back to your grade-school and middle-school days. You were pretty good at learning all of that addition and subtraction stuff. Do you remember the kids in class who weren't all that good? They were labeled "dumb" or "slow." They ended up sitting in the back of the room. When they got frustrated and acted out, they were labeled "problems."

Education research has come a long way since you were that young. Since then, researchers have discovered that different children learn in different ways, which they call learning styles.  Students with a strong logical or mathematical learning style pick up the vertical method of subtraction (the way you do it) very easily. Students who are weak in this area, but who have a strong visual or spatial learning style, such as artists, or who have a strong physical or kinesthetic learning style, like dancers and athletes, may not understand the vertical method at first.

These visual and kinesthetic learners, however, will understand the number line immediately. They can use it as a crutch, or as training wheels on a bicycle, until they get the idea well enough to move on to the vertical method.

Or would you rather that teachers did NOT use all the tools at their disposal to help their students learn? Should we abandon this number-line method, as Frustrated Parent and all of  his fans loudly proclaim? Would you rather go back to the days when the dumb kids and the slow kids were relegated to the back of the room, where they could be safely ignored? God forbid we should allow our teachers to use the tools that might make them successful!

I recently had lunch with one of my former students, now 20 years old and a junior at college. Before she came into my 7th grade math class, she didn't like math. She was one of the "slow" and "dumb" ones. In my class, we used a number line and a marching Gummy Bear to learn about addition and subtraction — of both positive and negative numbers. She tells me that she remembers that lesson  (even though she no longer uses a number line). It was a turning point for her, and the confidence she gained from that one exercise changed her life. She ended up taking advanced math classes in high school, and she will be graduating from college with a minor in mathematics.

Her major is education. She wants to be a teacher.

One final note. If you think that it's simple and easy to teach the vertical method of subtraction to children, including the very difficult concept of borrowing, then you probably also think it's simple and easy to teach the vertical method of multiplication (also known as "long multiplication"), don't you? I know you do. I've seen some comments in the anti-Common-Core articles decrying the "box method" and other modern methods of teaching multiplication, and demanding that teachers teach it "the way we learned it."

So let's watch the Animaniacs demonstrate the simple and easy vertical method of multiplication — the way you learned it. Click here.

Common Core: the backlash against "Frustrated Parent"

Well, I'm not the only person who stood up in defense of Common Core, or who put "Frustrated Parent" in his place. The Huffington Post, which has admirably refused to jump on the anti-Common Core bandwagon,
published an article that I missed - way back around April 1 - quoting many of CC's defenders and calling out "Frustrated Father" for his lack of ... common sense? understanding? ability to follow directions? comprehension? The article also pointed out very clearly - yet again - the difference between Common Core and all the stuff being passed along by CC opponents and the popular media as "Common Core."

Actually, considering that my blog postings about "Frustrated Parent" and Common Core were published on March 26, and the HuffPo article was posted on March 28, it could be that they used my blog as uncredited source material. This is even more probable considering that the article says at the bottom, "This article has been updated."

I sort of jumped the gun (like, two months after the fact) and posted a comment to the article today without having read it completely. Shame on me. It's still a good article. I recommend it to you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/viral-common-core-homework_n_5049829.html

Common Core: It's Not Really as Hard as You're Making It

I'm afraid that, in this Common Core debate, the voices of reason (and the voices of the teachers, bless 'em) are getting drowned out by all the yelling and screaming. Adjectives like "shrill" and "irrational" to describe some of CC's vocal opponents come immediately to mind, followed closely by "stupid" and "morons," and then devolving into words not suitable for a G-rated blog.

Here's another attempt to inject some calm and rational input into the debate. A commenter to an article on Yahoo! Shine, an actual teacher, has this to say about Common Core:

Common Core is a set of standards, not a curriculum. I teach common core without a specific textbook or program. I look at the standard such as 7th grade geometry: 7/G.A.1 Solve problems involving scale drawings of geometric figures, including computing actual lengths and areas from a scale drawing and reproducing a scale drawing at a different scale. I find examples of the problem and worksheets to support practice. Then I assess as needed that the student has mastered the skill. The worksheets people refer to are from a private publishing company that has sold the school a new program. If you don't like the program your school purchased, let them know. Common Core hasn't changed the way I teach, it's just a different standard.

Unfortunately, her words will not be heard. They make too much sense, they do not convey an extreme emotion, nor do they convey an extreme viewpoint. In the long run, the bullies and the reactionaries will take down Common Core, just like they're doing with the rest of society's useful institutions. In the end, the Common Core standards will be subscribed to by a small group of exceptional schools who quietly turn out exceptional scholars, while the rest of society wrings their hands about the decay in public education, never realizing that they have brought it upon themselves.

Note: This posting is a follow-on to my previous posting  on the topic. Click here to read it.

Common Core: Getting past the bullshit and the myths

(Please forgive me. I don't use profanity very much. But this time it was truly needed.)

I'm getting fed up with all the attacks on the Common Core State Standards Initiative (abbreviated herein as "Common Core," or "CC"). It seems like the anti-CC folks, and the anti-CC arguments, come from people who have no idea what they're talking about.

Some people misunderstand one piece of CC, draw an erroneous conclusion, and trumpet their conclusion as proof that CC is bad. An example of this is the myth that "CC will let a student say that 3x4=11 and get away with it, if his reasoning is good enough." I dare any of you to find the text in official CC documents that supports that statement. There isn't any. It's a myth - or, to put it more baldly, IT'S A LIE. It gains credibility through retelling, but it's still false.

