tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post8403137465586868196..comments2024-03-27T08:53:29.267-04:00Comments on CURMUDGUCATION: Bill McCallum, CCSS Author & Sad ScientistPeter Greenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511193640285760299noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-78096885820583915882014-04-22T23:36:07.065-04:002014-04-22T23:36:07.065-04:00The disconnect between the progressive intent and ...The disconnect between the progressive intent and the actual consequences is staggeringly large. The ELA "standards" are another matter altogether. They are, in a word, completely amateurish. A tragic joke on the country.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-91514038778994411752014-04-22T14:14:23.589-04:002014-04-22T14:14:23.589-04:00Sadly, none of that happened. As a breed, mathemat...Sadly, none of that happened. As a breed, mathematics educators in this country have proven to lack political savvy. NCTM as an organization has proved to be so hopelessly naive and incompetent that it's little more than a sad joke in some circles (including cadres of very smart young math teachers who aren't waiting for NCTM or anyone else to finally wake up and smell the coffee). <br /><br />There are times when I think the only solution to making meaningful wholesale change in American mathematics education culture would be to take everyone over the age of 6 out to the middle of the Atlantic and sink them to the bottom. It's like trying to get this country to adopt the metric system, something we've only been trying since the early days of the 19th century, without success for some strange reason. Maybe if the Founding Fathers had gone ahead with their thought about dropping English and adopting Hebrew as the national language. . . ? After all, if they could have sold THAT one, they could have succeeded at anything. <br /><br />Meanwhile, I think McCallum gave things a reasonable shot given the limitations of his mandate and the fact that he was working with committees. Anyone who had tried to pull off anything vaguely like the vision of things I advocate would never have gotten the job or would have been dismissed or forced to resign sooner or later. That's how politics (educational and otherwise) works. The ridiculous critiques of much of the "problems" with the Math Standards have approximately ZERO to do with either the content or the practice standards as written. They reflect for the most part the same disgruntlement and abject distortions from 25 years of anti-progressive reactionary pushback against the 1989 NCTM Standards, replete with amazing propaganda and scare tactics that have parents beshitting themselves every time they see a problem they don't get. Couple that with a vast percentage of teachers and administrators who honestly don't get what progressive mathematics teaching is about, don't understand constructivism, don't understand the difference between a MODEL for a mathematical idea and an ALGORITHM for doing computation, approach progressive math teaching with the same narrow-minded, clueless rigidity with which they approached traditional math instruction, and you have . . . a freaking disaster. A quarter century of absolutely wasted time, money, and effort. A vast spinning of our collective wheels in which a vocal minority of elitists and reactionaries have been able to keep the bus from moving five feet forward without pushing it 20 years backwards. And the Common Core has simply been a gigantic juggernaut that repeats every error made in the previous 25 years and exacerbates matters with a host of new idiocies, including the hijacking of the democratic process, willful capitulation to corporate capitalism, destruction of the teaching profession, selling of public education to the highest bidder, and full-fledged surrender to high-stakes testing insanity. <br /><br />As Yakov Smirnov is wont to say, "What a country." I don't think Bill McCallum is the problem or the solution. We've met the enemy, and he is us. Michael Paul Goldenberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04939966966192318775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-34712734513201293312014-04-22T14:14:01.233-04:002014-04-22T14:14:01.233-04:00I think the analysis of Bill McCallum is hit and m...I think the analysis of Bill McCallum is hit and miss. I've had conversations with him, both public and private, via e-mail and by phone. He's not stupid. But I think it's easier to see in retrospect what the bigger picture is (and probably always was) with the overall Common Core Initiative than it was in the early days, particularly for those given a chance to write the Mathematics Content and Practice standards. And there was little consensus in those groups, I suspect strongly, just as in the end, elitists like R. James Milgram got to make the biggest splash by repeatedly and publicly trashing them (for all the wrong reasons). <br /><br />Like other progressive mathematics educators from the NCTM/NCSM world, McCallum believes in meaningful improvements over the dead model of mathematics instruction that have dominated this country for over a century. I don't know if he has been completely taken in by the prospect of seeing NCTM's underlying philosophy (see the Process Standards from, say, PRINCIPLES AND STANDARDS FOR SCHOOL MATHEMATICS (2000) put into place nationally with the force of the US DOE and a ton of state DOEs behind it. I do believe and have said repeatedly that some prominent progressive math ed folks, including much of NCTM's leadership over the last two decades, appears to have fallen, more or less, for that notion. It's understandable that they would. Having tried and failed since 1989 to get that philosophy into K-12 classrooms, they are desperate to give it another shot. If Big Government & Big Business seem to promise the realization of that wish, can we really blame people who worked so hard and long (and unsuccessfully) to see it come to fruition for biting the poisoned apple? <br /><br />Where I DO blame them and other well-meaning folks who support the Common Core Math Standards for progressive educational reasons is in failing to see the biggest flaw in this entire plan, REGARDLESS of the politics, the money, the greed, the corporate worms writhing throughout the fruit: the failure to adequately plan for an effective change in the entire culture of American school mathematics. Such a plan would be gradual, and it would meaningfully engage EVERY stakeholder, most importantly parents, teachers, and administrators. It would include a flexible and well-considered long-term plan for changing how each new cadre of K-12 math teachers thought about mathematics content and pedagogy. It would adequately train teachers at every grade level to provide deep content and pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics necessary for the task they face with diverse students in real classrooms. It would have provisions for getting rid of the dead wood that cannot or will not adjust to the needs of contemporary mathematics teaching and learning (and I'm thinking in terms of Finland, not Michelle Rhee in that regard). And perhaps equally importantly, it would have a well-thought-out strategy for educating parents so that the next round of the Math Wars wouldn't simply be a repetition of the last two and a half decades' worth of losing battles against smarter, better-funded, more ruthless opposition. <br /><br />Michael Paul Goldenberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04939966966192318775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-56489184454267496232014-04-22T13:11:55.354-04:002014-04-22T13:11:55.354-04:00I feel sad for McCallum as well. Just like charte...I feel sad for McCallum as well. Just like charter schools, the creation of the Common Core has been mutilated, twisted, and perverted into a monster used for sinister purposes, which was certainly not its original intent. Unlike the creator of the charter school movement, however, McCallum still has it well within his power to change the course of history and set things right.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-6611263888004090802014-04-16T18:29:38.837-04:002014-04-16T18:29:38.837-04:00Wow, that is quite the pin. I agree with your asse...Wow, that is quite the pin. I agree with your assessment. I do think there are those who support CCSS who are simply misguided. Their hearts are in the right place. It's a shame they can't see the forest through the trees.Camiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17019972786838081366noreply@blogger.com