In Maryland, among experts, the test was rolled out to explain how in its complexity, it would test whether a child was taught well, or not taught well at all.
The test question culled from the fourth grade test, was this…..
Now solve it…
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Did you get 936? My! You are good, you adult, you! Pat yourself on the back and go get some ice cream for your reward…
How long did it take you? Is this appropriate for 4th Graders? 4th graders? little 9 year olds? When we were in 4th grade, we were just being taught multiplication. Single digits, 1-10….
Here is what needs to be known before tackling this problem….
- The definitions of perimeter and area
- How to find perimeter and area
- The definition of a square mile
- The properties of a rectangle
- How to solve for an unknown in a perimeter
- Multiplication (up to multi-digit)
- Addition and subtraction (up to multi-digit)
Did you know this in 4th Grade? Should you know all of this in 4th Grade? Most educators say ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!!!!
This is very damaging for children to be put under this much pressure at such an early age. On a stress level this is the equivalent ot seeing their parents shot in front of their eyes. It borders the shame of being raped by someone you trusted in your family. How is a child supposed to know this…
Imagine if you as a teacher knew this problem was on the test and knew that if sufficient numbers of your students got it wrong, you would be without any way to pay your bills?
Week one… You would make sure everyone knew what Area was..
Week two… You would make sure everyone knew what a Perimeter was….
Week three… You would make sure everyone knew what a rectangle was…
Week four…. You would work on how to figure out the area of a rectangle.
Week five…. You would work on how to figure out the perimeter of a rectangle.
Week six…. You would work on how to figure what a missing piece of perimeter would be if you knew one side and the total.
Week seven.. You would work on how to figure the area
Week eight,.. You would work on how to multiply single digits.
Week nine… You would work on how to multiply double digit numbers.
Week ten…. You would work on how to solve many problems like this…..
Ten weeks… of nothing else. Just teaching this one problem. Gone would be time for everything else… You can see it is impossible to do… You can see that no matter how good ones teacher is, unless parents have already taught their children all these complex measure, and unless those children are tutored continuously over every minute of their free time, they will fail….
One has to get 936 as the answer… or one fails… This test is college level. It is similarly complex to a physic’s problem…. Why is it being given to 4th grade?
Your child will be irreparably damaged if they take the Smarter Balanced Assessment tests… There needs to be more education among parents. This test is dangerous for your child’s mental health. No doubt, you.. well armed with 12 years of schooling, and perhaps post secondary education, were under great stress to fill out that answer? Weren’t you?
What if you were 9 years old. Didn’t know multiplication. What a perimeter was. How area was determined. …… and all because your teacher spent 10 weeks preparing for another problem… that wasn’t on this test…..
Opt out. Opt out is your only option. Don’t worry if it is legal… Opt out. You, are in charge of your child… Opt out. Opt out. Opt out.
kavips 
9 comments
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August 1, 2014 at 11:25 pm
MHS
This is not a first grade problem as you allege, it is a fourth grade performance task and the scoring rubric along with standard references are linked here: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2014/08/a_closer_look_at_a_math_perfor.html
Not to mention this is a sample item from the PARRC assessment not the Smarter assessment. Maryland isn’t even in the Smarter consortium.
Please clarify your concern with children learning these concepts: is your concern that 4th graders are being expected to learn the concept of area and perimeter of a rectangle? Or is your concern that they be taught how to apply those skills and use problem solving and algebraic reasoning? Contrary to what you may think algebraic reasoning doesn’t start being taught in Algebra I, the beginnings of algebraic thinking actually begin when students begin learning to add and subtract as well as group numbers.
August 1, 2014 at 11:42 pm
MHS
You should probably also look through many of the other sample problems and read thoroughly how they are aligned with standards of learning and instructional practice. For example the deer problem which you screen capped in this post actually utilizes both 4th and 3rd grade standards.
http://www.ccsstoolbox.com. (PARRC prototyping project, under the resources tab)
Here is an excerpt of the information about that sample problem:
“In the grade 3 CCSSM, students developed their understanding of area and perimeter by solving real-world and mathematical problems involving rectangles with a missing side length. In the grade 4 CCSSM, students now apply this securely held knowledge for the first time to solve multistep problems.
This single-part task may initially appear to address familiar content. However, preliminary data from field testing this task show that students struggled with the relationship between area and perimeter. The task asks students to demonstrate their ability to model with mathematics (MP.4) and reason abstractly and quantitatively (MP.2)—thus making it a “practice forward” task.
This task is innovative because students go much deeper than just demonstrating their ability to solve area and perimeter problems. They reason about the model and the relationship between area and perimeter. Students must move in and out of context as they create a coherent representation of the problem, consider the units involved, and attend to the meaning of quantities.”
August 2, 2014 at 12:15 am
kavips
Thank you. It WAS a fourth grade level problem and how “first” was put in the first sentence and got past editing, I’m still puzzled. It is fixed now. The other references were correct. Again, thank you.
