I’ll admit that I’m no fan of the Common Core State Standards, which is besides the fact that Bill”ionaire” Gates basically funded the whole endeavor , they are just badly written AND to make things worse, the “new and improved” textbooks are just as crappy as the old ones. Let’s look at the pitfalls of using “Go Math!” which is just the most worthless piece of junk imaginable. I still believe that someone in the NYC Department of Education had to be bribed to adopt this, because the more I look it, the more I hate it.
Let’s look at the latest element of educational malpractice that raises my ire. Let me start with this observation: the word “algorithm” does not appear in the math standards before third grade. Let me repeat this: the word “algorithm” does not appear in the Common Core math standards before third grade. Are we clear: algorithms are not meat to be part of the Common Core math curriculum before third grade. I should mention that Go Math! advertises itself as being “completely aligned” to the Common Core State Standards.
Just so we’re clear, I will publish the relevant standard that the page I’m about to examine refers to:
7. Add and subtract within 1000, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method. Understand that in adding or subtracting three- digit numbers, one adds or subtracts hundreds and hundreds, tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose or decompose tens or hundreds.
I don’t see the phrase “learn and practice algorithms” here, do you? Okay, let’s review the implications of this finding. Are we in agreement that 2nd grade < 3rd grade? Good!
So tell me, why does this page (and many other just like it) show up in the 2nd grade Go Math! workbook?
I’m sorry: these are not “strategies” – these are algorithms…
There are many pages of this nonsense in the 2nd grade workbook, and while perhaps the writers thought these were “strategies,” they are not: they are algorithms. I’m pretty sure that when the puppets hired by Bill”ionaire” Gates wrote the CCSS, they may have had a reason to not use the word “algorithm” before third grade. For example, because they are totally inappropriate!
Was this an isolated mistakes? Okay, let’s look at another page, which is hilariously entitled “Model and Draw.”
and where exactly is the “model” and “draw” part?
C’mon, give me a break, give me two, please give me a thousand! There is nothing in this turd of a page that would remotely be considered “modeling” and “drawing.”
I’ve tried to contact the weasels at the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, but wouldn’t you know it, there seems to be no telephone number where you can reach anybody who has anything to say about this. Of course, if you want some “training” on their poorly conceived materials, they’ll be glad to sell it to you; if you want to ask about the inappropriate material in this curriculum, well, write us an email and maybe we’ll get back to you. I doubt I’ll hear from either of the functionaries whom I emailed, but then again, you never know: it is St. Patrick’s day. Maybe some of that “luck of the Irish” will rub off me.
