I've just taken a look at the background on the development of the new
Common Core Standards for education in the United States.
Contrary to myth, this is not a federal program being "shoved down the
throats" of the states and their citizens. Rather, representatives from
48 states devised the Common Core; 44 states have adopted it so far. In
fact, looking at a list of the participants, I found -- in addition to
states' representatives -- many professional national organizations but
not a single one from the federal government. If any of the latter were
there, I missed them.
Contrary to another myth, the Common Core provides no curricula. It is
up to each state, local education system, and individual teacher to
devise curricula to attain the specified standard knowledge for each
grade and within each domain.
Due to my military background, which involved many moves from one state
to another, I applaud a commonality among states in the standards for
each grade level. This avoids having the same standard being applied in
one grade in one state but a different grade in a different state. The
latter greatly impedes the education of students who move from one state
to another during their school years. That risks missing a concept
entirely while being taught another one for the second year in a row.
The focus of my detailed inspection was on the Mathematics Standards, in
particular the domain of "Measurement and Data". That is due to my
interest in metrology. That domain is specifically covered in grades
Kindergarten through five. Of course, it is the underlying basis for
parallel domains and for domains addressed for grades 6 through 12.
I found the sequence of standards in this domain to be utterly logical
and I deem them to be attainable. Unlike some early "new math" reforms,
this one is not what I would call "fuzzy math" nor does it contain
esoteric abstract concepts. Rather, it is well grounded with hands-on
learning. (In math education, the objects used to provide such grounding
are called "manipulatives".)
The "Measurement and Data" domain can be seen, broken down by grade
level, at
http://www.corestandards.org/read-the-standards/
See also:
http://www.corestandards.org/other-resources/key-shifts-in-mathematics/
My one concern is that we are still teaching two "systems" of units --
metric and non-metric. On a positive note, though, the metric system is
included in all of those six levels (K-5). This is a greater presence of
SI in education standards than I have seen before. Lorelle Young and I
spoke with a representative of the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics (NCTM) years ago to encourage them to do this. We were not
very successful.
The good news is, the organization(s) behind this consider it a work in
progress. There is still time, once the US gives up its buggy-whip units
of measurement, to streamline the standards by omitting them and thus
provide more time for learning metric units. One cautionary note,
however -- the concept of common and vulgar (non-decimal) fractions must
still be taught!
As a reminder, I looked specifically at the "Measurements and Data"
domain. I did not look (very deeply) at the other domains in the
Mathematics Standards.
Jim Frysinger
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stoney Point Mountain Road
Doyle TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
