The Common Core for Mathematics in a Nutshell

By Christopher Danielson

If everything you, like many Americans, know about Common Core State Standards (CCSS) comes from social media, you likely think children are being taught to subtract by adding, to write letters to Jack instead of learning their facts, and to draw endless series of dots. (If you got none of those refer- ences, a web search will quickly bring you up to speed.)

As with most urban legends, the commonly voiced concerns about the CCSS begin with a kernel of truth and spin into fiction and fear. Here are the things you, as a mathematically concerned citizen, need to know about these standards.

For U.S. elementary students, addition and subtraction have been taught as distant cousins. The facts are learned separately; the algorithms require substantially different (and seemingly unrelated) procedures; each has its own set of keywords that appear in word problems.

A major goal of the CCSS writing team was coherence. To view operations coherently means to study their interrelationships from the earliest stages. Viewing addition and subtraction as related operations sets the stage for operating on integers in middle school (One interpretation of is “What do I add to to get 7?”). It gives students tools for devising efficient computation strategies (Do you really want to use the subtraction algorithm to solve And it sets students up to more fluently solve algebraic equations in ways that make sense.

The Standards for Mathematical Practice are an important feature of the CCSS, and all eight standards apply to all grade levels. (Go read them—you’ll find them useful for thinking about college-level math as well!)

Perhaps my favorite of these practices is: “Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.” In the early grades, this might mean saying how you know that eight empty pistachio shells means you ate four pistachios, not eight. In middle school, it might mean explaining how dividing by a fraction can yield a quotient larger than the original value. In high school, it might mean writing a geometric proof.

Students in Common Core classrooms have a lot of practice arguing the truth of their mathematical ideas,establishing importantexpectations about what it means to do mathematics, and easing their transition into formal proof writing in geometry and in college mathematics.

Another Student asks students to “look for and make use of structure.” As an example, the distributive property is a structure that underlies basic arithmetic, algebra, calculus, and more. It explains why multidigit multiplication algorithms work, why some (but only some) quadratic expressions factor nicely, and why the definite integral of a constant multiple of a function equals that same multiple of the integral of the function.

Looking at the distributive property as a connecting structure across many contexts brings coherence to what could otherwise be seen as a long list of disconnected, hard-to-remember facts. In contrast to a common mnemonic device for multiplying binomials (FOIL, anyone?) the distributive property applies broadly and provides a foundation for making sense of various mathematical situations. CCSS pushes teachers, curriculum writers, and students to focus more effort on these larger structural ideas and less effort on memorizing individual instances of them.

Going Deeper

If you are interested in the K-12 math educational system, you’ll want to know more than what I’ve covered here. The CCSS for Mathematics, which are neither overly technical nor lengthy, are available at corestandards.org. A series of “progressions documents” expands on the standards with research references and text that helps the reader see how understanding builds across grade levels (ime.math.arizona.edu/progressions).

I hope that this information and my book, Common Core Math For Parents For Dummies, provide an antidote to the misinformation so easily encountered online, and that they spur readers to become better informed and better equipped to formulate viable arguments about mathematics teaching practice.

To purchase at JSTOR: Math Horizons

Christopher Danielson teaches and writes in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. He is no dummy, nor does he believe his readers to be. Email: mathematics.csd@gmail.com