Jennie should learn math

[Harbourmaster]

The biggest problem that I see with "Common Core" and Math is that if you don't have strong English skills then you will fail at math.

[kj]

Sam3 wrote:
Using a visual or word syntax with math is closer to the way humans process math in real life.

This New York Times article explains the issues with teaching math pretty well: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazi....html?_r=0

[quote=NYTimes]
The unschooled may have been more capable of complex math than people who were specifically taught it, but in the context of school, they were stymied by math they already knew. Studies of children in Brazil, who helped support their families by roaming the streets selling roasted peanuts and coconuts, showed that the children routinely solved complex problems in their heads to calculate a bill or make change. When cognitive scientists presented the children with the very same problem, however, this time with pen and paper, they stumbled. A 12-year-old boy who accurately computed the price of four coconuts at 35 cruzeiros each was later given the problem on paper. Incorrectly using the multiplication method he was taught in school, he came up with the wrong answer. Similarly, when Scribner gave her dairy workers tests using the language of math class, their scores averaged around 64 percent. The cognitive-science research suggested a startling cause of Americans’ innumeracy: school.

Please read the article. It describes why Americans are failing at math, and why Common Core actually is a well-designed program that is not implemented well, due to teachers themselves not being trained properly on the methodology behind it and how to best teach it.
THIS is the deal. Common Core makes sense. It all comes down to implementation, which many teachers aren't willing/able to consider. So, even if the idea is sound, if people don't buy in, it isn't going to work. Yes, I'm sick of the whining about common core. Good lord. kj.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Implementation of Common Core started less than five years ago. The problems under discussion in this thread extend back in time much longer than that.