Which also, if poeple think this, basically means f*** you if you have an IEP. Although to be fair, some gen ed teachers are like this too, which is a pet peeve of J2’s (who is an intervention specialist). I go out of my way to support ISs, because I think they are doing God’s work with what they have to deal with every day, not the least of which being all the IEP red tape and paperwork.
When I interviewed for a long term sub job one time, part of the interview was a brief chat with the superintendent. She asked me “What do you think is the biggest problem that teachers face today?” (Something like that.) I thought for a moment, and basically said something carrying the sentiment of “Because half of society basically sees us as just fungible low-level government workers instead of professionals.”
I’ll say this: I was pretty firmly anti-union until I started teaching.
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Thanks. I’ve run across complains about math specifically before. I’ve helped grand kids with math. IMO, time spent drilling addition and multiplication tables would have been repaid five fold (or more) in later math classes, to say nothing about outside of school.
Your earlier post was about “weasel Common Core nonsense into every aspect of education”. That seemed to go well beyond math.
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Sorry, I’m not a teacher. “IEP”? I could look it up, but you’ll know it better.
It also triggered triweasel!
Individualized Education Plan. It’s the legal document that makes special education what it is. Basically outlines what accommodations and/or modifications the student is entitled to to have equitable access to the educational process. Most of the time when school districts are sued, it’s over not following an IEP and/or its required protocols.
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Thank you.
Good to get this POV (point of view) regarding education.
Like I said, it’s possible I’m conflating standards with curriculum.
I’m not up on the current state of affairs (beyond what’s in Wikipedia), but my recollection is that the concerns about Common Core seemed to be:
- teachers upset that some derivations from CC were going to require new ways of teaching/testing
- folks upset that that schools were “doing away” with teaching kids cursive
- some people annoyed with the rearranging of when different math topics are to be taught in high school, at least in the early discussions of the math portion of CC – rather than the American traditional progression of Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Trig/Precalculus, Calculus; there was a proposal to take a more integrated approach, and add statistics to the mix. (It looks like they made integration an option rather than a mandate)
- the expected complaints about federal intervention in something that has traditionally been a state/local matter
- Conservative paranoia that manifests today in resistance to “woke education”
Thanks for your response. I also share some of your concerns and I do think it is a curriculum issue. I think we are mostly in agreement about the basic skills. I see students all the time that can barely do basic arithmetic, and I’m teaching at university. That’s not a common core issue - that’s all about curriculum design. You can do all the abstraction and mate it with the rote practice, but it’s a tricky balancing act and each student is going to be at a different pace. I see the stuff my kids are doing in school and it’s a great plan, but in practice it can fall apart of either the student or the teacher doesn’t commit to it.
On the flip side I also see lots of students, mostly from China, that are great at the arithmetic but don’t have the first clue about any of the bigger picture stuff. That’s fine for accountants or whatever, but it really holds them back when they want to be engineers or mathematicians.
As to the Pearson thing, I also hate that they are angling for such a huge profit. All the materials should be free online. Kids are using tablets in school now so that transition is happening, but it takes time.
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This is such an obviously superior choice than the traditional rigorous order that I’m constantly amazed by the pushback from teachers. I think it’s mostly just inertia because they don’t want to deal with learning a new curriculum.
Well I have a limited perspective: my experience as a student in the 80s & early 90s, my recollection of teaching in the late 90s (a lot’s changed since then), and my experience with Mini Me’s K-2 math education.
Her math skills and instruction seems mostly reasonable from what I can tell. Last year she’d usually have to do 3-4 math worksheets a week as homework and I’d check them all. A good mix of different skills: addition & subtraction, story problems, graphs, telling time, money, measurements (metric and imperial), inequalities, probably more that I’m forgetting.
And there would always be review problems. If they were subtracting three digit numbers there would be a question that was adding three digit numbers and initially she’d always get those wrong because she didn’t pay attention and she’d subtract instead of add.
They’re starting multiplication now, but we’re only four days into 3rd grade so the jury is still out on how I’ll feel about that.
I had mixed feelings about the integrated track at first. Now I look at it this way: imo, the traditional progression is better for students whose career path will take them to traditional 4-year college, and the integrated path is better for students whose career path likely will not.
I have many friends and family members who are either active or retired teachers. The Canadian ones certainly feel the unions have done a good job on compensation. The salaries here are good and teachers can retire with indexed pensions of 70% of salary by their late 50’s.
Sadly, there will always be a segment of the general population that dislikes teachers but I think that % is small in Canada. Teachers here generally have a good deal of respect in the community and the curriculum is not as politicized as in the US. Overall I sense it is easier and more rewarding to be a teacher in Canada than in the US based upon what my US relatives have indicated.