We here are well aware that Maryland is in PARCC and Delaware is in Smarter Balance Assessments. We have been dissecting the Smarter Balanced for over a year. You can find all the practice tests here…..
The relevance here, is that the veil of secrecy was dropped for a moment. Though two different consortiums, both are working off the same standards. This example illustrates why Common Core is dangerous. Will the Smarter Balanced be any better? Not if they use examples similar to what we have shown….
Thank you for the link to http://www.ccsstoolbox.com.
I think it shows exactly WHY this is dangerous for children.. Students nine years old should be building foundations….. not ...”move(ing) in and out of context as they create a coherent representation of the problem, consider the units involved, and attend to the meaning of quantities.” Those are adult concepts. Our generation learned them… as adults.
This pushes children too fast! I believe my post shows exactly how SO much time must be spent in classroom just to teach this one single problem. That in itself is a problem… This was 11th grade level when I was in high school. Yet I was doing cutting edge calculus and physics my freshman year of college. If I could do it only then, why are we doing it to children who just nine years earlier, were still in vitro?
And during that time-frame in which this is taught, what are we missing? History, English, Science, Art, Music, Play? Those all are far superior to the future development of children than learning 11th grade concepts when they are 9 years old….
That is why Common Core is not only dangerous to our children, but to our nation’s future. Common Core has become a national security risk and only if stopped now, will there be a nation not full of idiots by 2055.
Since Greg Lavelle singlehandedly pushed this forward upon us.. (he is the one responsible) …. parents of every child must now opt out… You and the elected school boards who are responsible to the voters of this state, should get behind THEM, not behind those insane people who perhaps though well meaning, will ruin children…..
August 2, 2014 at 3:36 am
Jon's loving father
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
This is a travesty. What they are doing to our education system is beyond harmful to our children. We have a moral duty to stop this NOW!!!! All special needs parents, do not subject our children to this ludicrous and insane agenda.
August 2, 2014 at 7:11 am
John Young
Nope, nothing about achievement in there. More reformer speak! Innovate = good!. It’s a neutral word, sometimes good, sometimes bad…very unlike how reformers use it.
August 2, 2014 at 10:27 am
kavips
In the old days, they called it by a more apt name: child sacrifice. Common Core stresses that this is innovative. Well use of the gas chambers for people’s eradication was innovative too… Innovative is neutral.. Good and bad people use innovation… What is incredulous is that how-this-affects-children, has been completely erased from the equation! Just like: “oh, they are only Jews. They don’t matter what they feel when they die.”
August 2, 2014 at 4:28 pm
John Young
At the bottom of MHS’ link to the “toolbox”, go to bottom of page and next to the copyright, click on Agile Mind, a partner.
Then once there go to “About us” and click “research partners”
http://www.agilemind.com/about-us/research-partners/
Voila!: Bill Gates strikes again!
August 2, 2014 at 4:42 pm
kavips
In addition, Agile Mind research and development benefit directly from the support of:
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The Brown Foundation
The California State University at Dominguez Hills Foundation
The Carnegie Corporation of New York
The Chicago Community Trust
The Small Business Innovation Research Program of The Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education
The James Irvine Foundation
The National Science Foundation
The Small Business Innovation Research Program of the National Science Foundation
The Noyce Foundation
The Sid W. Richardson Foundation
The S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation
The Texas Education Agency
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
August 3, 2014 at 1:20 am
John Young
The National Governors Association (NGA) owns the copyright – along with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) – to the Common Core State Standards. When the nationalized standards are mentioned these days, however, many governors would rather change the subject.
In fact, the NGA, holding summer meetings in Nashville, had not even placed the controversial standards on its official agenda, a sign, as the Wall Street Journal states, “the bipartisan idea has become a political minefield.”
Much to the surprise of many Washington, D.C., pundits, the standards, and even the name itself, “Common Core,” have “become, in a sense, radioactive,” said Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R), according to the Associated Press.
The governors’ association is not taking a position on implementation of the Common Core, though the group was a key player when the standards were developed in 2009.
“I guarantee you there will be a lot of discussion this week about it among individuals and in governors-only meetings in terms of, ‘Tell me what you are doing. What’s the impact?'” said Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R), who has continued his support for the Common Core and joined with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in March to promote them.
Indeed, for Republicans, the issue of the Common Core has also been described by former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) as “toxic,” and has served to separate the GOP establishment, supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, from constitutional conservatives who oppose the federal government’s hand in pushing Common Core through President Obama’s Race to the Top (RttT) stimulus program and the promise of relief from federal No Child Left Behind restrictions.
Emmett McGroarty, education director of the American Principles Project, is concerned about federal overreach into education.
“The NGA and many individual governors want to ignore the cold, hard facts,” McGroarty told Breitbart News. “The Framers intended that the governors and state legislatures would protect citizens from federal intrusion so that the people could make their own decisions about important matters like education policy.”
