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Andy Brummer wrote: The foundation I work for is working on getting all states to adopt a common data standard for student level data,
How can you do that with the amount of cultural and economic diversity that is found, not just among different states, but among schools within a state?
Marc
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It's a beast of a standard. For example there are many ways to calculate attendance. By class, for a particular homeroom class, minimum number of hours per day, etc. However there are a limited number of fields required to enable all those calculations. The standard has all the fields and leaves the calculation up to the district.
There are a number of different areas, like discipline, attendance, grades, household information. Each one is a related sub-standard. Then there are extensions which are not official but can be shared between implementations and depend on the core standards.
It doesn't give 100% abstraction, but we've had vendors estimate that it saved them 80% of their mapping effort between states, which is huge. Here's the standard's website: http://www.ed-fi.org/[^]
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Also, here is another school that the foundation funds that addresses the curricula issue in a completely different way:
Quote: The School of One’s mission is to provide
students with personalized, effective, and
dynamic classroom instruction customized to
their particular academic needs, interests, and
learning preferences.
To organize this type of learning, each
student receives a unique daily schedule based
on his or her academic strengths and needs.
As a result, students within the school can
receive profoundly different instruction. Each
student’s schedule is tailored to ability and
to the ways he or she learns best. Teachers
acquire data about student achievement each
day and then adapt their live instructional
lessons accordingly.
School of one NYC[^]
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Marc Clifton wrote: Every teacher I've talked with hates this system, but what do you expect from a curriculum that was decided in a national conference
I think that's a large part of it. Teachers hate it and students will also as it is incorporated, but this is the way to force more national standards -- central control -- upon every little city out there. Plus this way we can teach all the children to pull the same levers. "I hear and and obey..."  No need for thinking, that's for the smart people.
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Well maybe it's good for exposing kids to different techniques for doing calculations, especially if they want to do sums in their head, as there isn't one perfect easy method for every sum (with the obvious exception of using a calculator). It's better knowing a few methods of reaching the answer and choosing the best one, rather than knowing only one method and attempting to use it for everything.
With the example from Kent Sharkey's link 325 - 38, in my head I would do this:
38 + 2 = 40
40 - 25 = 15
300 - 15 = 285
285 + 2 = 287
Maybe it's a little strange, but as I don't do a lot of mental arithmetic I adjust the numbers so I can add or subtract easier while keeping the quantity of intermediate numbers I'll have to remember to a minimum.
I also like to do division in my head in a similar fashion, but that's more recursive and to get an accurate answer I have to remember a bunch of numbers along the way, probably best just to use a calculator.
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Hmmmm... 38 - 25 = 13 , and 100 - 13 = 87 , so 287 .
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I'd do 300 - (38 - 25) without even thinking about it.
The common core method is not something that should be taught. It is something that should be learned via the ah-hah moments that occur inside your head when you get a good handle on arithmetic. If you understand numbers, the tricky methods will come naturally.
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Well of course. But for me 38 - 25 takes more effort than fiddling the numbers in my head, either by adding or subtracting to reach easier to work with numbers, or breaking it down into smaller sums, for example ((30-20) + (8-5)) (although that requires me to remember more numbers at a time).
If I had to do mental arithmetic more than few times a month (beyond counting change) than perhaps I'd have an easier time with it.
I'd also like to point out that I don't sit there and think "Perhaps if I add two or three here, and then..." the route to the answer comes without much thought.
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I was going to pipe up with the same explanation that everyone else did, It's a good way to do subtraction in your head. I learned that and more as a child. The common core doesn't seem that weird to me, but it sucks that they don't have any physical materials to work with like I did.
For example this is one way I learned multiplication:
Checkerboard[^]
This is what I worked with for addition:
Bead frame[^]
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I can't watch YT videos at work... oh the tease! 
Jeremy Falcon
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I think they are trying to bring back magic in our cold dry intellectual world! 
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I think that is stupid way to do math. Sorry, but that is how I feel.
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No need to apologize man. I like the premise personally, I just don't particularly see how the implementation is good.
Jeremy Falcon
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It's not Maths; it's counting.
Everyone can count, so it's really easy.
Now subtract 7 from 472326598458412365452131236525897456321452453698736985215457.
Call me next week when you're done.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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How about I use a calculator, and don't call you. 
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If you need a calculator for that, you should call a private arithmetic tutor.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I honestly just looked at the long number and started typing.
My point was that if the numbers/maths are complex then use a f***ing calculator. Move out, draw fire. No need for this bizarre, bullshit way of doing arithmetic.
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Um...you probably should have chosen a more difficult problem. :p
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That's the point.
Using the common-core-counting method, it would take forever!
Not using the common-core-counting method, it takes as long as it takes to see what the last digit of the number is.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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string s = "472326598458412365452131236525897456321452453698736985215457" ;
int i = s.IndexOf ( "7" ) ;
s = s.SubString ( s , 0 , i ) + s.SubString ( s , i+1 ) ;
(Or something like that.)
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Mark_Wallace wrote: Now subtract 7 from 472326598458412365452131236525897456321452453698736985215457.
42326598458412365452131236525894563214524536983698521545
Tada!!
Jeremy Falcon
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One criticism I have heard a lot about some 'modern' education techniques is the emphasis on 'research'. With the advent of the internet some children are being encouraged to look everything up and 'discover'.
In some cases there has been a strong move away from rote learning or the learning of facts.
It's certainly something I have seen a bit of, where giving a person a task they rely more on their opinion than on hard evidence. Evidence they can gain by looking in detail at what is happening.
My take on it is that you need a solid foundation in basic facts such as memorising simple multiplication tables for simple things. Then extrapolating from those basics to more abstract concepts when you come to things like calculus.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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It much older than the Internet - it's called Pupil-Centred Learning and has been around in one form since the 70s to my knowledge, probably longer.
This is interesting [^] as it suggest student centred learning can't work until you are about 11 as it requires logic.
Alberto Brandolini: The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
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Basically, the third column minus the first column equals the second column or original problem.
32 + 30 + 20 + 15
- (30 + 20 + 15 + 12)
= 32 - 12
Addition is easier than subtraction sometimes. That's actually quite smart.
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Hmm. It looks like a convenient "shortcut" for doing those operations in your head. It's analogous to how a lot of retailers teach their cashiers to make change for quick cash transactions. I don't like the notion of teaching this as a primary method, without teaching the underlying primitive operations.
It's yet another example of "nothing changes". When I was in first and second grade 45 years ago, we were taught the "New Math". I had a really hard time with it, especially subtraction. My mother taught me how she learned how to do it. I got dinged a few times on tests for not following their method, but the teacher couldn't argue with the fact I got the correct answer.
A final observation; some kids will learn how to do basic arithmetic well, regardless of the algorithm that is taught. Some will not. It depends somewhat on the kid, but more on the parents. Parents who participate and monitor their kid's education will ensure they learn. Parents who treat school as an all-day babysitter will wonder why their kid is still working as a server at T.G.I. Friday's when they're 32.
Software Zen: delete this;
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