Former dean for for-profit, fraud filled college to head DOJ college fraud unit

[BmorePat87]

(08-31-2017, 03:11 PM)Benton Wrote: I don't understand most of what my daughter brings home in math. But she's been doing algebra for a couple years now and — according to the district (one of the only Blue Ribbon elementaries in the state) — she's doing math at a middle school level. My son (a high school junior) started last year on the stuff she's doing now.

It's crazy, but it works. In a couple years, she'll be doing math that I did in college. 

I used to complain along with the rest of the parents. Now I just shut up and let teachers teach. I don't care if I don't understand as long as she's getting results. And the results have been phenomenal. People fear what they don't understand. Which, unfortunately, gets in the way of people who know what they're doing.

If you read the standards, it's good stuff. It makes sense.

Most parents learned rote memorization, even if it was a struggle. The how and what is there, but not the why. Common core focuses on the "why does this make sense?" of math. It teaches kids concepts that those of us in AP math classes just kind of picked up on our own.  It's like "48+48=". Well, I could add 8 and 8, get 16, and then add 40 and 40 to 16. I have 96 now. Or I could use new methods and round 48 to 50. I know 50+50 is 100 and 100-4 is 96. I then apply to to larger and larger numbers and I am more easily adding big numbers in my head. 

Early on, sites like Breitbart filled the web with mischaracterizations of common core, giving birth to a bloc of parents who just hated it because it was different and big government. There'd be a lesson that aligns to it for texts about communism or gay people and all the sudden the curriculum pushes communism and the "gay agenda" on people.