Common, Standardized, and Missing!

This week, in my Curriculum Design course, we were asked to provide a brief news report from a current/recent education news article.  We were asked to limit our writing to 20 minutes...

Upon reviewing the requirements of this assignment, I determined in advance that I would log on to www.edweek.org, glance briefly at the contents, and quickly choose the first article which “struck me”.  I made this decision in order to prevent any over-analyzing on my part and with the hopes of expediting the selection process.  I was immediately drawn to an article entitled “Did the common-Core Math Writers Accidentally drop a Standard?”  It had all the makings of an article which would fit nicely in my wheelhouse.  This particular article was a short follow-up to the original piece “Common Core Seen Falling Short in High School Math” and since the original article had a little more meat on its bones I decided to proceed with the dissection.  

“Common Core Seen Falling Short in High School Math” details the shortcomings of the Common Core State Standards for High School Math…but on polarizing sides of the fence.  Some experts argue the standards are too dense while others claim the standards are too thin on content.  Everyone seems to agree that the Common Core State Standards for High School Math were rushed.  “As some experts see it, the high school standards were shortchanged because reviewers were rushed looking over them.” (Heitin, 2015, para 4).  As a result of being rushed, Richard A. Askey, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and member of the math standards’ feedback group, said 

the process toward the end was so hurried that an entire high school standard was left out of the final draft…’it’s mentioned in Appendix A but isn’t in the standards,’…’and it was there in one of the drafts’ (as cited in Heitin, 2015, para 24).  

What I found most alarming about a documented process that was meant to be “standardized” and “common” is this:

There’s no formal mechanism in place for a wholesale review of the common core, but it’s likely that states will – as they always have – review their standards at times and decide whether they need to be altered. (Heitin, 2015, para 28)

For the sake of high school Geometry students (and all math students) in the 42 states and District of Columbia which have adopted the Common Core Standards, I hope states will review and consider adding the geometry standard “one that explains that, under similarity transformations, area scales by squares and volume by cubes” because…it’s kind of important! (Heitin, 2015, para 6 and 24).

Please look here at the map of Common Core State Standards adoption, and if you have an extra three minutes, watch the video in the upper right-hand corner of the page.  It seems to me the "staircase" (from the video) is broken in one or several places. 

Heitin, L.  (February 24, 2015).  Common Core Seen Falling Short in High School Math.  Education Week.  Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/02/25/common-core-seen-falling-short-in-high.html