It's the first day of school in my local district, and hankering a guess, I expect it's also a school-day for most districts across the country. With another year comes many things, including the further implementation in 45 states of the Common Core Standards in Math and English.
We've explored the Common Core a bit in the past, with a reflection on Sara Mosle's "What should Children Read?," and some thoughts on "The Next Generation Science Standards," an initiative akin to the Common Core with respect to science instruction. My thoughts on both initiatives have been mixed, but generally positive: I agree with both standards' emphasis on foundational mastery at the expense of some content, but remain unsure of its transition from theory into practice. Indeed, there is much concern with the role testing will play in the Common Core (see this principal's objections for instance), as well as fear that the new standards will "kill creativity." Such concerns are legitimate, and in time perhaps we'll see how these challenges are met.
Which brings us back to the present, and the first day of school. We're revisiting the Common Core today because it's also the first day of school in New York, where beginning this year it will be fully implemented. As reported by Kenneth Chang in the New York Times, the broad focus of Common Core in New York will be to cover "fewer topics...more rigorously." Mr. Chang begins with Mayra Baldi's kindergarten class in Brooklyn, where changes to the math curriculum will become immediately apparent.
Where before kindergartners were expected to learn how to count orally to 20 and write out numbers from 1-10, the new standards require them to count to 100 (in ones and tens) and write out their numbers from 1 to 20.
The new standard is expected to be challenging for kindergartners, who must not only be able to memorize the names of numbers, but must to write them out, and have an intellectual sense of what "12" or "15" objects means. As Mr. Chang suggest, "Now they are to not only say 'fourteen,' but also to know it is written as '14' and understand that it represents a group of 14 objects."
Not surprisingly, this renewed emphasis on numbers will crowd-out other math lessons, specifically those related to patterns which have long served as a basic introduction to Algebra.
As reported later in the piece, "...the new standards are modeled on the teaching strategies of countries, especially in Asia, that perform better on international comparisons...'Countries who outperform us are countries that do not cover every single concept that is on those tests,'... 'They cover focused concepts. They cover central concepts.'"
The emphasis on numbers and what they mean discussed above may have deeper goals in mind. As discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in "Outliers" (2008), differences in the way certain Western and Asian languages name numbers could make it easier for certain Asians to learn math from an earlier age (Gladwell 2008, pp. 227-232). The advantage is apparently in the regularity of Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean in naming numbers. By contrast, English and other Western languages have irregular naming systems (for example, putting the 10s first in "twenty-five, twenty-six, etc." while putting the 1s first in "fourteen, fifteen, sixteen). According to Gladwell:
"The difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children an count, on average to forty. American children at that age can count only to fifteen, and most don't reach 40 until they're five. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills" (Gladwell 2008, p. 229).
Whether one agrees with Gladwell's larger points in the book or not, there does seem to be something to this notion of language and numbers; that for better or worse, American students learning in English may need to spend more time and effort on numbers to keep pace with similarly educated Asians speaking Mandarin, Japanese, or Korean.
In this respect then, Common Core's focus on numbers and foundational knowledge is well placed. Teaching kindergartners to count orally to 100 in both 1s and 10s, and to write out their numbers from 1-20 as described above is a challenging task, but one that may provide them greater facility with numbers from an early age. Whether American students fall behind their Asian counterparts due to language or not, a more rigorous program of number study may improve math achievement in later grades.
We shall see how Common Core works in the next few years, but I think its current focus is on or certainly near the mark. Concerns abound about the role of tests, the space for creativity, and even the encroachment of Federal influence on youth education, but for the moment Common Core will have its day in class.
Happy School Year, folks :)
No comments:
Post a Comment