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New Math & NCLB in the US

Mar 31, 2014#1

GasBandit

What the unholy hell? You mean they're not teaching subtraction by digits any more?

Mar 31, 2014#2

Terrik

GasBandit said:
What the unholy hell? You mean they're not teaching subtraction by digits any more?

This..this isn't funny at all.

Mar 31, 2014#3

Chad Sexington

There is no new thing under the sun

Mar 31, 2014#4

Terrik

GasBandit said:
I didn't know where else to put it. The not-so-funny picture thread, I suppose, but I guess I thought political trumped it. But yes, it's horrifying that the future minds of our nation are being warped by this bass-ackwards gobbledygook pseudomath. Teaching this should be tantamount to committing assault.

Maybe I'll have my kid in China, stay a few years and THEN come back.

Mar 31, 2014#5

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
I didn't know where else to put it. The not-so-funny picture thread, I suppose, but I guess I thought political trumped it. But yes, it's horrifying that the future minds of our nation are being warped by this bass-ackwards gobbledygook pseudomath. Teaching this should be tantamount to committing assault.

My mother is a teacher. Just about everything from common core is fundamentally flawed... but it's quantifiable and that's all that matters to the Department of Education. Blame No Child Left Behind and it's funding based on success.

Mar 31, 2014#6

figmentPez

AshburnerX said:
My mother is a teacher. Just about everything from common core is fundamentally flawed... but it's quantifiable and that's all that matters to the Department of Education. Blame No Child Left Behind and it's funding based on success.

I'm looking at the image of some common core worksheets... and it's just a jumble of concepts. It's like someone took all the various ways that a teacher might use to explain math to a kid who just isn't getting it, and decided to show all those ways to every single kid. I can't imagine how confusing that is. Most college students I know get confused if you show them more than one way to work a math problem. These should be examples in the teacher's arsenal to help them get through to a kid who can't understand the work any other way, not just a shotgun of tactics thrown at kids to decide how they understand best.

Mar 31, 2014#7

blotsfan

I don't see the issue. It doesn't seem like the most intuitive way to do it, but I kinda understand what they're going for. You take away 3 100s, 1 ten, and 6 ones. The issue being that the kid took away 6 10s and no 1s. Maybe not the best way to do it, but it doesn't seem like a reason to call for the decline of all things holy

Mar 31, 2014#8

Ravenpoe

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/viral-common-core-homework_n_5049829.html?ir=Parents

Explanation of that image.

Apr 1, 2014#9

figmentPez

blotsfan said:
I don't see the issue. It doesn't seem like the most intuitive way to do it, but I kinda understand what they're going for. You take away 3 100s, 1 ten, and 6 ones. The issue being that the kid took away 6 10s and no 1s. Maybe not the best way to do it, but it doesn't seem like a reason to call for the decline of all things holy

Take a look at this sheet:

Apr 1, 2014#10

blotsfan

I still don't see the big deal. Just different ways to do it. I would've liked some methods of subtracting bigger numbers without having to deal with carrying 0s and borrowing from the left when I was younger.

Apr 1, 2014#11

Bubble181

blotsfan said:
I still don't see the big deal. Just different ways to do it. I would've liked some methods of subtracting bigger numbers without having to deal with carrying 0s and borrowing from the left when I was younger.

Problem isn't one specific method (though some methods really *are* less interesting because they cant scale up or don't "explain" how you get there), but that children are supposed to "intuitively" understand 10 different ways of solving the same puzzle. Instead of being told "here's one way to do it, see if you like it, if not, there are others we can try", they're being asked to learn all 10 ways and use specific ways of solving for specific questions - even if they're not the best, fastest, easiest or whatever.

Apr 1, 2014#12

DarkAudit

The Fox and the Cat

"I only know one way, but I do it very well."

Apr 1, 2014#13

Eriol

The problem that I see there is that the "new" way REQUIRES understanding the "old" way to work at all. Thus just USE the old way. Let's go from the original example at one specific point: 107 - 10 (this is after the error). How do you do that by just taking off the 10s digit? Well you have to know that you can take from the higher-order digit. Which is the core of the old way anyways!!! In this case, not so bad, as it's right there, but what about this: 10007 - 10. This makes no sense in the "new" system you are demonstrating there. You still need to "x-out" and put "9"s in the middle of your work. Which is how you'd do it in the old system. Either way, if you need the tried-and-true system to USE the new system, then your new system is fundamentally flawed.

