Central to any discussion of the Common Core is the distinction between the Standards established by Common Core and the process of implementing of those Standards within States/School Districts.
The Standards are the “what” and “when.”
- Students will master times tables by the end of 3rd grade.
The Implementation is the “how.”
- Students will memorize the times tables, says one textbook publisher.
- Students will construct their own approach, says another publisher.
It appears from various discussions about the Common Core that many people who are concerned about the Common Core are not clear that making this distinction is crucial to having a meaningful dialogue that in the end will help students to raise their achievement level in mathematics. It is important that we remember this distinction, as we investigate strategies to help the students in our Learning Centers who are encountering the Common Core in their classrooms.
Because implementation of Common Core is being done at the local level, there will be little “common” about it. As always, we are seeing a huge divide in strategies, methods, levels of teaching competency, testing methodologies, textbooks, and grades. We are also seeing things that are just “wrong.” If you read the standards [1], Common Core specifically states:
“These Standards do not dictate curriculum or teaching methods. For example, just because topic A appears before topic B in the standards for a given grade, it does not necessarily mean that topic A must be taught before topic B. A teacher might prefer to teach topic B before topic A, or might choose to highlight connections by teaching topic A and topic B at the same time. Or, a teacher might prefer to teach a topic of his or her own choosing that leads, as a byproduct, to students reaching the standards for topics A and B.”
The challenge that is presented to us, is that parents don’t distinguish (or care to distinguish) between standards and implementation. What they care about is helping their child be successful in class, in school, and in life. So Mathnasium’s message to parents doesn’t really change from what it was before Common Core. We teach math the way it makes sense to kids. We understand the Common Core Standards, and are neither “for” nor “against” them. The standards attempt to closely integrate number sense and critical thinking skills and, as such, have even more in “common” with the Mathnasium approach than previous state standards.
Our program has always both complemented, and more importantly, supplemented existing math programs used in public and private schools. Our support for the Common Core will be no different. While it is not our intention to be “aligned” with the standards, our support for those Mathnasium students in Common Core classrooms is unwavering.
With panicky parents arriving in centers waiving homework papers they don’t understand, or a normally straight A student failing a test poorly aligned to the homework that they completed with little difficulty, it can be easy to feel that this is a new world, and that we must reinvent ourselves to deal with this crisis. We need to remember that these challenges were present before Common Core, will be there throughout Common Core, and will likely be there long after Common Core. Many of us have lived through similar battles on a smaller scale; Every Day Math with its lattice multiplication haunts kids to this day. This is just the first time in recent memory that such a large portion of the country is affected by this type of change simultaneously. However, it really is not the first time this has happened on a large scale.
We have all laughed with Larry in Initial Training about “Teaching Math in the USA, [2]” as the lumber problem works its way through the decades. Some of you have asked us to write a Common Core version of the problem. Our hope is that it returns to something like the 1950’s version, with an added, “How did you get your answer?” But remember if it does, many of the parents who went through school in the 70’s – 2000’s won’t be able to help their kids with homework.
Through each of those changes, there have been panicking parents and The Mathnasium Method has worked through all of them. Some important strategies to remember:
- Use the Mathnasium Hour model – Do not let parents talk you into focusing only on homework [3]. Students who focus on Mathnasium material experience greater success over the long term than those that do not. “You can push back on parents harder than you think that you can!”
- Use the Mathnasium teaching constructs – Help students draw connections between their school work and their binder materials. If the teacher requires specific methods, help them with those during homework time, but always in conjunction with Mathnasium Constructs.
- Extend knowledge when a student understands the concept – It is easy to just move the child on to the next topic. Encourage your instructors to teach the student more, to introduce them to the next topic in the series, even if they aren’t ready to master the new topic.
- Teach to mastery – Use Mastery Checks as true assessments, and do not be afraid to assign extra material if “Mastery has not been achieved”. Use full post-assessments to ensure retention of topics beyond initial exposure.
For many of us in the system, Common Core will be a challenge, one of many that we will face going forward. But, it is a problem of Parent education and expectation management, not a crisis that requires an approach that “differs” from the Mathnasium Method. For those of you that are new, seek advice from those that have been around for a while. For the old-timers, remember that the system works, and you know that!
Please help guide this conversation…we want to hear from you, about what you are seeing in your centers. The more we know about specific parent concerns and how individual states and school districts are implementing Common Core, the better we can help “tailor” the message. Check back here soon for more information about our alignment to the Common Core Eight Mathematical Practices and a discussion of the challenges posed by the proposed assessments, and then let us know how we can help you.
– Larry, Jennifer, and Tanika
Larry will award you three bonus punches on your Great Mathnasium Card in the Sky if you send him an email telling him that you read this article.
