New math standards are simple, lucid -- and conservative?

"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.