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

[MineralMan]

175. Perhaps it is. I'd have no way of knowing.

I do not know how they are teaching these concepts. As I said, I was in the first grade in 1951, and we learned arithmetic the old way. I was bored and played with numbers in my mind in different ways. As it turned out some of those ways ended up being part of new math. My elementary school teachers left me alone with my odd musings about numbers, since I got perfect scores on every test.

Today, they're trying to teach some of the things I figured out for myself. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. But then, the old methods had the same problem. Starting in fourth grade, my teachers had me helping my classmates who were struggling. I could usually find a way to help them make sense of it, using different strategies than were used in class.

There is no single method for teaching math that works for everyone. We need smaller class sizes or kids like me in every class.