13 Comments To "Starting a Conversation About Common Core"
#1 Comment By Desiré Pierce On October 20, 2014 @ 2:48 pm
Great reminder about how our program works! I only have a few students that go to private schools that have adopted the Common Core. We make sense out of the math no matter how it is being taught in school.
#2 Comment By Mark Minson On October 20, 2014 @ 4:25 pm
A conversation with parents around common core usually goes like this.
Parent: I hate this stinking common core. It is wrecking my child’s GPA.
Me: Although it may seem that common core is the culprit, in reality the schools can choose any way they like to implement common core.
Parent: Common Core IS the culprit and you need to fix it.
Me: At Mathnasium, we teach kids math in a way that makes sense to them. So regardless of the curriculum or implementation of standards, we can help make sense of it to your child.
Parent: OK, but can we pull may kid out of public school and have him just do math here, then?
Me (patiently): Regardless of the curriculum, we will help them make sense of it. It will probably not go away soon, so let us be your guide for the next few years.
It’s great for repeating business!
#3 Comment By Brett Baltz On October 20, 2014 @ 4:35 pm
A timely article for many reasons. I just finished my training summaries of the sections in the Education Training Manual and drew from my experience in the high school math classroom. There is always a great divide between assessment (standardized tests), goals (standards), expectations (parents), implementation/instruction (teachers), and of course learning from a new set of rules but without the benefit of some of the prerequisite knowledge assumed under those new rules (students). They get stuck in the middle, and they need us more than ever. Educational ideas change like fashions–they come and go in cycles. Most parents only recognize math the way they learned it depending upon in which cycle they were stuck. There’s a reason the Mathnasium Method has a reputation of being highly successful and predominantly unchanged for 30 years. Stay the course.
#4 Comment By Patrick Figurski On October 21, 2014 @ 5:54 am
Larry, Jennifer, and Tanika— you have described what we experience from parents accurately. We have had a number of parents badgering Common Core because they have been associating it with being a methodology instead of simply an outline of standards to be achieved.
Once we explain the distinction and that any school can meet Common Core by teaching it any way they choose, it helps them understand the situation. And then of course, we explain how Mathnasium can help their child understand the methods regardless of how they are being presented in school……which in reality is not any different than it was before Common Core when each school district had their own flavor.
We agree with you entirely. We haven’t changed a thing.
#5 Comment By Terry Rennack On October 21, 2014 @ 10:00 am
Larry, Jennifer, and Tanika,
Your words ring true. This is exactly what I have experienced with both parent and students.
To paraphrase a Florida Law “Stand your Ground”.
The roads to success are paved with bricks of Mastery. Although grades are the current measure of success, colleges, technical scools and businesses are taking steps to make the actual grade a much smaller measure of the students abilities. Soon grades will be irrelevant and demonstrated results will rule the day.
I can’t help but think of the Robin Williams’ movie, Dead Poets Society. “Oh Captain, my Captain!”
Look at all things from all angles.
Carpe diem.
#6 Comment By Nick Mele On October 21, 2014 @ 11:02 am
Wonderful piece. It is a topic of discussion each and every day at our center, not only among parents and customers, but instructors and students as well.
#7 Comment By Larry Schatt On October 21, 2014 @ 3:14 pm
Great article. There is so much confusion about Common Core. Thanks for giving us more tools to explain this to parents.
#8 Comment By John Van Horn On October 21, 2014 @ 3:44 pm
Excellent article. We have seen many issues with worksheets and handouts at the lower grade levels.
The biggest thing that has occurred this year in the common core arena is that at the high school level my “home district” has found it a good excuse to drop using textbooks and to just use handouts. As the handouts are limited in resources, they create a sense of growing frustration among students and parents.
#9 Comment By Suzanne May On October 22, 2014 @ 12:42 pm
Great article – shared this with the entire staff to help them respond to parents’ questions. Oddly enough, we’re hearing more concerns from parents of children whose schools are using math programs like “Everyday Math” and “Math U See”, asking how they stack up against common core. These are questions, I gently remind them, that are more appropriately asked of their children’s school staff. But it’s great that they think of us as the go-to people on this subject.
#10 Comment By Chris Lee On October 22, 2014 @ 2:14 pm
We need to be very careful not to dismiss common core as another fad or cycle. Common core is very different in that 45 or 46 states have adopted it. The implementation of the standards is inconsistent from region to region even within the same county, which makes it very difficult.
What is common is the emphasis on word problems. I believe we need to adapt and evolve and be careful not to project a sense of superiority over common core.
