A glutton for punishment that even I didn’t want to incur, Megan Raposa analyzes the “new” South Dakota K-12 curriculum standards and finds, unsurprisingly, that they mostly just rearrange the Common-Core standards we had before:
The standards approved Monday not only look like Common Core in their verbiage but also in the physical layout of the page, from the column divisions to the red banner across the top.
The similarities to the new standards vary by grade level, though.
Middle school math standards matched most closely with Common Core, with 85 percent of standards taken verbatim. High school math matched least at 50 percent, though that doesn’t account for the rearrangement of standards in each class, a part of the revision process.
English language arts standards showed a similar pattern, with middle school standards showing the closest match at 69 percent, and high school standards showing the least similarity, with 54 percent.
Overall, math standards matched Common Core at a slightly higher rate than English, though both subjects were between 60 and 65 percent identical to the former standards [Megan Raposa, “South Dakota Replaced Common Core, But Did It Really?” that Sioux Falls paper, 2018.03.24].
This is why curriculum standards deserve a public yawn. We force schools through endless cycles of writing, implementing, and reviewing standards just to produce lengthy documents that are completely redundant to the professional knowledge and practice good teachers already exercise in their classrooms every day. Education Secretary Don Kirkegaard even admits that our ever-changing standards don’t change much:
Kirkegaard said it’s not unusual for standards to look similar after a revision, which happens every seven years for core academic areas like reading and math.
“You don’t reinvent math,” he said.
But the switch to Common Core marked an overhaul of the language used to describe what students should know about math and reading [Raposa, 2018.03.24].
Translation: Standards are a word game, not affecting what we teach but only the words we use to codify what we’re teaching into big impressive binders that collect dust on shelves for five years until the state decides to look busy and make new binders.
When the high school standards only match about fifty percent, did they get easier or harder or just changed enough that those who teach to the test, just have to update? Check which teachers spend how much time reviewing the differences to see who teaches to the test.
Roger, you may have missed the point. The standards didn’t get harder or easier. The teachers are still teaching (and the students are still learning) pretty much the same stuff. The standards only change the official descriptions of that teaching.
Cory, Why would the New Tech High in Sioux Falls do so terribly on their Math proficiency? 30% teens a bit low compared to 44% for the whole state. . .
Is this a result of Discovery/Inquiry/Constructionist math?
Fair question, OS. I haven’t seen the data, so I can only speculate. It is possible the school spends more time on projects and less time teaching to the tests, which are the only published measure of that proficiency. It is possible that Discovery/Inquiry/Constructivism don’t align well with the demands of standardized tests. Other explanations are possible… but I will speculate that the standards themselves don’t have much to do with whatever actual learning is taking place.
Feel free to submit links to the data to further the discussion.
Happily inviting the tangent, I will say that I respect and embrace discovery and inquiry whenever possible, since that approach offers a chance for more authentic, internalized learning. That said, that approach is not the only approach or the best approach in every learning situation. If I have a classroom of 33 kids and time is short, sometimes we just need to practice and memorize Quadratic Formula instead of spending a week trying to rediscover it.
Given the time for the teacher/student learning I agree. Personally, not being a math teacher, it appears the inquiry methods were instituted from elementary levels upwards and they have remained there. I would have thought it would have been better to look at the “end goal” first and work back down E.g. All seniors should complete Algebra II and then design how curriculum down through middle school and elementary.
It appears that in many of our schools the inquiry methods are still taught at the elementary levels but the high schools have reverted back to more classical methods, being a mix of both, but as a result they have fewer kids ready for Algebra I at the high school level. Thoughts?
(OS posing a thoughtful question with no personal insults—I feel like there’s a trap here… ;-) )
I haven’t seen enough school districts to generalize about possible causes of lower readiness for Algebra I. I’d like to see data supporting that suggestion—are fewer kids statewide entering HS ready for HS math?
I’m not sure high schools have reverted to classical methods; I think high schools have perhaps always been more “classical” compared to their freewheeling elementary counterparts. That’s just the nature of the disciplines: there’s more to lecture about in high school than there is in elementary, where we rightfully get much more art and play time.
I’m not convinced that an end-goal, top-down math curriculum is a superior approach. There’s a lot to learn in math other than Algebra II, and those multiple learning objectives may exist in a tree, not a single linear path.
Dare I analogize to P.E.? The point of first-grade gym class is not to get kids ready for ninth-grade P.E. The point of every gym class is to help every kid get more physically fit and to internalize good habits of physical fitness that they will follow for the rest of their lives. Goals like that for math—get kids more mentally fit and internalize good habits of mental fitness—are more immediately instructive for teachers at every grade than, “Will this activity help the child solve the trigonometry problems on the eleventh-grade math final?”
I will offer this general observation on lesson styles: if kids are given discovery/inquiry lessons all the time, and those lessons are done right, kids will be the kinds of independent learners who will tackle H.S. math with gusto and do cool things with it. We H.S. teachers should always be ready to capitalize on that approach. At the same time, good teaching at the earlier grades involves preparing kids for all kinds of learning experiences, including lecture, drill, and independent practice.
Standards are the language of mistrust from the “authority” to teachers.
