Common Core Mythbusting

If you've been on Facebook for any amount of time, one of your online friends has probably posted a video similar to this one:

There is a plethora of videos similar to this one, and most of them have sensationalized, click-bait titles:

• Arkansas Mother Obliterates Common Core in Four Minutes!
• COMMON CORE MATH MAKES SIMPLE ARITHMETIC AS COMPLEX AS CALCULUS!
• Proof Common Core is Killing Common Sense
• Teaching Math in Bizarro World
• New Common Core Math Doesn't Add Up
• Common Core Teacher Takes Nearly a Minute to Solve 9+6=15
• Common Core Assignment Makes No Sense to Dad
• Common Core Makes Me Mad

Along with the headlines, these videos tend to share a common two-pronged thesis: There is a specific Common Core method in math, and it is ridiculously hard and confusing in comparison to how math has traditionally been taught. 

For anyone who accepts the information in these videos at face-value, this is an effective argument. The method shown in the video I've posted and in so many others does seem at first to be overly-complicated, especially when explained in a confusing manner by someone whose intent is to make you believe that it is. And we're all familiar enough with basic addition and subtraction that when the video goes on to make a comparison to the carry and borrow method we learned in grade school, our initial reaction is probably agreement with the narrator that it doesn't make any sense.

Fortunately, in education, we're not in the business of accepting information at face value, and a critical look at either part of the argument shows that there is nothing complex about it, that it does add up in a way that is far more natural for the human brain than borrowing and carrying, and that it makes perfect sense when explained well by a good teacher. 

The first part of the anti-Core argument--that there is a specific method prescribed by the Core--is patently false. There isn't one, and I would challenge anyone who says there is to go to the Common Core website or the excellent Iowa Core website and find it. (For that matter, I would encourage anyone to explore these sites whether they believe the myth or not, just to be more informed about the standards that have become so vital in American education.)

The second part of the argument--that "Common Core math" is confusing and over-complicated--involves a little more critical thinking. In the case of the video above, it took a second viewing for me to realize that what was being shown was simply how I do math in my head. It's been said that there are three kinds of people: Those who are good at math, and those who aren't. (On Facebook, that sentence would be followed by an obligatory "LOL.") That may be true to an extent, but for many people who struggle with mental math, it's possible they're trying to carry and borrow in their heads. That method works well on paper, but poorly when attempted mentally. Mental math is a different animal, and it looks like the method that is ridiculed in so many anti-Core videos. 

In fact, when it's explained by a teacher whose purpose is for his students to learn an effective math strategy, it's not complicated at all.

For more information on debunking Common Core mythology, google "Common Core myths."

The Signal and the Noise

The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth.
--Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise

The Signal and the Noise is my favorite book about statistical analysis. (Yes, I have a favorite book about statistical analysis. Don't judge.) The book's author Nate Silver runs a website called FiveThirtyEight.com, a name derived from the number of electoral votes in United States presidential elections. Silver is most famous for correctly predicting the electoral results of 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, and then topping that feat by correctly predicting all 50 in 2012.

In the book, Silver discusses how we humans naturally observe and seek out patterns, and how we often fail to successfully make accurate predictions based on those observations. This is in part because there is so much information out there, and much of the information is noise. It distracts us from what we really need to know to accurately analyze the information available to us.

Thanks to unit pre and post tests in math and ELA (as well as those that are now being developed in other subject areas), we have a wealth of data about our students and their proficiency on a wide range of Iowa Core standards. As Southeast Polk's assessment coordinator, I have been looking for ways to share more and more data with teachers, coaches, and administrators to help facilitate our common goal of raising student achievement. Using Data Director, Infinite Campus, and Excel, I've been able to develop reports not only on overall test data, but also on subgroups based on IEP, ELL, TAG, and gender. I've gone back and found historical data in these areas as well. And I think this is probably just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what sort of data could be available to everyone.

The problem becomes how to deal with all of that data. How do we decide what is important right now, what needs to be observed for future patterns, and what can be dismissed? How do we separate the signal from the noise?

The answer lies in the data team process. A strong data team has the ability to hone in on the signal, on the important truths that our unit assessment data can tell us about what our students are doing well, and in what areas they need more help. I've been privileged enough to attend a few data team meetings since the start of the school year, and I'm looking forward to hopefully making them a more regular part of my schedule as the year progresses.

If you're interested in reading The Signal and the Noise, it's available at Amazon.com and many other retailers. I also have a copy of it in my office that I would love to loan out. Send me an email if you want to borrow it!

Strange Days, Indeed

Most peculiar, Mama...

