A highly experienced K-12 math tutor, Cynthia Walker, with an engineering
degree, just wrote an article "Un-Common, Not Core" for the American Thinker
blasting Common Core (aka Florida Standards) for the damage it is doing to
younger kids due to the structure of the math classes and curriculum.
Every teacher, parent, grandparent should read this article
because it
is very specific how kids are beginning to hate math due to the excess
content required of younger kids whose brains have not developed enough to
cope with the curriculum. Walker writes:
"I predict that if we continue implementing Common Core,
average students will drop out of math as early as they are allowed. Even
math-bright students will hate math. Tutoring companies will proliferate to
serve wealthy families. The educational gap between rich and poor will
widen. If we want to destroy math and science education in this country,
keep Common Core.
After reading something like this, you wonder how Lake County
Administrators, teachers and the Board members would sanction this child
abuse.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/uncommon_not_core.html#ixzz3EfqqtGwf
"The reform mathematicians who put together Common Core areignoring cognitive development. My Common Core pre-algebra students are
hurried through the arithmetic review and taught the coordinate system.
They graph lines and parabolas. They do transformations, exponents
(including zero and negative exponents), and a truly horrendous percentage
of percentage problems. The homework can be finished in an hour if the
student's parents can afford to hire a BS mechanical engineer to sit at his
elbow and remind him when he takes a wrong turn. Otherwise, he is up 'til
midnight. Students work hard at tasks beyond their strength; they flounder;
they fail; they learn that math is no fun.
This isn't education. This is child abuse."
It is time the Lake County School Board had a workshop to learn about all
this damage being done in the name of Common Core.
"The second-biggest problem with Common Core is the problem
of Big Mistakes. Pretend for a moment that a homeschool family did
something as asinine as giving their eight-year-old a calculator instead of
teaching him his times tables. That child would be a calculator cripple.
But that would be a small mistake, affecting one child. Now
consider what happens when a state made such a mistake. We don't even have
to pretend. In 1986, California adopted Whole Language Arts, which proved
to be a disaster. Within a decade, California plunged to 49th out of 50 in
reading performance. Millions of children were affected. Big mistake."
And don't miss our several recent video tapes HERE
on the dangers of
Common Core by Dr. Duke Pesta, FL Rep. Debbie Mayfield and others.