I’m not saying the end goal should actually be Algebra II. It could be Calculus or Trig for that matter but Math, unlike P.E., builds from one year to the next. In P.E. you can focus on four-square for the whole year and next you could do dodge ball without any real impact. In math the tools you used in the last class you apply to the next class. If you are missing at any juncture you are lost. Actually, I’m wrong about P.E. If one was to start practicing basketball in the first year the 2nd year you would have even better skills for the next year and so forth. This is clearly demonstrated in wrestling. Kids who attend camps, participate in league wrestling do much better than the kids who just walks on one year. I’m not setting you up on the math topic. I like math.
Right, OS. My analogy to PE is imperfect—I can certainly look at 6th-grade math and point to skills that are necessary to do Algebra II, calculus, etc. There’s definitely a linear progression from course to course.
But maybe your mention of basketball, wrestling, four square, and dodgeball helps illustrate what I’m getting. The overall goal in P.E. is not to make better wrestlers. A good P.E. program exposes kids to lots of healthy activities, with the overarching goal of helping them find ways to stay physically fit. Similarly, math includes a variety of activities beyond the traditional add/subtract, multiply/divide, fractions, exponents, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus path. Consider statistics—we do a poor job of fitting that into the curriculum, in part because it’s a separate branch. To do stats, one definitely needs to have arithmetic down, but practically speaking, there’s not much algebra or calculus to do. With computers handy to crunch numbers, a good stats class is more about analysis, interpretation of data, than it is about calculating or solving for x. We need to build kids’ number sense and critical thinking more than perhaps any specific algorithm to get them ready for stats… and stats, arguably, will have more impact and application in more kids daily lives than calculus, maybe even more than Algebra II. Maybe we should put fewer kids through Algebra II and more through stats!
That debate is what bothers me about the standards. Skilled, conscientious math teachers can make good arguments for calculus and stats. The math teachers at Aberdeen might be really good at calculus and want to focus the school’s math curriculum on those skills. The math teachers at Watertown might have a couple really sharp statisticians who want to redirect their school’s math program accordingly. I’d like them both to have the freedom to do that, because neither school is going to go wrong with its separate mathematical focus. In both a calc school and a stats school, kids with good teachers will come out mentally fit. The Aberdeen kids won’t be as versed in measures of correlation, and the Watertown kids won’t be as versed in integrals, but both groups of students will have practiced math skills and will be able to approach new problems with logical, mathematical reasoning. I thus don’t think we should have one statewide test that says, “Here’s the math you need to know.” There are multiple and divergent math curricula worth teaching.
O concisely captures the principle underlying my lengthy paragraph. Trusting teachers means allowing the experts in Aberdeen and Watertown to choose their curriculum freely. They’re professionals. They’ll work your kids hard. They may teach your kids different things, but they will teach your kids well, without any need of formal standards to direct them.
I agree. I would say having standards is one thing but spending valuable teaching time to prepare for a test that has no bearing on the child’s future is a waste of everyone’s time. I would also say I have known teachers that lost their excitement in teaching and in search of something that meant transferring the responsibility of teaching from themselves saw inquiry math as that path. I do feel that it takes a combination of methods to improve the learning and that one path over another would hurt the learning. I am sure teaching simple arithmetic year after year can be wearisome and feel this is what we have seen happen in the elementary level. The result has been kids entering middle school without the basic tools to be as successful as they could have been. Now, in most elementary schools across the nation, elementary school children are falling further and further behind those from earlier years.
Who sets the acceptable levels for the smarter balance testing? Is it each state on their own? I seem to remember reading the Smarter Balanced tests were never normed. In addition I can now only find 6 states that use Smarter Balance throughout their different school levels. It all makes me think the SD Dept of Ed isn’t doing their job and if they aren’t doing their job then what do you think has taken place at the National level. . .
I have no desire to spend any time in my classroom teaching kids to pass someone else’s test.
The teachers you speak of, those who sought to somehow transfer responsibility by changing to inquiry/discovery methods, were obviously entirely wrong about what it takes to do such methods well. Inquiry/discovery doesn’t mean asking a couple questions and then sitting back and letting the kids do all the work. Effective Socratic questions requires extensive planning, asking oneself all the possible questions, pursuing all those avenues of inquiry oneself to get an idea of where the kids might roam intellectually and what advice they might need along all those different ways.
Discovery done right is awesome. Discovery done as early retirement is, to put it gently, ineffective.
I still would need to see data showing that some widespread shift to inquiry/discovery/constructivist methods has uniquely and significantly contributed to a decline in academic achievement and readiness for higher levels of education.
If I recall correctly, we were trying to establish the baseline data for the Smarter Balanced tests a few years ago. We were starting that work when I was teaching French in Spearfish. Luckily, my world language assignment kept me out of the thick of that work, which landed mostly on my math and English colleagues.
Teaching French helped inform the position on math standards that I laid out above. In my French class, I emphasized conversation and grammar. I can make a good case for focusing on those skills. Another teacher with different strengths and interests can make just as good a case for focusing on writing and literature. In either classroom, kids would learn lots of useful skills. Who’s to say there should be only one approach to teaching and learning French?
Excellent comment Cory!
Thanks, Bear. Let the record show that, when we stop shouting at each other, I can have a reasonable discussion about serious issues with even my bitterest critics.