I sat down with my daughter to help her with her 4th grade math. She attends a school within the Clover Park school district and all math is done through a curriculum titled Common Core. Now, it is understood that Common Core is the new standard almost nation-wide and that it’s supposed to “develop critical-thinking, problem solving and analytical skills” that will be needed to succeed in life. 

I have two problems with this. The first problem is that it’s making math harder than it should be. Prior to helping my daughter, I logged into WAMAP to complete the first two days of my College Algebra course and breezed the lessons. Mind you, I have never been “good” at math, nor have I enjoyed it but as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned how to problem solve better than I used to. Maybe I just have more patience. Not with my 10 year old’s math! I was ready to toss the homework in a fire pit and set it ablaze. I am completely dumbfounded as to why the math is becoming so complicated.

For example, rather than teaching multiplication the “old way,” the homework instead asks, “10 times as many as _____ hundreds is 60 hundreds or _____ thousands.” 60 hundreds? Really? What is so wrong with 60 x 100?” Oh, that’s right. It doesn’t employ “critical thinking.”

My second complaint is that while it’s said that elementary common core “requires the automatic recall of multiplication tables to get the answer right,” I have yet to see either of my elementary school-aged children rely on their knowledge of the multiplication tables. In fact, they don’t know them. Instead, they are asked to draw an “array” to demonstrate how they came up with their answer. Rather than knowing their tables, they draw rows of shapes (7×6 or 4×3) and COUNT until they find the solution to the multiplication problem. 

I don’t necessarily think that Common Core is evil trickery that was put in place to give everyone ample opportunity to fail but I do think that if this is the new standard, we should at least know what to expect. The lessons are taught in the classroom and a work sheet is sent home. There aren’t directions on how to complete the homework. How can I help my child if I don’t know how to do the work? I have to work the problem out the only way I know how and that is the “old,” long way, which is considered wrong.

I am not under any illusions that my complaining will change the way math is taught nowadays, but it feels good to get my frustration off of my chest. Common Core is just prolonging the amount of time it takes kids – and parents – to do homework each night. I don’t know about any of you, but with three school-aged kids, a husband, a full course load, a part-time job and a house to maintain, extra time is the last thing I can spare.