Chicago Teaching style: 3x4=11 is ok

[Gman]

Oh, but we have to bow down to the child's 'self-esteem' which has become the primary concern. These kids will have to find out where they really fit in the world from their boss instead of their parents.

Nobody catered to my 'self-esteem' when I was a kid. I knew right from wrong and where I stood in the world. My existence was pretty insignificant in the grand scheme. It was up to me to make my way in this world.

The answer to education isn't computers in every classroom. Personal computers didn't exist until the end of my public education and were found in a course known as "Computer Math". I was taught in school how to read and learn on my own. There's no limit to what you can learn when you have those skills. Now I work with computers every day for a good living. If you learned on a computer in school, what happens when technology moves on and those skills no longer apply?

[Byte Stryke]

the ONLY part of the entire thing I agree with is that we should expect the child to be able to explain why they cam up with the number... it should still be right.
But, if they are just memorizing figures, they are not learning how to think.

4 nines is 36
thats great...
WHY is 4 nines 36

as far as the incorrect answer being OK... I don't think so

[sellersm]

Take this one more step, logically, towards its conclusion: if simple mathematics (simple math we're talking about, not complicated, theoretical stuff) can't be based on 'absolutes', then what else in life can't be based on absolutes? See where this is going? The only absolutes in life, are the ones "they" tell you are absolute! Moral foundation? Fugettaboutit. Scientific foundation? What? Are you kidding? Etc. etc. etc...

As was mentioned, another HUGE step on the path, and the end of the pat is now in sight!

[Gman]

Classroom chaos? Critics blast new Common Core education standards

As critics fear Washington is poised to take control of what and how local districts teach kids, school administrators are adopting new curriculum in an effort to ensure their students outperform their peers and parents worry that their children are being used as academic guinea pigs. As the program gets closer to full implementation, a full-blown backlash is developing despite assurances from supporters that it is merely a test aimed at establishing a national standard.

“It’s just now reaching their school districts and their children’s schools and they want to know, ‘What is this, and why is it being forced on us?’” said the Cato Institute’s Neil McCluskey.


When 90 percent of states signed on to subject K-12 students to the Common Core math and English standards being pushed by the federal government, the program looked like an unqualified success. Kids around the nation would be tested once a year in grades 3-8 in math and English language arts, and once in high school, either in the 10th or 11th grades. Finally, students throughout the country could be measured by the same yardstick, long before taking college entrance exams. Local districts that excelled at educating children could be singled out, and ones who lagged could also be identified in order to address problems.


But if what happened in New York and Kentucky, two of the 45 states that have signed on to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, is any indication, the chaos has only just begun. Those states administered their own standardized tests aligned with Common Core, and the results were disastrous. Just 31 percent of New York students in the third through eighth grades were deemed proficient in math and English on the new tests, down about 50 percent from the traditional test given the year before. Kentucky, which also implemented its own Common Core-aligned tests, experienced similar declines in scores.

[merl]

Gman, what is the complaint there? That the new tests are too hard? (big decline in numbers deemed acceptable) I see harder tests as a good thing.

[Gman]

Local government should be making the calls for education, not the disconnected Feds.

...and it's not that the tests are "harder". The expectations for learned content in the new tests are "different".

What does the Federal government do efficiently or better than the states?

[merl]

If the local (state in that article) gov is setting standards such that everyone passes and FedGov comes along with a harder test it is going to be very hard for me to side with the locals.

[Gman]

Did you miss the rest of the thread discussing 'common core'?

DAVID BARTON EXPLAINS HOW COMMON CORE POSES ‘SERIOUS PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE OF THE REPUBLIC’

[merl]

That article in context of the rest of the thread is what has me confused. If common core is really a step UP in difficulty, what the hell is being taught now?

Math & English are pretty straightforward subjects. Math has provably right & wrong answers, OP notwithstanding. I refuse to believe anyone would mark 3x4=12 incorrect even if they might mark 3x4=11 half credit for effort. English again is a straightforward subject at the root, can you understand and write a sentence. Combine the two subjects and you get the dreaded word problems from math class.

In the two test states more kids failed the common core test than whatever was being tested before. Either that is a deeply flawed test which we would be hearing about everywhere or it is a more difficult test than existing standards.

[DavieD55]