Not that the "new" math" that Leher talked about is all that much better than the common core crap. Most of us in this forum grew up on it, but it still sucks compared to the "old math" way. Luckily I was taught that as well, and "just used it" most of the time except when explicitly told to use "expanded form" of numbers and problems. Again, you need the "old/actual" math to use it, hence why it's also worse.

Apr 1, 2014#14

Chad Sexington

"Show your work" constantly lowered the marks of both my brother and me in our math classes. We knew how to do it. Why are we being penalised for not taking five minutes to cross out the two, move the 1 to make a 12... Good lord. "I'm sorry, but your child is good at mental math, which is something we must stunt."

Apr 1, 2014#15

AshburnerX

Chad Sexington said:
"Show your work" constantly lowered the marks of both my brother and me in our math classes. We knew how to do it. Why are we being penalised for not taking five minutes to cross out the two, move the 1 to make a 12... Good lord. "I'm sorry, but your child is good at mental math, which is something we must stunt."

It was an anti-cheating thing. They wanted to make sure you knew how to get the answers, not just what the answers were.

Apr 1, 2014#16

PatrThom

Know why I failed 6th grade math? Because my grade was based solely on the number of homework problems turned in.
I hate homework.
I failed.
Then I had to take a Summer School class so I wouldn't be held back.

Stupid.

--Patrick

Apr 1, 2014#17

Eriol

Chad Sexington said:
"Show your work" constantly lowered the marks of both my brother and me in our math classes. We knew how to do it. Why are we being penalised for not taking five minutes to cross out the two, move the 1 to make a 12... Good lord. "I'm sorry, but your child is good at mental math, which is something we must stunt."

That varied wildly in my teachers. One of them (whom I liked) told me outright: "If you get the right answer, you get full marks. If you get the wrong answer and don't show your work, you get zero. If you show your work but get the wrong answer, you will probably get partial marks." This IMO is the "right" policy to have in math & science class when the answer is deterministic.

Apr 1, 2014#18

Dave

Spinning this off to a new thread.[DOUBLEPOST=1396370677,1396370292][/DOUBLEPOST]No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is fucking stupid.

Designing a curriculum for everyone is impossible. Doing so retards the growth of those students who would normally shoot ahead, marginalizes those students who typically have trouble, and bores those students who are in the middle. If you are going to make kids run a race, some are going to be naturally better and some will suck. We'd be better off instead of saying no child left behind, would be to say Every Child Has Opportunity (ECHO). You have the same resources everyone else has, regardless of economic demographic. If you fail anyway, sorry.

Apr 1, 2014#19

GasBandit

I thank my lucky stars that my elementary school had a gifted and talented program. By the time I was in the 5th grade, they we doing my math lessons out of a 8th grade textbook.

And then the army moved my family from Maryland (which if you remember the latest states map I posted in the pictures thread, has the best public schools) to El Paso, they didn't have any program nor want to make accomodations.. and stuck me back in my own grade in math. I proceeded to coast on prior knowledge without doing a single page of homework all the way until I hit calculus like a brick wall and by that time I'd forgotten how to study math. It was a struggle like no other after that.

Apr 1, 2014#20

Chad Sexington

AshburnerX said:
It was an anti-cheating thing. They wanted to make sure you knew how to get the answers, not just what the answers were.

Which I feel like would show on the test. I mean, yes, I suppose I could have been some kind of mastermind, cheating every assignment and test, but at that point, I'm obviously canny enough to succeed in life...

Apr 1, 2014#21

Dirona

Chad Sexington said:
"Show your work" constantly lowered the marks of both my brother and me in our math classes. We knew how to do it. Why are we being penalised for not taking five minutes to cross out the two, move the 1 to make a 12... Good lord. "I'm sorry, but your child is good at mental math, which is something we must stunt."

Related story. There was a kid in my grade who just "intuited the answers" to math questions, because according to his mother, he was "gifted", and thus didn't need to show his work. The problem was that he generally "intuited" the wrong answers, so if he'd shown his work (like he was supposed to) he might have passed. Meh.

Apr 1, 2014#22

Dave

I love telling this story.

When I was in first grade we had a series of workbooks that we needed to go over. There were 21 of them and when you completed them you took this test using a "magic ink" pen that made the things you wrote on appear. So if you took the test and used the pen on the "B" box, it would tell you if you were correct. If wrong, you could choose another answer until you got the right one. So you could conceivably unearth all three incorrect answers before getting the right one. But you can only have so many wrong before you failed.

