• For the youth that were already being taught the "old way," they have been left behind as new standards were adopted.

• While common core standards seem to reinforce necessary competencies, they also over complicate the process, which defeats the purpose of educating the youth. The simplest explanation is always best.

• Common core standards look great on paper to law makers, however effective implementation has yet to be seen.

Issue 1- Those left behind

It's ironic that another big model in education, "No Child Left Behind," (also to be discussed in later editions how damming this idea is), is actually exactly what has happened to a large part of the youth still in schools. According to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, "States decided to develop the Common Core state standards in 2009." The issue with this, is that when the new standards were passed, students already in school who were taught the "old" ways, were also adopted into this new system and held to the same standards. This was a huge blow to the self esteems of children who may have been proficient in math, and now all the sudden cannot even understand what the questions are asking.

I have noticed a huge difference in the verbiage associated with how math questions are written, and how the concepts are taught. This has created entire generations of youth that are terrified of math. If students already struggle with reading comprehension, it's going to be even more difficult to know how to setup a math problem and solve it. Students older than 9 years of age (a great number of students still in school!) have not fully been considered when these new standards rolled out, and I suspect this has a big effect on success rates I see across all grades (I have taught middle through high school math). I have never seen such widespread gaps in simple mathematical concepts (I'm talking adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing!). I have seen too many seniors who struggle with simple math, and being the young adults they are, this is a scary truth. To use my daughter as an example, she is of age 8 and has only ever known common core standards. She excels greatly at math, and she really understands the concepts better than I had at her age even. So, I reiterate, these standards can be good, however they do not address a large part of existing student populations.

Issue 2- Occam's Razor

If you are familiar with this principle, basically what it means is when describing something complex, the simplest explanation is always preferred. This simple (by definition!) principle is somehow overlooked when common core standards are developed. It is almost as if the opposite of this rule has been implemented in common core standards. Math is a language in it of itself. When students are asked to write mathematical proofs proving that 2 + 3 =3 + 2, we have a problem. Sure, the commutative property of addition is cool to say, and cool to know what it means, but at what cost? What is the end goal? That students can add! Adding in all this extra jargon, and a paragraph proof for something so simple? It makes math so much less intuitive when you include all this useless jargon. If we make easy problems unnecessarily more difficult than they need to be, how can we expect students to perform well on higher level mathematics?

Why is it that "copy dot flip" has been replaced by "multiplying by the reciprocal?" I will never forget how to divide fractions because of "copy dot flip." Who's going to remember that multiplying by the reciprocal is the same thing as division? What happened to PEMDAS? Now children are exposed to a winded explanation on why you do exponential operations before multiplication, for instance. There is very little mention of PEMDAS anymore. The use of mnemonics in education and remembering (how do you remember the colors of the rainbow?) seems to be almost completely forgotten. We have abandoned a more simple explanation, for an overtly complex one, and that leads me to my final point.

More intuitive, hands on approaches to education should not be overlooked!

The Illusion of Effectiveness

On paper, the common core standards appear robust, comprehensive and thorough. In practice, as mentioned above, they over complicate the process and forget about students who were taught the "old" way. What appears to be happening is that law makers and the public are appeased by a curriculum that appears so complete, that no one ever goes in to question what it is actually teaching and how. Again, what it teaches isn't wrong, but lawmakers have not considered effective implementation of core competencies. Ok, great. Those standards look great. How are they being taught? Is it the best way to break down the curriculum, or does it just look good from a legislative perspective? Somehow I am not convinced that these principles are being taught in the most palatable way to meet the needs of all students. They appear to just be accepted at face value and left alone. This lazy approach to education, just to appease those watching, does little to enhance the knowledge our youth actually have.