Some people hear an anecdote about a bad experience somebody had with CC, and they repeat the anecdote. They tweet it; they put it on Facebook; they put it on their blogs and again, through repetition, the anecdote acquires enough credibility to be a powerful (but bogus) argument against CC. These bad experiences are usually based on a misunderstanding. One example of this is the recent story of Jeff Severt, the "Frustrated Parent" who couldn't understand his child's CC math worksheet and got his 15 minutes of fame by crafting a snotty response to the question on the worksheet. As I have shown in a previous post, the guy proved that, even with an engineering degree, he couldn't grasp an elementary mathematical concept and couldn't read or follow directions.

MOREOVER (and I added this on April 7 and put it in italics), a lot of people's complaints are not about the CC standards, but about curricula (that's a fancy word for "lesson plans") developed by textbook companies and sold to school districts, curricula which claim to be compliant with CC. If you don't like the curriculum, then complain about the curriculum, not the standards. Despite what you may think, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

Some of you may take the lazy way out and say, "But the curriculum is written to comply with the standards; therefore the standards must dictate the way the curriculum is laid out." That's some kind of logical fallacy. I don't know how to label it, but only intellectually lazy people would believe something like that.

My question to my readers is this: with all the resources available from the CC initiative itself, why are you relying on distorted opinions and anecdotes about stupid people, to form and to reinforce your negative opinions about Common Core? Why don't you bypass all the bullshit and go directly to the source?

And Now, A History Lesson:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was started in 2009. It was a collaborative effort between state governors, school administrators, teachers and yes, those nasty old teachers' unions. The federal government was not a part of it back then - and the federal government is still not a part of it. Okay, I can hear you sputtering with exasperation back there. Hold onto your horses, okay? We'll talk about the feds in a minute.

Before CC came about, departments in individual schools tried to come up with a common set of goals or standards, to ensure that all the students in their school learned the same stuff. It was a collaborative effort, driven by teachers.

Then teachers at many different schools in the district realized they were all working on the same thing, so they collaborated to create district-wide standards. Their efforts were usually coordinated by a curriculum chair at the district level. This was not a bad thing. Don't get your shorts in a bunch.

With the advent of No Child Left Behind, state boards of education were responsible for coming up with a set of common statewide standards, against which all students could be evaluated. Whether you like NCLB or not (I don't), it doesn't matter. NCLB led to the creation of state standards, and the districts hustled to conform, because statewide standardized testing was next. The state BOEs (well, the smart ones) relied on the work that had already been done by the teachers in the school districts in their states.

In the field of mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) recognized the major effort that these teachers were making, and so NCTM surveyed the teachers and developed a uniform nationwide set of standards for mathematics in all grades. I imagine that similar movements were happening in other subjects.

So in 2009, a bunch of governors and school district administrators had the bright idea to codify these efforts, and define a core of knowledge, the bare minimum standards that American students should learn. This core would be the same in all participating states or districts; hence it would be known as the Common Core, and the standards as the Common Core State Standards.

NOW, ALL YOU ANTI-COMMON-CORE LOUDMOUTHS: Notice that the CC standards were driven by the teachers - the ones doing the teaching - and fostered by the governors of some of the states in the Union. Not all of them.

Like all good things, the federal government got wind of CC, and they messed with it. They screwed it up. They didn't change the content of CC, but they took what should have been a teaching tool, to be handled delicately by skilled practitioners, and turned it into a club, to be wielded by clumsy politicians and inept bureaucrats. They made threats like, "If you don't adopt CC in your school, or district, or state, we will withhold federal education funding." You can blame it on the Obama administration if you want to. You won't be very far off. I wouldn't say it was Obama's doing, but the few times I've heard him speak about Common Core, it was obvious that he didn't understand CC any better than the anti-CC forces did.

A Special Message for You Mormons

The Mormon church has had to endure a lot of bad press in its 180-plus years of existence. It seems like the same lies, half-truths, and innuendo keep getting repeated over and over, in spite of the church's (and its adherents') attempts at rebuttal. In addition, it seems like everybody knows a friend of a friend who has a scare story about a Mormon, illustrating just how evil, terrible and bad the Mormons are.

Now, all of you Mormons know that the lies are just lies. You know that the anecdotal Mormons are either extreme fabrications or aberrations. Don't you wish that people would find out the truth about the Mormons by talking to a Mormon? or by reading the official Mormon website or something? Doesn't it really frost your cookies when people try to find out about the Mormons from somebody other than a Mormon, and they end up getting it all wrong?

So why the hell are you doing the same thing with Common Core? If you want to know the truth about Common Core, then go to the Common Core website. Read everything the creators have to say. Don't rely on CC's opponents to tell you the truth. Read the actual standards themselves, not somebody's interpretation of them. Use your own brain; don't borrow somebody else's.

Finally, a Message for Everybody

The Common Core standards were developed by teachers, for teachers. It was, and remains, a grassroots effort, with the students' best interests in mind. Although CCSSI itself was launched only four years ago, the groundwork for it was laid years before - by teachers.

This isn't something that was thought up by politicians, bureaucrats, administrators or union bosses. It came from the teachers themselves, because they cared about their students.

Don't believe the negative stuff in the press. If it's not outright lies, then it's distortions and innuendo. Even the anecdotes are suspect, as I've shown in the case of Jeff Severt. If you look behind the stories, you will see that they're based on misunderstanding, and sometimes on stupidity.

Finally, and I can't stress this enough: read the standards yourself. Go to the Common Core website and read them. Understand them. Make up your own mind. Use your own brain; don't borrow somebody else's.

Final final note: My wife says I'm ranting. Yes, I certainly am.

Update, April 7: I found a great explanation of the difference between Common Core standards and Common Core curriculum. I quoted it in my latest posting. Click here to read it.