I loved these books and went through most of them very quickly, including taking the tests. When the teachers found out how fast I was going through them, they told me I had to stop because I would finish before everyone else. Basically, these books were supposed to last the entire year, not a couple weeks. So during the time when we were supposed to be working on them, I had to sit at my desk quietly. Could I read? Nope. Could I doodle? Nope. I had to sit there doing nothing for an entire hour. I was being punished because I loved to read and did it faster than everyone else.

I will never forget that lesson.

Apr 1, 2014#23

Lurker

You mean stone tablets and the "magic ink" chisel, right?

Apr 1, 2014#24

MindDetective

Eriol said:
That varied wildly in my teachers. One of them (whom I liked) told me outright: "If you get the right answer, you get full marks. If you get the wrong answer and don't show your work, you get zero. If you show your work but get the wrong answer, you will probably get partial marks." This IMO is the "right" policy to have in math & science class when the answer is deterministic.

That is basically how I do it when I teach statistics.

Apr 1, 2014#25

Dave

Lurker said:
You mean stone tablets and the "magic ink" chisel, right?

I'm pouring my heart out here and you make jokes? JOKES?!?

Yeah, that's what I meant.

Apr 1, 2014#26

SpecialKO

The problem in that first page isn't that it uses a number line, it's that the question is not about solving the math problem, it's about using the number line.

Unless the class you're taking is specifically, "Alternate ways of teaching math to students, for teachers", this is exactly the wrong way to teach math.

The problem with the page that FigPez posted is that the last question on the page is "How would you solve this problem (that we've already shown you the answer for)?" not "Pick one of these methods (or any other method you prefer) that you are comfortable with and solve this new problem, X-Y = ?"

Math is ultimately about the solution. You show your work because if your solution is wrong, it's much easier to figure out where you went wrong. If multiple methods work to solve a problem, it shouldn't matter what method you're using. Testing the method instead of their ability to solve the problem is a really foolish way for young students to learn math.

[Puts on GB hat] What we're going to end up with are a bunch of public-school kids who won't actually know how to solve problems, just the approved methods of possibly doing so.

Apr 7, 2014#27

Necronic

wtf is the point of using a number line?

Apr 7, 2014#28

Eriol

Necronic said:
wtf is the point of using a number line?

Try understanding complex roots of numbers without them.

Try understanding negative numbers without something akin to that concept.

It's a useful concept. But much like almost anything, it can be OVERused too.

Apr 8, 2014#29

Bubble181

Dave said:
Spinning this off to a new thread.[DOUBLEPOST=1396370677,1396370292][/DOUBLEPOST]No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is fucking stupid.

Designing a curriculum for everyone is impossible. Doing so retards the growth of those students who would normally shoot ahead, marginalizes those students who typically have trouble, and bores those students who are in the middle. If you are going to make kids run a race, some are going to be naturally better and some will suck. We'd be better off instead of saying no child left behind, would be to say Every Child Has Opportunity (ECHO). You have the same resources everyone else has, regardless of economic demographic. If you fail anyway, sorry.

Giving all children the exact same curriculum "let's see if you can manage with the same amount of resources in the same amount of time" isn't very useful either.

I know it takes time, money and effort, but separate curricula for all children - especially after a certain age - are the way to go. This can be taken too far - the school my niece is in has all children working on iPads and choosing their own lessons and exercices, with just some basic "you have to get at least this far in math, this far in English, this far in French, this far in history, to proceed" rules. Some children go way faster in math but barely make the minima in history, others the other way around... It breeds idiots - great knowledge in a small field, but absolutely nothing outside. Eh.
But anyway, teachers need the time and possibility to adjust curricula on the fly, give children extra work, show them new concepts ahead of their class, and all that.

Apr 8, 2014#30

Chad Sexington

Bubble181 said:
great knowledge in a small field, but absolutely nothing outside..

You mean PhDs?

Apr 9, 2014#31

Necronic

Eriol said:
Try understanding complex roots of numbers without them.

Try understanding negative numbers without something akin to that concept.

It's a useful concept. But much like almost anything, it can be OVERused too.

I get the negative numbers thing, but how does a number line help you understand imaginary numbers?

Apr 9, 2014#32

Eriol

Necronic said:
I get the negative numbers thing, but how does a number line help you understand imaginary numbers?

