Common Core Math Standards Research Paper

When the “math wars” began in the 1990s, on one side were those who argued for a new focus on concepts and reasoning rather than drilling students on their times-tables. On the other were the traditionalists, who said the progressive approach allowed students to become unmoored from the building blocks of the subject
, leaving them unprepared for more advanced mathematics.
The writers of the Common Core math standards have sought a middle ground.

“There are explicit expectations for knowing the times-table from memory, and that’s going to take dedicated work toward that end. So this isn’t fuzzy math,” said Jason Zimba, a professor of physics and math at Bennington College in Vermont and lead writer of the math standards. “On the other hand, …show more content…
“The notion of rigor in Common Core involves equal intensity about conceptual understanding, procedural skill, and fluency and application.”

The creation of the math standards was in large part an editing process. Experts have mostly agreed that previously, American math classes tried to cover too much ground, leaving students without the deeper grasp of central concepts that would serve them best in more advanced mathematics. So the Common Core math standards tackle fewer topics, and also move students more slowly through arithmetic, subtraction, multiplication and the other operations that build up to more complex math, particularly algebra.

“These standards are focused in a way that we didn’t have before in the sense that they really try to say in each grade-level, this is what you need to learn so you can move on,” said William McCallum, math department chair at the University of Arizona and a member of the work team for the Common Core math standards. “A lot of curricula tend to keep teaching the same thing over and over again, and never doing it in a particularly deep …show more content…
“Mathematically, it’s summed up in one little phrase: Fractions are numbers. And it’s made emphatically clear in the Common Core standards.”

“They are not pieces of pizza and they are not little blocks, and they are not a certain number of dots in a bigger set of dots,” he added.

Using pizza to teach fractions isn’t banned, Zimba said. But the idea that fractions are actual numbers that fall on the number line—rather than pieces of something larger—is emphasized.

Other aspects of the Common Core math standards—mostly at the secondary level—have raised concerns among a handful of mathematicians, however.

For one, experts have worried that the standards are encouraging a way of teaching geometry that may not only be above the heads of students, but also hard to grasp for teachers. The standards start with transformational geometry, a way of visualizing congruence by, for example, transposing figures over one another or flipping them into mirror shapes. The authors of the standards say it’s a way to help students grasp fundamental concepts in geometry. Mathematicians, though, worry that what may seem like a simple way of teaching students is actually a highly complex approach more appropriate for college math majors that could reduce the emphasis on the rules and formulas of

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