When I left my office at the Southeast Polk Teaching and Learning Resource Center last Friday, I expected to be welcomed back from the weekend by a hectic Monday. The week would start with the regular curriculum team meeting on Monday that would include planning a half day of professional development for our first-year teachers. Following that, I would dive into Data Director to start analyzing nine different unit pre and post-tests that teachers throughout the district had used to assess their students last week. I was looking forward to a busy day with my curriculum colleagues and our assessment data when our science coordinator Jim Pifer asked me if I knew school had been cancelled. I barely had time to respond to Jim when my phone lit up with texts from family members and colleagues wanting to know if I knew anything beyond what they knew from a district email and the news.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these...

That's not completely true. Somewhere along the line in ed school classes, it does get mentioned that teachers have to handle situations outside of pedagogy and standard student discipline, but it's hard to prepare educators for every situation. When we do discuss dealing with the unexpected, we at least expect those things to happen one at a time. It's hard to predict that the extra security that a school puts in place to deal with an anonymous social media threat will be pulled away due to unrelated acts of violence only a few minutes from the school at which the threats were directed.

Because we're working with first-year teachers tomorrow, I've spent a lot of time today thinking about the unexpected events of my first year of teaching. Classes at Stuart-Menlo High School were cancelled the day after Labor Day because a student went home after the football game the previous Friday night and shot himself with the hunting rifle he kept in his room. Midway through the year, the Stuart police showed up at my classroom door to arrest two juniors in my Basic Literature class for possession of marijuana. While I was filling in for the seventh grade math teacher so he could take his basketball players to an after school game, a boy in the class exposed himself to the girls who sat near him. One morning, one of the best actors on my speech team didn't make it to rehearsal because he tried to get through a railroad crossing before a train got there. In the days before electronic gradebooks, I had to completely rearrange my American Lit roster, because one of my students got pregnant and then got married, which meant her last name began with a W instead of an A. In addition to all that and a few more things I haven't listed, I was barely older than my seniors and looked young enough that the photographer on school picture day asked if I was a tenth grader.

Always something happening...

If there is one piece of advice I would give to new teachers, it's that you have to be flexible. Planning is vital; in fact, lack of planning is the root cause of a lot of classroom management problems. That doesn't change the fact that sometimes the real world gets in the way of your meticulous lesson plans. Sometimes it's one student who is having a bad day that throws everything out of whack. Sometimes it's an assembly you forgot about, or technology that doesn't work like you thought it would. And sometimes, the world beyond the school walls conspires against you and you're sent home for the day, despite the fact that you were ready to kick off a new week with the greatest class activity your students have ever experienced.

Where does that leave us? It depends on the situation. In this case, we have a second shot at a new school week tomorrow. As educators, it's in our best interests and in the best interests of our students to go into it well-prepared for anything that could happen, with the understanding that "anything" covers far more ground than we want it to.

(All of the quotes in this post were from John Lennon's song "Nobody Told Me.")

Out of the Rabbit Hole and into the #SEPreflects Blogging Challenge

“The time has come
The walrus said
To talk of many things:
Of shoes- and ships-
And sealing wax-
Of cabbages and kings-
And why the sea is boiling hot-
And whether pigs have wings.” 


Certainly a nonsensical quote from Lewis Carroll's brilliantly absurd children's story seems to be an odd way to start the first post of a blog about assessment data. But just as my job as Southeast Polk's district assessment coordinator is not just about Data Director, test scores, and spreadsheets, this blog will be about many things besides all of the numbers from the myriad assessments that I lose myself in every day.

“In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.” 

It is all too easy for my to lose myself in the rabbit hole that data can create. I've always loved playing with data. As a kid, when my friends sorted their baseball cards based on their favorite teams or players, mine were sorted based on criteria that were based on the hitting and pitching statistics on the back of them. I didn't realize it when I was in elementary school, but I had created a rubric to assess the hitting or pitching skills of each player pictured on the gum-scented pieces of cardboard that I spent most of my allowance on each week. For years, the floorspace of my bedroom was dominated by a grid-like arrangement of baseball cards as I sorted and re-sorted them based on the statistical criteria in which I was most interested at the time. If I would have had access to spreadsheets back in the late seventies, there would have been considerably more hardwood visible in my room. 

My other rabbit hole was reading, which explains how a numbers geek became an English teacher, then a computer technology teacher, and then a data coordinator. In the same way I would become obsessed with baseball stats, I would also become obsessed with certain authors or series of books. Even though I don't read as voraciously now as I did then, a good writer can still hook me, regardless of genre. This is the only explanation I can give for why I've read every Harry Potter book multiple times, why any new Carl Hiaasen novel is always pre-ordered for instant delivery to the Kindle app on my iPad, and why it seems like Christmas when I learn that previously unpublished works of Kurt Vonnegut have become available. 

"Curiouser and curiouser..."

Could there be a better phrase to describe a career in education? Whether I've taught high school or junior high, English or technology, as a classroom teacher or a district coordinator, I've never lacked in things that have surprised me, that created questions that led me down one rabbit hole or another. And as I finish up this first blog post, I'm looking forward to continuing the journey, and to whatever new surprises are part of it.