Real axis and imaginary axis represents the complex space on a 2D plane. And roots of numbers are points on circles on there. Or something. Been a while since I had to do it.

http://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/10005.1.shtml

A bit of a graph there that makes some sense, but there's more to it than that. Either way, the visual helps.

Apr 9, 2014#33

Tinwhistler

Chad Sexington said:
"Show your work" constantly lowered the marks of both my brother and me in our math classes. We knew how to do it. Why are we being penalised for not taking five minutes to cross out the two, move the 1 to make a 12... Good lord. "I'm sorry, but your child is good at mental math, which is something we must stunt."

Apr 9, 2014#34

Chad Sexington

Tinwhistler said:

That's a very subjective question, "How do you know?" - She doesn't know how he knew. Maybe he did know because he is smart.

Apr 9, 2014#35

GasBandit

Chad Sexington said:
That's a very subjective question, "How do you know?" - She doesn't know how he knew. Maybe he did know because he is smart.

"The pale girl with no eyes who comes out at night told me."

Apr 9, 2014#36

Eriol

Ya, the better question was "why is your answer to 6 true?"

And I don't like the teacher's answer either. I'd rather say "because it's divisible by 2 with no remainder" rather than their answer.

Apr 9, 2014#37

Covar

Eriol said:
Ya, the better question was "why is your answer to 6 true?"

And I don't like the teacher's answer either. I'd rather say "because it's divisible by 2 with no remainder" rather than their answer.

In complete agreement with you there. The worst part about the teacher's recursive answer is that I wouldn't be surprised if she forced rote memorization of the first 5 even numbers and that rule, and didn't actually teach what makes a number even or odd.

Apr 9, 2014#38

Chad Sexington

I once got into what became a philosophical debate about whether numbers exist or not... The divisibility by 2 was relevant though I don't remember why.

Apr 9, 2014#39

PatrThom

Chad Sexington said:
I once got into what became a philosophical debate about whether numbers exist or not... The divisibility by 2 was relevant though I don't remember why.

Don't...don't get me started.
Just trying to figure out prime numbers and factors, and whether or not our number system should be based on integers will drop you down a huuuuuge rabbit hole.

--Patrick

Apr 9, 2014#40

Necronic

Man, all this talk about bad professors got me thinking about one that I absolutely hated.... It was a math intensive/engineering class (not that math intensive but it needed a fair amount.) It was multiple choice, 10 questions on a page, and we weren't allowed scratch paper so we had to write really tiny next to the questions. He wouldn't give partial credit, which wasn't the worst thing since it was multiple choice, but he did arbitrarily remove part of your points if he thought you didn't show enough work. I have absolutely nothing against a hard class. Give me hard tests, I enjoy it, it separates the men from the boys, and it actually is a credit to the teacher. But its very obvious when a professor is making something difficult for the sake of making it difficult, because he either isn't smart enough or is too lazy to make it challenging in the right way. Not sure if that makes sense.

Apr 9, 2014#41

PatrThom

Necronic said:
its very obvious when a professor is making something difficult for the sake of making it difficult, because he either isn't smart enough or is too lazy to make it challenging in the right way. Not sure if that makes sense.

On the one hand, I want to rally behind your flag and join you in denouncing a teacher for questionable teaching practices. On the other, I wonder if he didn't actually do an excellent job of showing what life would be like in the real world. Ugh.

--Patrick

Apr 9, 2014#42

Bowielee

Dave said:
I love telling this story.

When I was in first grade we had a series of workbooks that we needed to go over. There were 21 of them and when you completed them you took this test using a "magic ink" pen that made the things you wrote on appear. So if you took the test and used the pen on the "B" box, it would tell you if you were correct. If wrong, you could choose another answer until you got the right one. So you could conceivably unearth all three incorrect answers before getting the right one. But you can only have so many wrong before you failed.

I loved these books and went through most of them very quickly, including taking the tests. When the teachers found out how fast I was going through them, they told me I had to stop because I would finish before everyone else. Basically, these books were supposed to last the entire year, not a couple weeks. So during the time when we were supposed to be working on them, I had to sit at my desk quietly. Could I read? Nope. Could I doodle? Nope. I had to sit there doing nothing for an entire hour. I was being punished because I loved to read and did it faster than everyone else.

I will never forget that lesson.

