How would you answer this test question? From a 1st grade Common Core test.

[Ms. Toad]

124. The video does not explain where the question came from.

And the copyright on the left page is too pixelated to tell.

My guess is that at least half of the elementary school complaints arise from bad implementation rather than bad standards - far too many elementary school teachers become elementary school teachers - in part - because they don't handle math well. (I've tutored several.)

I was a victim of "new math" in the 60s. My parents were concerned I would fall behind the kids in the town school - so they bought textbooks for me to use (by a teacher with a high school education), and I got to study it during recess.

As someone with a Master's degee in math, new math itself wasn't bad - but it was taught, by and large, by people who did not understand how powerful set theory actually is. So they got bogged down and focused on the lower level details year after year for seemingly no purpose, and those of us who studied math further finally went, "Aha!" somewhere around college level. In other words, it was so watered down as to be meaningless before college - and became the focus of math education, rather than a very useful tool, because those teaching it - for the most part - had no clue.

Some of what I have seen in the Common Core that people are scratching their heads about are actually very useful tools. But implemented by someone who has no idea how powerful those tools are, they will become a meaningless goal and detract from learning other necessary skills.