The reason most parents reach out to us is that they are feeling a pain point caused by something in school. Of course a weak foundation is a contributing factor to this pain, but with the common core implementation in our area we have seen that reading comprehension and explanation skills are also becoming contributors to this pain.
We need to continue to create world class curriculum and be able to offer advice on reducing this pain. Are we going to be able to solve a reading comprehension issue on our own? Of course not, but we need to develop tools to assist the students with problem solving. Before you say isn’t that what our curriculum does? I would say yes to a point but we can go much further and deeper by developing micro problem solving skills.
There is a fabulous WOB page.. WOB8_ACT_V04_03 that outlines problem solving strategies it lists 17 strategies starting with Read the entire questions carefully, read it several times, if necessary and ends with Recognize the possibility that there may be no solution.
We should be teaching these 17 skills in a systematic way from grade 1 on up. Imagine the possibilities? Imagine being able to show a parent a road map of how we teach problem solving yes we do it today, but it is a bit ambiguous to a parent.
This new idea would be a true road map that we could build quantifiable stats around and have meaningful conversation with parents about how we have mastered the skill of underlining key words but we need to work on skills like making a table or chart and here is some curriculum and this is how we are going to teach it.
The new curriculum has come a long way and is much improved in providing constructs and embedded instruction to help create a more uniform teaching approach, but we must continue to evolve.
On a second note I have some specific questions with some of this blog posting
• Use the Mathnasium teaching constructs – Help students draw connections between their school work and their binder materials. If the teacher requires specific methods, help them with those during homework time, but always in conjunction with Mathnasium Constructs.
What does that really mean? Sounds like we are straddling the fence. If we are truly the math expert and a student has a test on long division using partial product method we better darn become the expert in that method and teach it to them that way or guess what we will lose the customer, we will get the reputation that we are not flexible and only teach it our way.
• Extend knowledge when a student understands the concept – It is easy to just move the child on to the next topic. Encourage your instructors to teach the student more, to introduce them to the next topic in the series, even if they aren’t ready to master the new topic.
What exactly does next topic in series mean? Does this mean when a student learns single digit multiplication we should extend knowledge and start teaching 2 digit multiplications?
• Teach to mastery – Use Mastery Checks as true assessments, and do not be afraid to assign extra material if “Mastery has not been achieved”. Use full post-assessments to ensure retention of topics beyond initial exposure.
Where does the extra material come from? There has been discussion for years about creating second versions of pk’s for students who miss the topic on the mastery check or the post test so they don’t do the same pk over and over again.
Cheers
#11 Comment By Dan Saposhnik On October 22, 2014 @ 3:27 pm
Chris raises some excellent points.
We are also seeing that a word problem orientation, including problem solving strategies, is playing an increased role in children’s tests as a result of Common Core.
Isn’t it possible for HQ to survey existing franchisees across the USA to determine the similarities of Common Core implementation on learning plans, homework and tests so that we can be proactive with our students? Rather than saying that Common Core teaching is all very different at each local level, can we have a grass roots understanding of what is really occurring? This could be done with a survey posted here to all the franchisees. I prefer to have added material and strategies to our curriculum than simply say & teach to mastery (which I have been saying oddly enough). BTW, I love Chris’ point about teaching to mastery, why don’t we have additional new material to teach to mastery rather than regurgitating previous material?
#12 Comment By Ryan Booth On October 23, 2014 @ 12:09 pm
In Louisiana, our old standards specifically called for giving students calculators in 3rd grade. The standards were a mile wide and an inch deep. For example, when I taught 6th grade, I was required to teach students which polygons tessellate on a plane—even if that meant that I didn’t have enough time to fully teach GCF, LCM, and adding fractions with unlike denominators.
So, I have no problem saying that the CCSS are superior to the old ones that Louisiana had (your state may vary), though I obviously don’t blurt this out to parents who are complaining to me about Common Core.
A big problem that we are having is that Eureka Math has been the only math curriculum rated as Tier 1 by the Louisiana Department of Education as teaching all of the standards, so a great many schools here are using it. (As some of you know, many curriculum manufacturers simply slapped “Common Core-aligned” covers on their old textbooks.) Eureka Math obtained the website commoncore.org and has deliberately tried to pass themselves off as THE common core math, which has massively added to the confusion about standards and curriculum.
#13 Comment By Ryan Booth On October 23, 2014 @ 12:21 pm
I would also echo Chris’s concern about the following statement:
“Encourage your instructors to teach the student more, to introduce them to the next topic in the series, even if they aren’t ready to master the new topic.”
In many cases, it is impossible to know what the next topic is, which is why (for years now) I have said that we need a curriculum map that lays out a scope and sequence for our material. The new curriculum is fantastic stuff, but it would still be very useful to see how it all fits together, to see a roadmap.