“With respect to the Common Core, many governors – spurred on by the NGA – failed to do this, and in fact the NGA actually invited the federal government to push the standards into the states,” McGroarty explained. “Together, the NGA and those governors cut state legislators and citizens out of the process.”
McGroarty asserts that, because of the failure to include state lawmakers and parents in the process, “the NGA’s Common Core Standards are defective and lock children into a low-quality education.”
“The Common Core initiative is a man-made disaster that arose from a lack of respect for the people, the legislators who represent them, and the constitutional structure intended to protect them,” McGroarty said.
In an ironic twist, leading the states in repealing the Common Core standards, without simply “rebranding” or renaming them, is Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R), who also happens to be the chair of the NGA. Oklahoma will not only write its own standards, which the law says must be shown to be sufficiently unlike the Common Core, but has reverted to its former PASS standards for the coming school year.
“Common Core has become a divisive issue in our nation, with the concern that the federal government is trying to mandate standards down to states,” Fallin said Friday. “The governors are listening to their voters and their constituents back home who are concerned about the federal overreach into states, and each governor will do what’s in the best interest of their states.”
Though Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) was the first of the governors to declare the Common Core repealed in his state, many Hoosier parents have been highly critical of his decision to ignore both them and the advice of standards experts he invited to assist in writing replacement standards. It turns out Pence’s replacement standards are remarkably similar to the Common Core and, in some cases, even inferior.
According to the WSJ, however, Pence, a 2016 presidential hopeful, “rejects” that claim.
South Carolina, led by Gov. Nikki Haley (R), also plans to write its own standards to replace the Common Core, though the nationalized standards will remain in place for the coming school year.
Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), also a 2016 potential presidential hopeful, has taken on his state’s superintendent and state school board president – who have threatened to sue the governor – to remove Louisiana from the PARCC Common Core test consortium, a battle that has demonstrated the power that state boards of education have achieved through the years over state legislatures, local school districts, and parents.
Anna Arthurs, a physician and parent organizer of a grassroots group in Louisiana, said she is not surprised that Common Core has been avoided at the recent NGA meetings.
“It is getting difficult for this D.C.-based trade organization to continue to defend the full initiative associated with these standards,” Arthurs told Breitbart News. “The NGA can no longer continue with the false claim that these standards were ‘state-led’ and are the will of American voters, teachers, principals, and parents.”
“The NGA also can no longer deny the federal government’s role in this initiative, since we now know that cash-strapped states were financially coerced to adopt these standards in order to receive Race to the Top federal stimulus funds, NCLB waivers and Title I funds,” Arthurs continued. “These standards may not have been a federal mandate, but that is only because the federal government could not do this by law. They skirted the law as best they could and their intent is undeniable.”
Arthurs also challenged what has been the claim of the NGA and other proponents that the Common Core is just “standards,” and not “curriculum.”
“We have seen the publisher’s criteria sent out by the NGA and CCSSO to textbook companies to instruct them how to make their material comply with these national standards,” Arthurs said. “Also, it is the federal government that exclusively funds the national PARCC and SBAC assessment tests which will be used to make sure that states are teaching to these standards.”
Arthurs said that, contrary to the depiction of Common Core opponents as “crazy,” American parents – and voters – have become very informed and educated about the standards initiative.
“We are not going away,” she asserted. “Several of the members of the NGA initially supported these standards due to the impressive Gates-funded sales pitch, but they too have educated themselves. They are now paying attention to the facts and the will of their constituents.”
In a recent Washington Post interview, Bill Gates admitted that the primary goal of the Common Core was to socially engineer the “huge problem that low-income kids get less good education than suburban kids get…”
The argument has been made, however, that in attempting to make it easier for low-income and minority children to be part of an engineered “workforce,” the low-quality Common Core standards actually do a disservice to bright children wanting to move on to STEM careers, regardless of their background.
Dr. Sandra Stotsky, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas, and Dr. R. James Milgram, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, are both standards experts who were invited to be members of the Common Core Validation Committee, but refused to sign off on the standards.
In an email statement to Breitbart News, Stotsky said:
It is a sad commentary on the education of both Republican and Democratic governors that neither group of governors has seen fit to ask their higher education teaching faculty in science, engineering, and mathematics to tell them how Common Core’s mathematics standards and tests deepen the lack of equity in K-12 education.
“Some of us really don’t care about things like whether or not Common Core is a federal takeover of public education,” Milgram, a mathematician, told Breitbart News.
“If the standards were capable of improving the outcomes for our brighter students who would, normally, be interested in STEM areas, I’d be their strongest supporter,” he added. “But they don’t do this at all. They are aimed at the weakest students and provide an absolute minimum for students to enter a community college, nothing more.”
“Statistically speaking, even if a student with this background wanted to major in a STEM related area, only one in fifty would succeed,” Milgram said.