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My in-laws are this type of No Step on Snek Tea Party Q-curious voter. They think the election was stolen and Biden and Hillary Clinton are pedophiles but I believe(?) stop short of believing in drinking baby blood for adrenochromes. (I’m not sure of that however, because my ultraconservative WASP MIL has been really into drinking water with an amethyst crystal for curing her allergies lately.)
Anyway, their kids are all out of college and neither in-laws are anywhere close to education or even politics, yet they still complain about Common Core for some reason. Less so now, as the topic has more moved to trans people existing and Antifa, but Common Core still comes up.
What is up with Republicans and ignoring court rulings?
George, 17, a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, has been serving an in-school suspension since Aug. 31 at the Houston-area school. School officials say his dreadlocks fall below his eyebrows and ear lobes and violate the district’s dress code.
George’s mother, Darresha George, and the family’s attorney deny the teenager’s hairstyle violates the dress code, saying his hair is neatly tied in twisted dreadlocks on top of his head.
Editorial note: she’s right.
The lawsuit accuses Abbott and Paxton of failing to enforce the CROWN Act, a new state law outlawing racial discrimination based on hairstyles. Darryl George’s supporters allege the ongoing suspension by the Barbers Hill Independent School District violates the law, which took effect Sept. 1.
They allege that during his suspension, Darryl George is forced to sit for eight hours on a stool and that he’s being denied the hot free lunch he’s qualified to receive. The agency is investigating the complaint.
Barbers Hill officials told cousins De’Andre Arnold and Kaden Bradford they had to cut their dreadlocks in 2020. [The two students’ families sued the school district ]
(Texas school district to keep policy that forced two Black students to either cut their dreadlocks or leave school - CBS News)in May 2020, and a federal judge later ruled the district’s hair policy was discriminatory. Their case, which garnered national attention and remains pending, helped spur Texas lawmakers to approve the state’s CROWN Act law. Both students initially withdrew from the school, with Bradford returning after the judge’s ruling.
Demographics of the town the school is in is 75% white, 3-4% black. County is similar, every elected official is Republican.
Mine is also in 3rd grade…
Anyway, so far her “Common Core 3a Singapore Math” workbook is super boring and grindy. So I don’t know, so perhaps “drill and kill” is still alive and well?
My vague feeling is that some things very much need to be drilled-- addition and times-tables. Other things it’s like she gets the concept in 10 seconds, and then has to spend hours demonstrating it again and again.
It’s not math specific either. Language arts is full of “spelling” and “irregular verbs” that she picks from reading.
There’s also times where I randomly ask my kid a question, and her school skills get completely in the way of her thinking about it. I have to insist that she stop trying to use “standard algorithm” or whatever. Then she figures it out.
This.
This statement actually pretty well encompasses everything that’s wrong with what I call Common-Core-ism. The standards themselves should in theory just be a list of what everyone should know by when at a minimum. Somehow along the way, policymakers, researchers, and teachers bastardized the effort into a nonstop bashing of “traditional” and “algorithmic” teaching methods, as if no thinking occurs when using these bad old methods. But then there are stories of students who happen to stumble into the “traditional” way of doing something because that’s what makes sense, and they get marked wrong because “you didn’t do it the Common Core/constructivist/inquiry/whateveryouwanttocallit way.” So all they’re doing is replacing an old, efficient algorithm with a new, inefficient algorithm. It’s doing the same thing all the time that’s bad, not whether it’s an old way or a new way. Other countries are better than us at math because they embrace drill and kill as a necessary tool. (And also because we put stock in flawed international benchmark tests. But that’s a different conversation.)
There’s also no reason to expect young people to “become mathematicians” and waste time re-discovering concepts and properties that have already been discovered and well-established. Combined with the standards themselves having too much abstraction too early, it’s an unnecessary taxation of working memory, at the expense of long-term memory (which is where learning actually takes place). “But they have to think about the math.” Yes, they do.
But without basic building blocks that just plain have to be known, what do you expect them to think about? You don’t build a house starting with the roof.
Jaspess II (an intervention specialist, 4th grade) has a related frustration with her gen-ed math teacher. Some of her kids simply can’t work at the level of the 4th grade standards because of a combination of their unique needs and the gaps in prior knowledge that have built up along the way. But so far the gen-ed teacher is digging in and being like “well, but he has to know these standards.” But… 
Grrrr. As a gen-ed teacher, I’m frustrated for J2. I hate when gen-ed teachers act like they have no role in helping provide for the academic needs of students with IEPs. They’re still your kids!
Common Core in theory was well-intended. I think mainly it was corrupted by a combination of people with a blind axe to grind against traditional teaching methods and companies who manipulated the process top to bottom to profit as much as possible off struggling students.
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Once he gets around to taking knot theory he will be able to prove that his hair was indeed not below his eyebrows.