Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards, Part 5

Yesterday, The Hechinger Report released an article related to the South Dakota proposed math standards. The author, Steven Yoder, contacted me in early November to discuss his idea for an article focused on the Archimedes Standards. I spoke with Mr. Yoder on two occasions and emailed with him a few times as he was writing the article. I didn't see the final article until it came out, and there are some statements in the article that puzzle me.

From the article, Dr. Joseph Graves, SD Secretary of Education said that "teachers and parents don’t understand the current standards because they’re so complicated. 'Our whole goal was to simplify, simplify, simplify.'" The Department of Education keeps saying that parents and teachers don't understand the standards. Where are they getting that information? Did they do a survey? Is it anecdotal evidence?

The Archimedes Standards were produced by the National Association of Scholars. This conservative group is urging states to eliminate Common Core math. They got the help of Jonathan Gregg, an Assistant Professor in Education from Hillsdale College, to write the Archimedes Standards. Yes, this is the same college that helped craft the current SD Social Studies Standards. Dr. Graves liked the simplicity of the Archimedes Standards so "last summer his department, using the Archimedes document and a few other state standards as examples, produced the dramatically slimmed-down rewrite." The proposed high school standards draw heavily from the Arkansas Math Standards.

Some SD teachers do like the simplicity of the proposed standards. Susan Fairchild, a Watertown High School math teacher and member of the committee, said, "As a new teacher, you don’t have to try and figure out what all of these fancy words mean.” I am not sure what she means by "fancy words?" Does she mean mathematics vocabulary? All teachers who complete an accredited teacher preparation program take math content courses and a math methods course. Vocabulary is very important in teaching and learning mathematics. In fact, a recent study indicates that students perform better in math when teachers use math vocabulary.

Monte Meyerink, an Assistant Professor of Education at Northern State University, was also on the committee and provided research to the advisory group. Most of the research articles focused on intervention techniques that help students with disabilities. In The Hechinger Report article, it says about Meyerink, "He said he doesn’t know of research supporting the connection between standards’ lucidity and student proficiency. But simplifying standards is a new trend, one whose effects on student outcomes won’t be understood for another 15 or 20 years."

Are we really experimenting with standards that we won't know if they will work for 15 to 20 years? The students in SD deserve better than that. Our teachers deserve better than that. I am pleading with the Board of Education to NOT approve the proposed standards on May 4th. I request that the Department of Education start the revision process over and include more stakeholders in the process.  

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards, Part 4

A November 22, 2025 article in The Dakota Scout talks about the U.S. Mint no longer producing pennies, which led the SD Education Secretary, Dr. Joe Graves, to talk about how money is used in early grades to teach math. In fact, counting pennies and knowing that they are worth 1 cent is a Kindergarten standard in the Current Standards. In the Proposed Standards, there are two standards listed in Kindergarten related to coins and counting.

• K.M.6 Identify pennies and dimes by name and value. 
• K.M.7 Count groups of pennies and groups of dimes by their values. (coins not combined) 

Later in the article, Dr. Graves was critical of our current standards, which are largely based on Common Core Standards, when he said: "...We believe that changing the math standards so that we can get away from a very complicated common core based system to one that is, that treats math like math, will improve that as well. So that's the direction that we're trying to go in and make."

However, a little over a year ago, at a Joint Appropriations Committee meeting of the SD State Legislature, Dr. Graves seemed more positive about Common Core. He talks about how math involves two skill sets: calculation and number sense. He goes on to say that he believes that some people can do calculations but not have number sense; and that people can have number sense but not do calculations. While I disagree with the second part of his statement, he does emphasize that number sense is important and that doing well in math involves both skill sets.

During that meeting, one of the legislators, Taffy Howard, asks, "Have we at least recognized that Common Core does not work?" Graves responds:

    "...Common Core fed deeply into the sense that we need to have number sense and an overall global understanding of what we're doing versus the ability to actually do calculation or decoding and those kinds of things. So, actually to me at least, Common Core is a great example of one side of the equation."

It seems that Dr. Graves thinks that Common Core has helped with improving number sense. I agree with that. Number sense is so important. In fact, a recent opinion piece in the New York Times talks about how the current U.S. administration tends to exaggerate numbers, and they do this because they must believe that Americans won't know enough to critique them. This is why we need people with number sense so that they can look at data and understand enough math to know when something doesn't make sense.

What has happened in the last year to make our Department of Education think that we need to change our math standards? When Shannon Malone gave the rebuttal to the opponents' testimony at the Board of Education hearing on February 23, she said, "This department is committed to replacing Common Core with Common Sense."

If we go back to that Dakota Scout article, it quotes Governor Rhoden echoing Dr. Graves criticism of Common Core when he says, "When I think about where we came from and where we are headed, I've surmised it by saying we're going to trade common core for common sense."

This makes me wonder if Governor Rhoden is the one who wants to get rid of our current math standards. This doesn't make me feel great, especially since this is an election year, and he is in a primary race with three other candidates. Today, the first polls came out and Rhoden is polling in third place.