When I was a kid, I got placed in a remedial reading group because they didn't believe that I had read all the books they assigned me. I've been inhaling books for as long as I can remember.

My mother went in and had a "discussion" with the teacher. I ended up having to take a special test where they had me read a book that I'd never seen before to prove to them that I wasn't just memorizing what was being read to me at home.

Apr 10, 2014#43

Chad Sexington

Bowielee said:
When I was a kid, I got placed in a remedial reading group because they didn't believe that I had read all the books they assigned me. I've been inhaling books for as long as I can remember.

My mother went in and had a "discussion" with the teacher. I ended up having to take a special test where they had me read a book that I'd never seen before to prove to them that I wasn't just memorizing what was being read to me at home.

Man, I had a similar experience. At school, they tested reading levels and when I was 10, I was reading at a college level. The school questioned the tester (a volunteer) if she had coached me or prompted me, and I had to take it again.

Meanwhile at home I was reading long novels in a day or two, and a short one every day. My mom would take me to the library and at first she'd let me only take out one or two books because I "wouldn't finish them" in the two weeks; she was quickly letting me take out a dozen at a time!

Apr 10, 2014#44

Tinwhistler

Bowielee said:
When I was a kid, I got placed in a remedial reading group because they didn't believe that I had read all the books they assigned me. I've been inhaling books for as long as I can remember.

My mother went in and had a "discussion" with the teacher. I ended up having to take a special test where they had me read a book that I'd never seen before to prove to them that I wasn't just memorizing what was being read to me at home.

When I was in first grade, we got to go to the library for the first time, and we were assigned the "first grade section", which had the Dick and Jane books and similarly easy reading material. When I complained, my teacher said that I could pick any book I wanted, and if I wrote a book report to prove that I understood it, she'd write me a note to the librarian to give me access to the higher level reading material.

After spending a day reading and reporting on the Mouse and the Motorcycle, the coveted all-library pass was mine.

It would have been so much easier for that teacher to just shoehorn me into the little boxes that all the other kids were in. I owe her a lot for going out of her way to circumvent the bureaucracy on my behalf.

Apr 10, 2014#45

PatrThom

I have to thank the librarian for allowing me full run even as a kid.
And once I figured out the card catalog? The entire library, and everything within it (except the restricted section) was mine...

--Patrick

Apr 10, 2014#46

Covar

When I was in the third grade I changed to a public school about two month after the year started. The school had a program called Accelerated Reader, where every book in the library was worth a certain amount of points based on the length and reading level. You could check out the books and then take a test on them to earn the points. When year ended I was 2nd in the school (K-6). My secret? Grabbing as many of the children's books as I could, gaining points 1/2 point at a time in between the larger stuff. Looking back I think it was one of the first signs that I was meant to be in engineering.

Apr 10, 2014#47

Eriol

The library was restricted? That's really odd. In my K-6 school, they of course had recommended sections, but you could take out anything you wanted without any "special" dispensation of any kind. Not a LOT there that was engaging though that wasn't non-fiction. I will credit the library (though it was a teacher, not a librarian) for introducing me to Tolkien though. Blew through the Hobbit and LotR in about 2 months. Later on, I could re-read them in about 2 weeks if I was wanting to.

Apr 10, 2014#48

Chad Sexington

I was never restricted to certain sections in our library... Though I did get in trouble once because I put a book back in front of, instead of behind of, the book it was beside.

Apr 10, 2014#49

Bowielee

Our school didn't have any grade level restrictions, then again, we didn't have a very big library. On the plus side for me, my grandmother was a librarian, so I got to spend a ton of time at the town library reading.

Apr 10, 2014#50

PatrThom

Eriol said:
The library was restricted? That's really odd.

I was referring to the city library, which was within walking distance of my house. Restricted books were things like The Complete Book of Breast Care, for instance.

--Patrick

Apr 11, 2014#51

Bubble181

Our library was parted in two - one side children, young adult, youth, and all that; the other side everything adult - novels, encyclopediae, non fiction, and so on. Going into the adult part under 12 years old was supposed to be "with parental guidance" (there were plenty of horror stories and some mild pornography, but also all those kinds of non fiction books you might now want a nine year old to read...). Still, it wasn't illegal or against the rules to go in and get something. My parents asked me to first got hrough the YA and teens sections and read everything interesting there, by the time I was 11 I had read everything there I wanted to read twice so they let me run wild in the other part. Much more fun

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