What's the Big Deal with Common Core? (Part III)

In my 3rd and final blog post on the subject of Common Core, I want to go into the Math standards of the Common Core Standards (CCS). 

There was one mathematician on the Common Core Validation Committee, the committee whose job it was to review the curriculum after it left the work group who designed it.  Professor James Milgram, of Stanford University, refused to sign off on the math standards.  So the authors took the curriculum back and revised it, right?  Nope.  Those unapproved standards are part of what is currently being implemented in our schools right now.

What's the Big Deal with Common Core? (Part II)

Here I am going to take a look at the first of the two sets of the Common Core Standards (CCS):  English and Language Arts (ELA).

One of the most criticized aspects of the ELA standards is the amount of informational (nonfiction) reading required compared to the amount of fiction allowed.  This chart came off the CC website and shows the amount of literary reading compared to informational reading in 3 grades:

Grade	Literary	Information
4	50%	50%
8	45%	55%
12	30%	70%

What's the Big Deal with Common Core?

So we’ve all been hearing A LOT about the Common Core Standards (CCS) these days.  Up until now, my knowledge of it has been embarrassingly small.

When I envisioned doing some research and writing a blog post, I was just going to write one concise post on the subject.  Now that I’ve typed out all I want to say, I have decided to split it into several posts for ease of reading.  If you are still interested after you read this article, the following two posts will talk more specifically about the English Language Arts standards and the Math standards.