Common Core math requires students to justify every answer. Does that make sense?
Canyon View math teacher, Kylie Findley works with her students during her morning class Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2104, in Cedar City, Utah. Findley, as well as other teachers, are utilizing the common core curriculum in their classroom. (AP Photo/The Spectrum, Asher Swan)
Common Core math has sparked a great deal of contention across the country in the past few years. It has its supporters, those who say that it teaches students to better understand mathematical processes. They also so that many problems parents cite with Common Core math stem not from the standards themselves but from poor teacher training. Critics, though, say the standards throw out proven computational techniques in favor of overly complex methods and wind up confusing students. Some parents and educators have also expressed concern that written math materials for young students are sometimes at a reading level above students’ understanding, thus impeding their ability to stay on track with math.
In this post, Wendy Lecker, a columnist for Hearst Connecticut Media Group and senior attorney at the Education Law Center, takes at another aspect of Common Core math: the requirement that students explain critical look at what she says is a key problem of Common Core math: the requirement that students are supposed to explain and justify every answer. This appeared in the Stamford Advocate, and I am republishing it with permission.
By Wendy Lecker
At parents’ night this fall, a high school math teacher I know begged parents to teach their children long division “the old-fashioned way.” She explained that the new way students had learned long division impedes their ability to understand algebraic factoring. She lamented that students hadn’t been taught certain rote skills, like multiplication tables, that would enable them to perform more complex math operations efficiently.
It turns out that brain science supports this math teacher’s impressions. Rote learning and memorization at an early age are critical in developing math skills.
A study conducted by Stanford Medical school examined the role of a part of the brain, the hippocampus, in the development of math skills in children. The authors noted that a shift to memory-based problem solving is a hallmark of children’s cognitive development in arithmetic as well as other domains. They conducted brain scans of children, adolescents and adults and found that hippocampus plays a critical but time limited role in the development of Common Core math requires students to justify every answer. Does that make sense? - The Washington Post: