It’s Common Core, lol.
Well, you identified the stupid.
No, he just didn’t tell @Brant_Drake all the Initial conditions so the problem was ill-defined.
Common core really isn’t bad for mathematics. It is based mostly on teaching number sense instead of rote memorization. As a fairly advanced math user, I like what it’s trying to do. Once I realize that what comes inherent to me about math and numbers as someone naturally gifted in that field is not apparent to the large majority of the population I instantly saw the purpose of the teaching.
The part about common core that scares me is the amount of engineers with actual engineering degrees making life or death design decisions on things (literally) not being able to understand what is being taught in common core math…
That should scare everybody
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Common core became the Boogeyman in certain ways. While I didn’t teach math, I struggled to help my kids because the process made no sense to me having been relatively good at math the “old” way. I did understand that it helped some kids progress but I did not see it as any panacea or great advancement.
What I did see was a new generation of “experts” messing around with the curriculum yet again when that effort would have been more effective directed at parenting skills and free meals for inner city kids.
Maslowe had it right and the method of instruction had nothing to do with kids feeling safe.
I’m not convinced from what I’ve observed but I don’t apply any advanced math at my work. Is common core producing a better grasp of math among new engineers in your field?
The thing about people who are gifted in math is that we’ll pick it up no matter how it is taught, at least through high school. If I had to fault anything about my math education, it is that I was given special treatment for being good at taking tests and did not develop good study habits.
Back in the 90’s the government ran experiments on kids like me that resulted in two years of unsupervised feral behavior and an A- grasp of AP calculus without doing a page of assigned homework in a class graded on a curve. I believe the government experiment I was part of is still ongoing.
I agree that the education experts should reconsider messing around with what works. To that point, I disagree with the idea that the school system and government more broadly should relieve even more parents of even more of their responsibilities.
I believe school should be a place where every child is educated as well as possible with available resources heavily oriented around this goal. If domestic abuse is occurring, report it responsibly. If parents require pressure to provide for their children better, provide that pressure. With those noble tasks complete, educators should go home everyday to focus on solving their own problems.
Otherwise you end up like my town, where we have to vote against school budgets because there are no more taxes to be squeezed from the already struggling population. Our school budget has ballooned to twice the municipal budget when in 2007 it was equal, as it was for decades prior. Our spend per student is among the highest in the nation and our outcomes are among the worst. This was not the case 20 years ago.
I hate voting against school budgets. I never did until last week. I hate advocating for it publicly and I hate being characterized as a person who doesn’t support special education funding, but that’s how it works if you express an opinion on local politics. The town can’t take a 10 percent property tax increase. It can’t. It is time to start cutting.
Education seems to attract a lot of people with savior complexes. Noble intentions aside, parenting their students isn’t the role of educators, even in what seem to be dire circumstances. The increasing numbers of dire circumstances has become a long-term problem now. The immediate problem is that we’re out of other people’s money, at least in my town.
Dire circumstances have been on the rise as my government has oriented itself towards solving the personal problems of private citizens for the last two decades. The people of Maine have also assumed other burdens that don’t belong to us, such as meeting all of the needs of people from other countries.
I believe that the quote below is broadly true.
My point was supporting kids whose parents had already abdicated their responsibilities. I am not a fan of educators interfering with good parenting, or even parenting, just felt tired and hungry kids would be better served with being provided food and shelter rather than “new” math.
I think this is evidence that the money is being misspent.
My property taxes on LI are in excess of $9,000 on an assessed value of roughly $450K (not accurate, but you get the drift) so I understand your position.
I think this is hyperbolic - certainly many of them are in it to help kids but I didn’t see many with a savior complex.
What I did see is a lot of Education officials making budget decisions with little or no education experience.
The quote applies to Maslow’s research and is exactly my point. If those things are not done, no pedagogical method will work. Yet we have DeVos and Gates spouting off on how to fix education.
The money isn’t being misspent. It is being spent on exactly what it was planned to be spent on when it was appropriated. This includes a tremendous amount of resources spent on the school retaining and expanding its efforts to assume parenting responsibilities. This has been the trend now for the last 15+ years.
These spending priorities are considered absolutely vital and our school committee chair lamented her lack of resources even before the budget was voted down overwhelmingly. Now, weeks after one of the highest turnout budget referendums ever, our education “experts” are insisting that the will of the people is being subverted. They say this as they mobilize a re-vote on what’s shaping up to be the exact same budget that we just rejected.
From our superintendent to the school staff today:
Of course, this concern about abysmal turnout somehow subverting the will of the voters wasn’t present when turnout was a fraction of last week’s to rubber-stamp the experts’ spending priorities in years past.
Some of us have explained to him that you aren’t a voter if you don’t vote, but this civic concept seems beyond the comprehension of our school administration.
Perhaps common core will eventually yield education experts who understand civics, but for now the local pageantry I’m seeing belongs right here in the stupid thread.
To early to tell, but my kids are learning it and both are testing two grades above their level and in the top 5% nationally in math scores.
It is similar to how Japan and India teach math and they are kicking our ass in math and science.
I completely agree a lot of it comes down to what the parents do at home
Once I looked at it and realized what they were attempting to teach it was clear to me. I think a lot of the problem is that a lot of lower level math teachers don’t have a deep enough math understanding in order to successfully pass on the information.
Yeah. I see it like pre-pre-pre-algebra instead of years of repetitious arithmetic. I pointed that out to my sons teacher as she was having a hard time introducing it, and even talking a little smack about it.
Then sure enough, they stepped into transitive property, comutative, etc, and by the end of this year (5th grade) they were modeling linear equations from word problems and constructing tables for different values of a variable.
After kids master the rudimentary procedures (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) theres no sense in spending five more years on the same application.
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I just quoted at random, but I’ve followed this entire response-set from you with interest. I think your plan to travel and write is a good one, but I wonder if politics isn’t where you could do the most good?
And I wonder further if your writing shouldn’t be geared toward “The Stupid Thread” that is our local and national political system currently. My understanding is that only 30% of the bills an overwhelming majority of Americans support are passed, while the opposite is true as well; that 30% of the bills that no one wants are passed. We are not represented.
Could you fix that, please?
I doubt it, but that’s not what I have in mind for my first large-scale piece of writing. I’m certainly not going to write a political advocacy book, but I can’t promise that what I write will be completely apolitical if my plan is to talk to people across the country about their lives in the summer before this completely bonkers federal election.
I have been thinking about it a lot and it may sound corny, but I really am choosing to drive all around the country and write about what I see in an effort to find aspects of people’s lives that give me hope about the future. I’ll surely write about other things that enter my mind, but I want to look for the good out there. I also can’t completely ignore the bad because a lot of people are hurting right now. I guess I won’t know what I find until I step out my front door, hopefully within the next month.
If I wanted to write a book about politics I wouldn’t incorporate a trip across the country to do it. I wouldn’t even need to get in my car. I would write about the manifestations of policy decisions I observe in my town, and I do that now under my own name with public comment. We’ve completely lost the plot here. Hopefully we can find it before we completely lose the tax base.
The good news is that my level of raw writing output seems decent. Those two posts above maybe took an hour in total last night, including minor editing. The words come when I fix my mind on something, we’ll see if they’re any good or not.
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When adjusted for poverty (immigration), the US does quite well in comparison to all countries.
Semantics - I should have said that it is being misappropriated. They will cut positions - classroom teachers. Meanwhile a superintendent on Long Island in a 5,000 student district makes over $400K per year.
My school district has a an $82,000,000 high school football stadium.
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Coach Bud Kilmer demands good facilities!
My sister-in-law actually worked for her campaign. So much family shame.
Well that’s disturbing
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What did they think was going to happen?
I completely agree the minimum wage is too low in most places in the US, but this had disaster written on it from the start.