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 quotes 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 math methods courses. 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 many more stakeholders in the process.