Is this a "common core" problem?

[Ree]

OK, this has gone on long enough.
Can we please get back to discussing the actual topic, rather than debating about who is the better debater? It's gotten really old, really fast, and the members are tired of it, judging by the amount of reports on this thread.

[Hyena Dandy]

Look into your heart, you know it to be true.

How about instead of looking into our hearts, we look at the evidence?

The last time we changed how mathematics was taught, there was a similar response, which was so vociferous that a lot of the reforms were rolled back. Tom Lehrer wrote a song about it (ironically, about one of the aspects that was not rolled back, meaning that I don't know what he's on about in his 'simpler' methods.)

And that was in a time when politics was much more friendly, certainly more friendly than the end of the Bush years when Obama was elected.

Honestly, we have absolutely no evidence about what the response would be if Clinton or McCain or Edwards or Romney were president. I don't have the ability to see those worlds, so I don't see why I'd speculate about them. Especially when we have evidence for what the response would be if Kennedy or Johnson were president, and they are notably not Obama either. I don't think that people would have been thrilled by it no matter who was president.

[Gravekeeper]

The last time we changed how mathematics was taught, there was a similar response, which was so vociferous that a lot of the reforms were rolled back.

A) New Math was legitimately flawed
B) That was the 1960s
C) Parents who didn't understand it *attended classes to learn*
D) It was introduced as a response to the farking Soviet Union.

And obviously there has been education reform in the 50+ years since then.

CC is a standards based reform so the apt comparison is not New Math, its the infamous No Child Left Behind. Something no one liked, most parents barely understood and which passed with full bipartisan support under Bush. Despite its unpopularity it sat around for well over a decade and in fact was only just amended last week.

NCLB is itself a continuation of policies and goals from Clinton which are in turn a continuation of policies and goals from Bush Sr which in turn were based on a report originally commissioned by Reagan.

Conversely, CC is not even an education bill, its an initiative that states are free to adopt. One with majority support among the math and education community at large that was developed in a bipartisan fashion. Yet the opposition to it is divided along political lines with some GOP presidential candidates even going so far to sign pledges to eliminate it. With the running theme being that CC is a Big Evil Government Takeover(tm) like ACA.

So, yes, go ahead and look at the evidence.