Common Core Standards and Disruption
Re-posted from The New Orleans Advocate. By Quinn Hillyer:
http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/opinion/quinhillyer/10365759-123/quin-hillyer-legislative-auditor-misses
The latest in useless Common Core disputes involves whether Louisiana’s legislative auditor indicated that the Core “drives” curriculum (Gov. Bobby Jindal’s version) or merely “guides” it (auditor Daryl Purpera’s own explanation).
That’s a sideshow. What is more important, and more frustrating, is how the auditor’s report whitewashes Common Core’s true nature by describing the Core’s changes in a bizarrely flattering light.
Here’s how the auditor frames the Core’s shift in mathematical emphasis: “Under the Common Core mathematics standards, teachers cover fewer topics in greater depth with their students than in the past. For instance, in kindergarten through second grade, students focus on mathematical concepts, skills, and problem solving related to addition and subtraction.”
Greater depth? Well, that’s one way to describe it. The better way is “incomprehensibly greater confusion.” Or, more simply: “gobbledygook.” Here is actual text [italics from the original], directly quoted from the Core’s own official document, of the Core’s “Standards of Mathematical Practice”:
“Mathematically proficient students make sense of quantities and their relationships in problem situations. They bring two complementary abilities to bear on problems involving quantitative relationships: the ability to decontextualize—to abstract a given situation and represent it symbolically and manipulate the representing symbols as if they have a life of their own, without necessarily attending to their referents — and the ability to contextualize, to pause as needed during the manipulation process in order to probe into the referents for the symbols involved.”
Huh?
It’s unlikely that even a single good math teacher in Louisiana thinks her job is to teach students “to abstract a given situation and … manipulate the representing symbols … without necessarily attending to theirGeaux Teacher!: Common Core Standards and Disruption: