I've said for awhile that comedians are some of the wiser people in our society.

Dammit, I have 3.2 million Twitter followers.

@1,

You don't see a problem with saying: "Complete the model based upon the information above" to a fucking 8-year-old?

I really don't understand the purpose of the boxes. What is with the pictograph and putting everything in boxes bullshit in Common Core questions? Just ask how many kids read each book. It's a simple fraction problem. Why make it more confusing than it needs to be?

Putting the info in the boxes is the equivalent of saying show your work. But yes, it is needlessly wordy/confusing.

There's some good stuff about Common Core. There's some OK stuff about Common Core. Then there's some abysmal stuff. The standards at K-2 fall into ABYSMAL. They have zero alignment with childhood development and the highly documented reality that kids fall within a wide range of "normal" in their reading, math and social skills at this age.

Also, the smartest people I have known were bad test takers. Shit, the two most successful people I have ever met are high school dropouts. So the constant media attention over international test scores has always been puzzling to me.

What was it mark Twain said? Never let school get in the way of your education? Words to live by in my experience.

P.S. The Eduspeak on the Louis CK example is the fault of the testing company or teacher who created it. Any organization or teacher who can suck the life out of learning for an 8 year old with a test like that should get out of the business.

Pathetic.

The essay by Diane Ravitch nailed it. The US falls behind the rest of the world not because our standards or curriculum sucks, but because we have so much child poverty. Put effort into fighting child poverty first and test scores will skyrocket.

@9,

Yes, English is important. It should also be largely separate from math testing to ensure that math testing isn't adversely affected by a student not having a full grasp of English. Or do you think ESL students should flunk out even if they have amazing capability in other subjects?

I have no problem with third graders learning fractions. I do have a problem with their introduction to fractions becoming incredibly fraught because Pearson and McGraw-Hill are useless pieces of shit.

Speaking of American students being outpaced by other countries, I'm having a hard time imagining students in other countries having to endure such shitty math problems.

Incomprehensible or questionable wording always messed me up on math worksheets when I was a kid. So nice to see this grand tradition carrying forward through the younger generations.

@7 And there lies the fatal flaw of all standardized testing. We learn/teach that every kid has their own distinct learning style and pace, with diverse interests and aptitudes. And then we go ahead and put them all into the same box. Many of the kids are doomed to fail, that failures opens up a whole pandora's box of issues that manifest themselves down the road. "I'm dumb", "I hate math", etc. Where do parents think this shit comes from?

During the bad old day of WASL, we took the kids that didn't pass the 10th grade exam and actually put them in WASL remediation classes. Bad at math? Well we are going to cut you guitar elective and double up your math, so you can pass the WASL retest over the summer. Then parents wonder why their kids are cutting class and smoking pot behind the school all morning. Because what normal human wants to take three hours of math every fucking day?

All this nonsense does is kill the innate love of learning and turn school into mindfucking drudgery.

@14,

There is no fucking way that that question requires "basic literacy" on the part of a third grader. Have you ever spoken to an 8-year-old? How about an 8-year-old with any kind of peculiar dialect?

I'm a college-educated 34-year-old who proofs English grammar *for a living*, and *I* had a hard time figuring out what in the hell that question was asking for.

I'd also add that it was this exact confusion combined with the seeming pointlessness of the whole enterprise that drove me away from math in my early years.

No longer having to do this shit makes me enjoy math a whole lot more now and wish I didn't avoid it so much during the younger years.

@14 Must be so easy to be you. Congratulations. You're smarter than a third-grader. Or at least you would be if you had even the least bit of empathy for those who are ever-so-slightly not you.

Not only is imprecise or confusing wording a problem for second-language speakers, it's a problem for over thinkers, under thinkers, and lateral thinkers.

@19 Thank you for proving my point so concretely. You clearly know nothing about this subject and yet you think you know everything.

Congratulations. You passed the ignorant jerk test. Here's your gold star.

Who says it's not about making sure every special snowflake goes home a winner?

"I agree that success in school is not synonymous with success in life, but I don't see why making sure American kids learn math is a bad thing."

And herein lies the problem with testing, in general. There are a hundred and one ways to go wrong on a question like this. Many of those ways have nothing to do with math ability. Many of them have nothing to do with English facility.

So, what exactly are we testing? Are we not actually creating more questions than we answer when we rely so heavily on these obtusely-structured kinds of knowledge assessments? Who's assessing the assessors?

@19: Here is how the question would be written if you weren't trying to mindfuck the kid:

Six students are eating fruit. A third are eating apples, half are eating bananas, and a sixth are eating pineapples. Write down how many students are eating apples, bananas, and pineapples.

This is how word problems have been written for ages. Instead, Common Core wants to play the game of eliminating extraneous information and writing the answer in the least logical way possible. What has the original problem achieved other than taught the kids how to count in unary? Is unary useful to anyone?

However misguided the implementation, it seems like the aim of questions like these is to get kids to solve problems with something other that rote memorization. Which, really, doesn't seem like the absolute worst idea.

@24 Yes. It's a good idea. Too bad it's really tough to use testing to observe complex mental functions, such as problem-solving. We use testing so much because we think it's cheap (or at least cheaper than the alternatives).

As in most situations in which we don't actually care enough to invest in comprehensively addressing the problem, we want a cheap technology to provide something that can pass for a solution. Whatever that something is doesn't much matter. It's the educational equivalent to putting a bird on it.

@1- So how old were you when you started to fraction problems?

I'm pretty damn sure we (born 1974, schooled in New York State) didn't start that material in my schooling until fifth grade. Maybe fourth. My daughter's standard curriculum requires far more complex math than I ever had, all of provided by for profit companies that aren't producing very high quality material. (and they don't have to because their competition is just as bad.) She also spends about four times as much of her school year in testing as I ever did. I see no evidence any of this is improving anyone's education.

Your comments are just a set of variations on "suck it up losers" with no attempt to engage with the actual issues of curriculum changes. So suck it up, loser, you're not contributing.

@28 You fail Reading Comprehension. But get an A+ in Irony and Hypocrisy. We all have our special strengths.

@GermanSausage -- You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake ... but I am.

HEY LOOK EVERYBODY! GERMAN SAUSAGE NEEDS YOU TO KNOW HE IS SOOOOOO MUCH SMARTER THAN YOUR 8 YEAR OLD! PASS IT ON!

@30 Actually, I'm pretty sure that I'm upset because I view science and data gathering as being more about identifying, isolating, and testing discrete variables than about giving certain individuals a false justification to claim: "Nahnahnahnah! I'msomuchsmarterthanyouare!"

First, @26, parents are complaining because they DO want to help with homework but themselves, cannot figure out what is being asked for. In fact, Common Core supporters are saying "parents don't help." What kind of answer is that for a kid?

Second, thank you to Slog readers for NOT calling out Louis CK. You would not believe the blowback he has received - as an active parent and parent of kids in public schools - for giving his opinion. He has a right to do so but you would not know it by the scathing comments he has received.

Standards are not bad, nor are assessments.

But Common Core has many dirty little secrets and we - and all schoolchildren - will pay for. We need to back off and reexamine who created these, why and how come the roll-out is so botched it makes Obamacare look great.

@15 is exactly and precisely right.

Any standard will work for some kids and make other kids miserable. We know this is true, not only because it is demonstrated year after year, but because we know that all kids are able to learn different things at different times in different ways.

@37 The "elephant in the room" isn't that kids' parents aren't as smart as you are, it's the idea (which you seem to subscribe to) that all kids at a certain age should know certain kinds of math and/or be able to read and/or write at a certain level. This is as baseless and scientific as young earth creationism.

But most everyone in education, including Diane Ravitch, doubles down on the idea, despite the fact that we know it absolutely doesn't work for millions of kids.

@37 -- Yeah, you're probably right, everyone's just stupid and lazy except you. Dig those heels in a bit deeper.

@35 Goddamn it. I don't know how many times it must be said. The issue with the problem has nothing to do with the fractions. The fractions are fine. The fractions are fun even! And understanding fractions--their fundamental concepts and how to manipulate them--is an incredibly useful skill that is well worth taking the time to develop. Early and often.

Deconstructing complexly-worded ideas, thoughts, concepts. Also fine. Also fun.

Putting the two things together into a sadistic pastiche of incomprehensibility--for a new learner, especially--is ridiculously counterproductive. It obfuscates rather than illuminates, making what one expects to be the intent of the original lesson--teaching fractions--completely secondary.

In short, the problem, "I don't understand fractions", turns into "I don't understand this particular question written in this particular way at this particular moment in time". And EVEN THAT's fine (I guess) as long as we interpret the results to be reflective of that second problem rather than the first.

But we don't. Or, at least YOU don't. And many others like you don't. We don't know if the test creators and assessors do or don't. Which is, to say the least, a big problem.

And, quite frankly, I've become biased against using tests to assess complex, compound problems. Academic tests (as they are traditionally constructed) are fairly ok for dealing with well-defined and isolated variables. I don't think anyone has done the work (real work!) it would require to make them useful for assessing more complex skills and knowledge. I say this as someone who has done quite well on tests in all subjects throughout my lifetime. Tests are dumb.

Tests can be great; they're how we learn, provided we get feedback about how and why we were wrong and then develop techniques to avoid errors in the future. Games are just tests with low stakes.

This test will never give feedback. This student will never see this particular word salad again, nor will she ever even know that she got this specific question wrong. She'll just have a stressful day that makes her feel bad and then a couple weeks later she'll feel worse when she gets her score, and then her teacher will lose their job and a 'non-profit' charter that shares the same board as the test-writing corp will take over her school.

I remember questions like that and secretly wanting to make my own box with 'go read 'Matilda' instead of doing this stupid test'.

Also 3.6 students? Did the quarterback grow a second, Russian speaking, head again?

And GermanSasuage no one is saying that kids shouldn't be taught fractions, or tested on what they've been taught. What they're saying is that when the word problem kids are given doesn't make any sort of sense and winds up confusing the adults around them, that's a problem.

delirian gave a great example of asking the same question the test would ask but in a way humans could understand without taking LSD, or joining with an alien hive mind.

