New math standards are simple, lucid -- and conservative?
- Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 30
- 2 min read
"Simplify, simplify, simplify" is the goal for South Dakota's education secretary, Joseph Graves. He's pushing streamlined math standards to replace Common Core standards, which he thinks are too complicated for many teachers and parents to understand.
But some math teachers say teachers need more guidance in how students can demonstrate they've met the standards, reports Hechinger's Steven Yoder.
One source for South Dakota's document is the Archimedes Standards developed by the conservative National Association of Scholars as a replacement for Common Core math. "Math, with its black-and-white rules and rigid structure, might seem to be beyond politics," writes Yoder. But -- like phonics -- teaching students to memorize math facts is now seen as conservative.
The Archimedes Standards call for students to learn addition and multiplication facts fluently, and ban the use of calculators in elementary and middle school. They're also a lot shorter, striving for "lucidity," writes Yoder. Teachers are told the goal, but not how to achieve it.
Critics say South Dakota's draft is oversimplified. “A lot of the math content has been lost by simplifying the language,” said Sharon Vestal, president of the state’s Council of Teachers of Mathematics and a South Dakota State associate professor of math and statistics.
Yoder provides a comparison of the old Common Core standards with the Archimedes' version:
Eighth grade standard for scientific notation
Common Core: Perform operations with numbers expressed in scientific notation, including problems where both decimal and scientific notation are used. Use scientific notation and choose units of appropriate size for measurements of very large or very small quantities (e.g., use millimeters per year for seafloor spreading). Interpret scientific notation that has been generated by technology.
Archimedes: Convert numbers into and out of scientific notation.
Some national math education researchers also think simpler isn't necessarily better, reports Yoder. Teachers need more guidance, they argue.
More students will succeed in math with more rigorous, accessible standards, argue David Randall of NAS and Jonathan Gregg, Archimedes' author. They'll have a shot at STEM careers.
Chose one at random by closing my eyes, scrolling through the standards and stopping, then scrolling down to the first actual standard:
"B. Use properties of rational and irrational numbers. 3. HSN-RN.B.3 Explain why the sum or product of two rational numbers is rational; that the sum of a rational number and an irrational number is irrational; and that the product of a nonzero rational number and an irrational number is irrational."
As a math teacher, this is clear as day. I understand what it is asking me to teach, I know why it is important, and with minimal thought I've already come up with some explorative strategies that I could ask students to work through. I also understand th…
What a load of rubbish. The CC standards are perfectly clear to a math teacher. The Archimedes standard is just as clear, and contains far fewer things for students to learn. Under the above standard, when my administrators came to me and asked if I was teaching the standards I could say yes, but if pressed I'd have to say I was teaching much more. At which point the discussion starts as to why I'm spending time teaching things that aren't in the standards.
The problem isn't the standards, it's the education colleges that are actively promoting inefficient and useless ways of teaching, was well as embedding ideological doctrines into everything the prospective teachers are learning (I literally had an…
The really relevant standards for Americans to know about are the Chinese mathematical curriculum standards for compulsory education, which are more ambitious than the Japanese, Singaporean, or any others, since China is now America's major geopolitical competitor; as long as internationally naive Americans are making their proposals in a context of astonishing global ignorance, which is typical of American educators, the economic prospects of our children and grandchildren grow dimmer and dimmer.
The Archimedes standards are how-to; what you need to know in order to pass them. Common Core is why you might want to know them -- maybe useful for teachers. Even by eighth grade, students won’t think seafloor spreading will ever be relevant for them
1. Any standards written by conservatives and/or Republicans are DOA. Everyone in the business knows this. The thoughtful NMAP document and its "School Math" are evidence. So it goes for decades. 2. Japan Math has the best standards. 3. The Common Core reads wonderfully as the example shows above. Most teachers would be thrilled simply to have an "Archimedes" level of success. It would be grand if "use millimeters per year for seafloor spreading" was learned. Perhaps a few students learn the judgment necessary.
The Common Core does read beautifully and is OK for elementary. It gets through Middle School and bogs down in high school.