Liberal blogger attacking common core

Well known liberal (the teachers’ union loves her) and blogger Diane Ravitch, who is a noted education historian and professor at Columbia Teachers College, posted this guest blog from math teacher Stephanie Sawyer early this year that asserts:

“I don’t think the common core math standards are good for most kids, not just the Title I students. While they are certainly more focused than the previous NCTM-inspired state standards, which were a horrifying hodge-podge of material, they still basically put the intellectual cart before the horse. They pay lip service to actually practicing standard algorithms. Seriously, students don’t have to be fluent in addition and subtraction with the standard algorithms until 4th grade?”

Wow! That seems awfully late to me.

And, this is no mistake on the part of Ms. Sawyer.

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics clearly says on Page 29 that the fourth grade is when students are expected to:

“4. Fluently add and subtract multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm.”