{"id":18355,"date":"2014-10-05T13:59:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T17:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=18355"},"modified":"2014-10-05T14:14:56","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T18:14:56","slug":"are-teachers-really-ready-for-the-common-core","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/10\/05\/are-teachers-really-ready-for-the-common-core\/","title":{"rendered":"Are teachers really ready for the Common Core?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Boston Globe<\/em> has the article <a title=\"The Boston Globe article\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/magazine\/2014\/10\/01\/are-teachers-really-ready-for-common-core\/bAhagn3zzkQ0bM9w8GgYzN\/story.html\" target=\"_blank\">Are teachers really ready for the Common Core?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This article adds some information that is needed in this debate, but it is only a piece of what is needed.<\/p>\n<p>In reading some recent articles and seeing some videos, I have started to gain an understanding of what the Common Core is trying to achieve in math.\u00a0 (See my previous post,\u00a0<a title=\"Previous post\" href=\"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/10\/05\/arkansas-mom-destroys-common-core-in-four-powerful-minutes\/\" target=\"_blank\">Arkansas mom destroys Common Core in four powerful minutes<\/a>)\u00a0 That understanding alone does not answer the question about how much research has gone into figuring out if the new teaching methods work.\u00a0 As I keep reading, I find that research has been done, but I haven&#8217;t yet read enough details on what research was done and how it was carried out to know if I think the research was sufficient.<\/p>\n<p>Questions I would like answered include the following: Have the new methods been tested on a broad range of students to see if the new method works for all, for most, for many, or just a few?\u00a0 Has the research included a study of how to train teachers to teach the new method?\u00a0 Again all, most, many, or none.\u00a0 Has the research analyzed the impact of parents &#8220;helping&#8221; their children with homework for all kinds of parents.\u00a0 Different kinds of parents might include the highly talented mathematicians who learned by different methods, to the average parent, to the parent with not enough time, to the uneducated parent. Has the research studied the best methods to roll-out the new program &#8211; all at once, a little at a time, school by school, city by city, state by state, or the whole country all at once.<\/p>\n<p>Changing the education system of an entire country requires much more thought than changing how one teacher teaches a course.\u00a0 Has the thought been done at the top, through the middle, and down to the bottom of the implementation pyramid?<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>I was intrigued by the following example question.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A right circular cone is shown in the figure. Point A is the vertex of the cone and point B lies on the circumference of the base of the cone.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\">\n<a href=\"www.parcconline.org\/sites\/parcc\/files\/PARCC_SampleItems_Mathematics_G8LengthofSegment_081513_Final.pdf\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/c.o0bg.com\/rf\/image_1920w\/Boston\/2011-2020\/2014\/10\/01\/BostonGlobe.com\/Magazine\/Images\/Coneweb2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"90%\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>The cone has a height of 24 units and a diameter of 20 units. What is the distance from point A to point B?<\/p>\n<p>____ units<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It took me a few seconds to see that this was not as complicated a question as I first thought.\u00a0 It took me a few more seconds to figure out how to do calculate the answer in my head without any difficult arithmetic.<\/p>\n<p>To check your answer with the right one, see the <a title=\"The PARCC website's answer\" href=\"http:\/\/www.parcconline.org\/sites\/parcc\/files\/PARCC_SampleItems_Mathematics_G8LengthofSegment_081513_Final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">answer on the PARCC web site<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps this isn&#8217;t as controversial a question as the examples in <a title=\"Previous post\" href=\"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/10\/05\/arkansas-mom-destroys-common-core-in-four-powerful-minutes\/\" target=\"_blank\">my previous post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Boston Globe has the article Are teachers really ready for the Common Core? This article adds some information that is needed in this debate, but it is only a piece of what is needed. In reading some recent articles and seeing some videos, I have started to gain an understanding of what the Common [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18355"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18360,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18355\/revisions\/18360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}