Are teachers using “The Right Stuff” to teach our children?

We hear a lot today about how student-centered instructional approaches are get primary emphasis in our classrooms today as a result of Common Core State Standards. Things like problem solving group work and higher order thinking skills development are all the rage.

But, do all those current education ideas really work well? For all kids?

Education watchers searching for answers to that question just surfaced an interesting, two-year old research paper published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2014 titled, “Which Instructional Practices Most Help First-Grade Students With and Without Mathematics Difficulties?”

This AERA paper looks at the effectiveness of various math instructional approaches with first-grade students, especially including those students with “Mathematics Difficulties” (MD).

The research team concluded:

“Only teacher-directed instruction was significantly associated with the achievement of students with MD.”

The paper also says:

“A higher percentage of MD students in the first-grade classrooms were associated with greater use by teachers of manipulatives/calculators and movement/music to teach mathematics.”

So, thanks to the one-size-must-fit-all approach that Common Core has triggered, kids who have problems learning math tend to be subjected to ineffective instructional approaches more often in their classrooms even though things like using manipulatives and calculators with these troubled early math learners is not effective. For these MD students, Common Core has resulted in the wrong stuff coming into their classrooms.

What about students who don’t have math difficulties?

The report says that some of the Common Core approaches work, but they don’t work any better than the tried and true teacher-directed instruction that students with difficulties badly need. In some cases, the report cites research showing:

“Some of the measures of specific practices—group-work, mixed-ability group-work, and problem-solving group-work—had negative effects on learning. Only seatwork had a large, positive effect on elementary schoolchildren’s mathematics achievement.”

So, even for non-MD students, some of the things that Common Core brought into our classrooms just don’t work.

This is really no surprise in Kentucky. We tried all of this stuff after the Kentucky Reform Act of 1990 was passed. Most of these fad ideas faded out by the end of the last century. But, educators have short memories, so Common Core created an opportunity for the same stuff to ooze back into our classrooms again.

In closing, the AERA report team’s final comment is worth careful consideration:

“First-grade teachers in the United States may need to increase their use of teacher-directed instruction if they are to raise the mathematics achievement of students with MD.”

As long as we keep chasing Common Core fad ideas instead of following this informed advice, our kids will pay the price.