Michelle Malkin is wrong about the Common Core - Part 1

Part 1.

Michelle Malkin is posting articles promulgating inaccurate and irresponsible information about the "Common Core". I have excerpted her information in the indented sections. Below each section are my comments.  Her comments are from the article found here.

For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity and social justice. “Progressive” reformers denounced Western civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed ability grouping of students (tracking) bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling and multicultural claptrap.

Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers — empowered by Washington education bureaucrats and backed by misguided liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates — are now presiding over a radical makeover of your children’s school curriculum. It’s being done in the name of federal “Common Core” standards that do anything but raise achievement standards.

Michelle doesn't understand the difference between standards and curriculum. Think of ends vs. means. The standards are the ends, the curriculum is the means. Standards determine what kids should have learned after they have studied. The curriculum is the method by which they study.  The Common Core Standards do not determine what text books your child will use or how they will be taught. The same standards could be taught using the Great books or they could be taught using the progressive claptrap Michelle eschews.

For example: CCSS.Math.Content.4.OA.A.1 Interpret a multiplication equation as a comparison, e.g., interpret 35 = 5 × 7 as a statement that 35 is 5 times as many as 7 and 7 times as many as 5. Represent verbal statements of multiplicative comparisons as multiplication equations.

This standard could be taught by any number of methods or texts. No text or method is prescribed or proscribed by this standard, it only states that at the end of 4th grade, students should be able to understand that when we multiply, we are multiplying groups of things a specific number of times.

Common Core was enabled by Obama’s federal stimulus law and his Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” gimmickry. The administration bribed cash-starved states into adopting unseen instructional standards as a condition of winning billions of dollars in grants. Even states that lost their bids for Race to the Top money were required to commit to a dumbed-down and amorphous curricular “alignment.”

The Race to the Top grant is a competitive grant and states don't have to apply. If they do apply, there is no reason to believe they will receive the money. The Race to the Top grant does not require states to use the "Common Core" standards, only that states involved in a consortium should develop some common standards and that the schools who participate should comply with them. Again, many states didn't participate in this program. No one was required to adopt the "Common Core" even if they won. They could have adopted their own standards.

In practice, Common Core’s dubious “college- and career”-ready standards undermine local control of education, usurp state autonomy over curricular materials, and foist untested, mediocre and incoherent pedagogical theories on America’s schoolchildren.

States can adopt the "Common Core" or not, as they chose. Also, the "Common Core" doesn't require any specific curriculum. The "Common Core" does not "foist untested, mediocre... pedagogical theories on America's schoolchildren", because the core doesn't talk about pedagogy (how to teach), it only talks about outcomes.

Over the next several weeks and months, I’ll use this column space to expose who’s behind this disastrous scheme in D.C. backrooms.

Michelle makes it seem as if this is a program driven by the Federal Government. In fact there have been several state regional efforts to develop common core standards. The current "Common Core" is an outcome of the state's efforts to develop a common core. The "Common Core" initiative is published by the National Governors Association, not a Federal Government agency.

Previous to the common core, large states like California and Texas were able to drive core standards without input simply because they were large purchasers of text books and text book companies catered to them in content areas. The new way of having a national standard is much more egalitarian in that educators all over the country have input into the standards and not just a few bureaucrats in a few states.

Professor Jonathan Goodman of New York University found that the Common Core math standards imposed “significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries.”

The paragraph above promulgates the myth that standards are maximum standards. That somehow if a school wants to have higher standards they are prohibited. Any state, school or teacher can exceed the standards and teach at a higher level. Nothing in the "Common Core" would prevent accelerated classes.  Further the "Common Core" spreads Geometry and Algebra throughout all the grade levels instead of treating it as a separate subject.  If you look up the math standards there are Algebra and Geometry standards in each grade.

Under Common Core, as the American Principles Project and Pioneer Institute point out, Algebra I instruction is pushed to 9th grade, instead of 8th grade, as commonly taught. Division is postponed from 5th to 6th grade. Prime factorization, common denominators, conversions of fractions and decimals, and algebraic manipulation are de-emphasized or eschewed.

 Algebra I is not pushed anywhere because Algebraic thinking is infused within the entire K-8th grade curriculum as a strand and not as a separate class.  Division is not pushed from 5th to 6th grade because division is introduced in the 3rd grade. Fractions are also introduced in the 3rd grade and represent a significant strand in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. Algebra is again a strand in all the lower grades. Factorization of all number from 1-100 is required in the 4th grade. Fractions are introduced in the 3rd grade.

Traditional Euclidean geometry is replaced with an experimental approach that had not been previously pilot-tested in the U.S.

Euclidian Geometry can't be replaced by and experimental approach because the standards do not indicate any approach to geometry, only the things students should know.

Common Core delays proficiency with addition and subtraction until 4th grade and proficiency with basic multiplication until 5th grade, and skimps on logarithms, mathematical induction, parametric equations and trigonometry at the high school level.

This is so blatently wrong that I can't even begin to understand where she got this information. Proficiency for grade 2 is to "know from memory all sums of two one-digit numbers."  That seems fairly proficient for me. Multiplication proficiency for the 3rd grade is to "Fluently multiply and divide within 100".

Whether the common core skimps on high school math is up to the states. States can choose to supplement any of the standards or teach to a higher level of proficiency. Nothing in the "Core curriculum" would keep a state from teaching more or offering accelerated classes.

Moreover, there are organizations that have reasons to work for lower and less-demanding standards, specifically teachers unions and professional teacher organizations.

I don't know how teacher's unions could use the "Common Core" to fight for lower standards.  They seem to be fighting for the lowest possible standards now.

This is all in keeping with my own experience as a parent of elementary- and middle-school age kids who were exposed to “Everyday Math” nonsense. This and other fads abandon “drill and kill” memorization techniques for fuzzy “critical thinking” methods that put the cart of “why” in front of the horse of “how.” In other words: Instead of doing the grunt work of hammering times tables and basic functions into kids’ heads first, the faddists have turned to wacky, wordy non-math alternatives to encourage “conceptual” understanding — without any mastery of the fundamentals of math.

 Michelle may not like the curriculum or pedagogy her children used, but the common core doesn't standardize curriculum or pedagogy. Schools can decide what curriculum to use and what methods to use to teach the standards. Michelle also has choices if she doesn't like the curriculum her school is using. She can try to change the curriculum by getting on the parent organization, or running for school board. She can opt out of the state school system by sending  them to a charter school, or a private school.

Sorry, Michelle, but you are wrong, wrong, and wrong.