Hannah Emmanuele
Many educators are concerned that the Common Core standards are developmentally inappropriate. Award winning principal Carol Burris and Assistant Principal John Murphy offer another example in today’s Washington Post:
A few days ago, our superintendent shared a Common Core assessment question from a PARCC website… He was interested in a question designed for fourth graders, who are typically 9 or 10 years of age. You can find the question that he shared here: under elementary tasks, fourth grade, “Number of Stadium Seats.” Part A of the assessment task is a straightforward question that asks students to put three, 5 digit numbers in order. Part B is a very different kind of question.
Part B provides students with the following information:
The San Francisco Giant’s Stadium has 41,915 seats, the Washington Nationals’ stadium has 41,888 seats and the San Diego Padres’ stadium has 42,445 seats.
It then asks the following question:
Compare these statements from two students.
Jeff said, “I get the same number when I round all three numbers of seats in these stadiums.”
Sara said, “When I round them, I get the same number for two of the stadiums but a different number for the other stadium.”
Can Jeff and Sara both be correct? Explain how you know.
Three administrators in our district brought that question home to their children—one 4th grader and two 6th graders. All three children are good math students who attend different, excellent Long Island schools; all are adept at rounding whole numbers; all were able to do Part A, but got Part B wrong. This response by one of the 6th graders, an 11 year old, provides insight into how this age group thinks:
No, I know this because they all round to 42,000.
We know her response is typical for her age group (7-11) … Students in this stage can engage in some inductive logic, but deductive logic, which is needed to solve problems such as the one described above, is beyond them.
If a child is not developmentally ready, these problems will likely lead to frustration, discouragement and negative emotional reactions—which is exactly what parents are reporting.