And hell it's this attitude that can turn school into hell. The belief that anyone having problem is just lazy or stupid, or their family is lazy and stupid. The idea that maybe the problem might be in the way kids are taught, is never brought up.

@45 I'm 32 and I have no idea what the questions is asking. I would imagine an eight would be even more confused than I am.

I had no problem with the content or wording of most of the problems, aside from the "Why might you...?" one. That one was passive and created too much of a subjective framework.

Who cares about math? People are going to program video games regardless if trigonometry or square roots are tested or taught. It's unacceptable that the majority in this country graduate from school thinking some people deserve more money than others, some genders are better than others, some races are superior than others, and killing animals to eat their bodies is acceptable if there's an alternative. Teach basic morality, you can even call it "philosophy".

@49 Ya know raku I was almost with you till you got to the 'eating meat is evil' thing. What do you think animals do in the wild? Shop at Whole Food? And then I realized that you think teaching math is less important than pushing your agenda and yeah, I'm gone.

50- "When there's an alternative". Leave some bread and peanut butter out for raccoons or watch them during berry season. They're not eating meat that night, because there's an alternative. They even put morality into their decisions -- they don't eat baby raccoons or usually other mammals unless they have to. We should at least learn equal morality to raccoons. Instead the only morality we teach the masses are from TV commercials and religious figureheads.

@40 You write as if you have some special knowledge about the way people learn, the way kids learn. But when you write:

if an adult can't figure out this simple fraction problem, they're as dumb as any young earth creationist, like you cite, and they ought to be just as ashamed of themselves.

...you expose yourself as just another ignorant moralist. As if not being able to figure out a fraction is something to be ashamed of. It's precisely this attitude which discourages people from math. It's like saying that dyslexic people should be ashamed of themselves. It's as ignorant as it is arrogant.

@49 Yeah, man. Like, down with fascist patriarchal math, man!

Nobody uses math anymore. Especially in developing and programing the complex physics required for interactive computer animation. Like, man, that's all done with runes and magical vegan incantations, man. Like you need to calculate the volume of a cone, man? All you need to do, is like, fly into the matrix, man.

Honestly. It's impossible to tell anymore if you're satire or just a total moron. I'm going with moron.

53: Exactly why we need to teach children how to be human beings. Teaching building blocks for how to animate shooting a terrorist's head off in a video game should not be a priority for 3rd graders. Teaching them how to use advanced math or other trade skills ethically should be. Philosophy, social sciences, cultural studies, foreign languages... teaching those actual human skills might prevent the abundance of unethical tradespeople, such as tech workers. It's ridiculous that we force millions to learn trigonometry in middle school to benefit the few who could easily learn it optionally for a trade, at the expense of everyone else.

@German sausage
The fraction problem isnt too hard, but the language used to convey the problem is inappropriate for a child. In the same way that if I had to sticks I wanted to ask a child about, I would ask "what directions are the sticks pointing? the same or different? where could you get to if you went along one, and then the other?" NOT " what is the span of the vectors U and V in R^3? (Diagram below) Show your work in box A, answer in box B"

I bet most kids could answer the first question, lots of linear algebra students have trouble with the second.

@54
Its unethical to say that tradespeople are unethical. That is a big lump of society you're claiming intimate knowledge of right there.

@51
Yeah its totally impossible that they eat the peanut butter instead of hunting because the peanut butter doesn't fight back. Racoons are scavengers. Not philosophers.

#56: I didn't say all tradespeople are unethical, I said many are, specifically the tech workers getting rich off of misogyny and racism and widening class divides all around Seattle.

@58
What? Tech workers are unethical because widening class divides? What? How is that related to some persons personal ethics? If youre saying stuff like that makes you an unethical person, we're all unethical for living in the USA, which does crazy shit to other people to make all of our lives more comfortable and our companies richer. That's not really a good bar to set for an individual. Which people are.
I was once asked by an Iraqi why I invaded his country(in seattle). I didn't make that call, I was against that call, but I'm not in charge and it happened. Am I unethical because the US invaded Iraq?

@60
Disagree. The wording is too technical for a 8 year old. The concepts covered can be much more easily explained with simpler language. Its like starting a T/F question with "Is it not true that..." Many people who know whether or not the answer is true will get the wrong answer (T/F)due to a misinterpretation of the exact question. This is gratifying for the people who can parse the language correctly, because they are succeeding at a harder task. But it really isn't testing whether or not the students know the answer.

If you're interested in this, a great essay on the topic is "On Language" by George Orwell. He has a lot of interesting notes on the use of different kinds of language in different areas of society, and the good and the bad of that.

@60 Literacy is important, but a student who can understand math should not fail a math test just because her reading skills aren't at the same level as her math skills. Or should spelling tests also include arithmetic questions, because math is as important as literacy?

When students are learning fundamental concepts, such as fractions, why confound matters? Back @23, Delirian proposed a question in plain English that would test exactly the same concepts.

Useless models are good practice for a budding young economist.