Until recently the mainstream media has portrayed the opponents of Common Core to be just a bunch of conservative yahoos incapable of understanding what a wonderful education program it is. However that might now be changing. Last night, NBC Nightly News surprisingly broadcast a segment highly critical of Common Core.
The segment showed just how confusing and lacking in common sense common core is. Although it portrayed teachers as mostly satisfied with the program while parents were distressed, it is hard to imagine any how any sane person can see the utility of Common Core which as you will see reaches simple solutions via a series of confusing steps. The video showing a simple subtraction problem is below but be warned: just watching the absolutely unnecessary Common Core multi-step complexity added to it can give the viewer a throbbing headache:
A Gallup poll out this week shows most teachers in schools where the Common Core standards are already being taught have come to like them. And while most states agree to them, there have been a lot of protests against them among those who see it as a giant federal government overreach in the effort to build better students. But far from all that in the evening hours right about now in fact at kitchen tables across this country there's a different complaint from parents about the homework their kids bring home. Our report tonight from our chief education correspondent Rehema Ellis.
So are you already reaching for the Advil just from watching that simple subtraction problem made complex? Well, when you actually read how it was done it still won't make any sense:
Take 34 minus 9. Many would say that's relatively simple, carry the one, 14 minus nine is five, bring down the two, you get 25. Under Common Core, second graders learn different methods and need to show all steps. One example, using a number line that can say nine is one away from ten, which is twenty away from thirty and four from thirty-four. Add those together to get twenty-five. And nine of 25 of 34, 34 minus nine equals 25. Using three times as many steps to get to the same answer.
Got that? If you do, congratulations because I don't which makes it hard to believe that Gallup poll showing that most teachers like Common Core. As for the students, they have to be completely confused. So could we finally be seeing Common Core go the way of the thankfully forgotten New Math? As the high school principal stated in the report, "It's falling apart. And it's time that we take it off the road."
