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- Common core is good for Math education – prefer our author who is a mathematician.
2NC/1NR — CC Helps STEMCommon core is good for Math: teaches students how to learn and evaluate STEM.French 14 – Rose French, A staff writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC). The AJC is a national newspaper based in Atlanta. “In your schools; Today’s math lessons tied to tomorrow jobs.” State educators say the new Common Core standards --- controversial among some, who criticize them as a federal intrusion in schools --- should help buoy math performance. Over the past decade, Georgia has followed a pattern similar to other states: moving from a math curriculum that touched a number of topics toward a more conceptual approach, first under Georgia Performance Standards, now Common Core. Some critics complain the changing curriculum has contributed to Georgia's problems. Under Common Core math, teachers focus on fewer topics and explore them more deeply instead of teaching numerous math topics and repeating them from grade to grade because students don't fully grasp them. "We teach fractions starting in third grade, and we teach them every single year through eighth grade," said Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, who's written extensively about U.S. math education. "And yet at the end of eighth grade, students still don't know fractions." "I think in other countries ... they introduce them using multiple representations, and because they help students understand what a fraction is early on, then they don't have to cover it for five or six grades." Common Core attempts to mimic results in higher-achieving countries such as Singapore and South Korea, where math is thought of as something that must be learned through practice and hard work. In math classrooms in Asia, a teacher primarily leads the teaching of math, unlike in the U.S., where students often are divided into groups or practice at their desks --- unaided by teachers. School days are typically longer in Asian countries, and a greater proportion of the time is spent on math. Thurston Domina, a sociologist of education professor at University of California Irvine, says race, class and other socioeconomic factors can influence how students perform. So, too, can the cultural attitude in the U.S. "So kids will tell you, 'I'm good at math' or 'I'm not good at math.' And that's not good for anybody," Domina said. "The culture around math is particularly unhealthy in this country."
If that doesn't sound fuzzy, there's a simple reason: It isn't. To appreciate the changes under way, and perhaps to understand the anxiety provoked by Common Core, it's helpful to look at math before the core.
Math as rules starts early. Kids learn in elementary school that you can "add a zero to multiply by ten." And it's true, 237 x 10 = 2370. Never mind why. But then when kids learn decimals, the rule fails: 2.37 x 10 is not 2.370. One approach is to simply add another rule. But that's not the best way. Common Core saves us from plug-and-chug. In fact, math is based on a collection of ideas that do make sense. The rules come from the ideas. Common Core asks students to learn math this way, with both computational fluency and understanding of the ideas. Learning math this way leads to deeper understanding, obviates the need for endless rule-memorizing and provides the intellectual flexibility to apply math in new situations, ones for which the rules need to be adapted. (It's also a lot more fun.) Combining computational fluency with understanding makes for problem solvers who can genuinely use their math. This is what businesses want and what is necessary to use math in a quantitative discipline. Here is what good math learning produces: Students who can compute correctly and wisely, choosing the best way to do a given computation; students who can explain what they are doing when they solve a problem or use math to analyze a situation; and students who have the flexibility and understanding to find the best approach to a new problem. Common Core promotes this. It systematically and coherently specifies the topics and connections needed for math to make sense, and promotes both understanding and accuracy. No revolution This doesn't sound revolutionary because it's not. Common Core is a list of topics everyone knows we should teach. It doesn't tell teachers how to teach them (though it does ask that they teach them coherently, with understanding). It is also not a test, not a curriculum, not a set of homework problems, not a federal mandate and not a teacher evaluation tool.
Of course, the core will do best if parents can support their children in reaching these higher goals. Websites such as Khan Academy and Illustrative Mathematics have incorporated the standards and show best practices and well-crafted math problems. There is no doubt that the new standards are more rigorous. They will require more of our students, our teachers and our parents. Knowing what you are doing, instead of just knowing a set of rules, is the essential foundation for applying math to the real world. That's not fuzzy. It is smart. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.81 Mb. Share with your friends:
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