In a critical op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal by Jamie Gass and Charles Chieppo, we learn that Stanford University emeritus mathematics professor James Milgram, the only academic mathematician on the Common Core’s validation committee, refused to sign onto the final draft. Milgram described the Common Core standards as having “extremely serious failings” and reflecting “very low expectations.”
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...David Coleman, the primary architect of the Common Core standards has become president of the College Board, “we can expect that SAT will be aligned to the standards. No one will escape their reach, whether they attend public or private school.” Even homeschooled children will be vulnerable to the federalization of public education standards.
linkWe've lamented the dumbing down for decades. With Common Core they've effectively tossed out everything that was left that was remotely traditional or classical.
I will continue to teach my children using the same materials I bought years ago.
http://www.insidemathematics.org/index.php/standard-1 This site has a bunch of short videos showing how to use the standards in the class. (If you watch grade 2 think of Pan when you hear the kids' names. lol In grade 2 by the way the students spend time explaining to each other why they did what they did on their problem. They're not to worry about it being correct. In fact, the boy says he got 79 by adding 63 + 19) I didn't make it through all the videos. I couldn't take it. Hey, parents with kids in public school -- is it common to have the kids do so much discussion? How do they ever get much done?
Another site to "help" teachers:
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/acre/standards/common-core-tools/ I randomly clicked on an explanation for 5th grade language arts standards.
For example:
Standard-1. Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
"Unpacking" (what they call the explanation of the standard)-Fifth grade students are required to quote accurately from the text to support their answers.
“Quote accurately” may include using their own words. HUH???
This one just makes my head hurt:
http://www.illustrativemathematics.org/One thing I learned quickly when I started to homeschool 20+ years ago was not to buy the teacher's book (which usually cost 2 x the student book). I'm not talking about the answer key, I mean the book that tells you in excruciating detail how explain and how to access the student's work. Gee, if she gets that 121 + 43 = 164 what else do I need to waste time on?
Continuing from the same painful website:
SBAC assessments are made up of four item types: Selected-Response, Constructed-Response,
Technology-Enhanced, and Performance Task. A description of those items follows.
Selected-Response Items (SR)
Traditionally known as multiple choice, selected-response items include a stimulus and
stem followed by three to five options from which a student is directed to choose only
one.
Constructed-Response Items (CR)
The main purpose of a constructed-response item is to address targets and claims that
are of greater complexity. They ask students to develop answers without suggested
answer choices.
Technology-enhanced Items/Tasks (TE)
Technology-enhanced items can provide evidence for mathematics practices that could
not be as reliably obtained from traditional SRs and CRs. Technology-enhanced items
may stand alone or may be a tool used as part of the Performance Task and/or
Constructed-Response items.
Performance Tasks (PT)
Performance tasks, the most complex of all items, include the following elements:
• Integrate knowledge and skills across multiple claims.
• Measure capacities such as depth of understanding, research skills, and/or
complex analysis with relevant evidence.
• Require student-initiated planning, management of information/data and ideas,
and/or interaction with other materials.
• Reflect a real-world task and/or scenario-based problem.
• Allow for multiple approaches.
• Represent content that is relevant and meaningful to students.
• Allow for demonstration of important knowledge and skills.
• Require scoring that focuses on the essence of the Claim(s) for which the task
was written.
• Seem feasible for the school/classroom environment.
The Smarter Balanced summative assessments in mathematics are designed to measure the full
range of student abilities in the Common Core State Standards or Core Academic Standards
(CAS). Evidence will be gathered in support of four major claims: (1) Concepts and Procedures,
(2) Problem Solving, (3) Communicating Reasoning, and (4) Modeling and Data Analysis.
Students will receive an overall mathematics composite score. For the enhanced assessment,
students will receive a score for each of three major claim areas. (Math claims 2 and 4 are
combined for the purposes of score reporting.)
Claim 1 — Students can explain and apply mathematical concepts and interpret and
carry out mathematical procedures with precision and fluency.
Claim 2 — Students can solve a range of complex, well-posed problems in pure and
applied mathematics, making productive use of knowledge and problem-solving
strategies.
Claims
Claim 3 — Students can clearly and precisely construct viable arguments to support
their own reasoning and to critique the reasoning of others.
Claim 4 — Students can analyze complex, real-world scenarios and can construct and
use mathematical models to interpret and solve problems.
Glossary of terms:
Item: the entire item, including the stimulus, question/prompt, answer/options, scoring
criteria, and metadata.
Task: similar to an item, yet typically more involved and usually associated with
constructed-response, extended-response, and performance tasks.
Stimulus: the text, source (e.g., video clip), and/or graphic about which the item is
written. The stimulus provides the context of the item/task to which the student must
respond.
Stem: the statement of the question or prompt to which the student responds.
Options: the responses to a selected-response (SR) item from which the student selects
one or more answers.
Distracters: the incorrect response options to an SR item.
Distracter Analysis: the item writer‘s analysis of the options or rationale for inclusion of
specific options.
Key: the correct response(s) to an item.
Top-Score Response: one example of a complete and correct response to an item/task.
Scoring Rubric: the descriptions for each score point for an item/task that scores more
than one point for a correct response.
A special thanks goes to Melia Franklin, Assistant Director of Assessment from the Missouri
Department of Education, for organizing the below item samples into individual grade levels.
Quite frankly, there are teachers today that can't add or subtract and they are supposed to know what the heck a selected response item is? They have to gather evidence the kids are meeting standards? Common on. Teacher's Ed majors in college struggle as it is.