Can I just say Bubb teachers are the best?

Yes you can! Our district and it's teachers are best! Undaunted by the failure in New York, our fearless teachers give up precious planning time to stand in line at the Xerox machine, make copies, and hand out the wonderfully scripted lessons to our children. I mean, why plan and think when someone has done all the work? Just because it's a mess in NY, doesn't mean it won't here, right? Did someone say free? How delightful!

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I've read the common core math standards. I really don't see what all the fuss is about. If you read the standards, it is nothing more than a fairly accurate description of grade appropriate math.

It is certainly much better than the old California standards that asked elementary kids to explain mean, median, and mode, but had no standard for multiplication speed or accuracy.

Greg, the Common Core math standards are AWFUL.

First off, they are SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW. I mean, kids don't need to master the standard algorithm for addition until the 4th(!) grade. 8th grade Algebra is essentially pushed back to 9th, and when you get into the older grades, the standards jump all over the place.

Second, over the last fifty years, there's been a math war going on in the United States and all over the world. I read the standards after I had researched the math wars, and I could see that they have "dog whistles" all throughout that push schools across the United States towards reform math.

What does reform math mean? Student-centered group projects with the teacher as a facilitator asking questions instead of a direct teacher explaining how to do things. Learning multiple ways to solve problems, sometimes learning very inefficient algorithms that only work in precise cases and won't work in all situations like the more traditional algorithms. Spending time writing essays about how you solve problems, taking away time from doing the actual math itself (and causing problems for kids with language difficulties).

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As I said, the math wars have been going on for a long time. The particular pedagogy that they are using to teach math in my children's school (student-centered, group learning, with the teacher as a facilitator) has been used in Canada over the last decade and resulted in innumeracy doubling and the rate of children being prepared for STEM degrees decreasing by 1/3. You should read about Canada. Really. Because this is exactly what we are starting to do because of Common Core in America. (By the way, this pedagogy has also been used in pockets of the USA and in Australia, with very spotty results.)

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These teaching techniques that schools are gravitating towards because of Common Core, they've been done before. And in many, many, many, many cases, they've failed. Common Core is encouraging schools all across America to take old teaching methods, brush them off, and put them back in the classrooms. Sure, you could argue that Common Core are a set of standards - and they don't dictate pedagogy or the curriculum. But lots of schools are listening to education leaders stand up and talk about how Common Core is supposed to revolutionize the way that they teach. Lots of schools are hearing those "dog whistles."

You want to know what the fuss is about, Greg? The fuss is about our kids not learning math anymore. Common Core is a disaster.