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. 

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards, Part 3

At the SD Board of Education meeting in Pierre on February 23, 2026, Shannon Malone was tasked with introducing the proposed math standards to the board, but she gave the floor to Dr. Monte Meyerink from Northern State University, who presented this slide show. Dr. Meyerink, who was a member of both the Math Advisory Group and the Standards Review Committee, presented the research that he said helped inform the writing of the standards. The slide below illustrates his role in the standards revision process. His last bullet point leads to a question from me: Where is this draft standards progression document?

It isn’t in the current version of the proposed standards. It wasn’t in the first version that the Board of Education discussed at the October 15, 2025 meeting, and it isn’t in the second version that was discussed at the November 10, 2025 meeting. I would love to see the standards progression document, as would all SD math teachers. I think many teachers are concerned about vertical alignment in the proposed standards, so this document might alleviate that concern.

If you look closely at the first version and the second and third versions of the proposed standards, you might also notice that the Introduction section in the first version is now missing from the second and third versions. That introduction explained the “collaborative process” that they used for the revision process. I do have some issues with some statements in that introduction. For example, the last sentence of the second paragraph says, “This group included K–12 educators and administrators from districts across the state, as well as representatives from higher education educator preparation programs.” I have seen the email list of the people in the math advisory group, and I think that there was only ONE representative (Dr. Meyerink) from higher education educator preparation programs.

The last sentence at the bottom of the first page also caught my attention. It says, “In lieu of identifying essential standards, the Department is creating a supplemental progression document that clearly outlines the development of mathematical skills across grade levels, organized by specific concepts.”  That sounds like the document that is mentioned in the last bullet on Dr. Meyerink’s slide. Where is that document? Again, I really feel like it would be helpful to all interested parties to see it, and it really should be included in the proposed standards.

It was nice to finally see the detailed list of research that Dr. Meyerink provided the group. I did read through the articles. The first three articles are all about research on math intervention techniques, primarily interventions used with students who have disabilities. This confused me because state mathematics standards are written for ALL students. I am not sure why that research would be used to write standards. The last article is about Direct Instruction (DI), and while it covers research done over 50 years (which Dr. Graves mentioned in the first hearing), those years are 1966 to 2016. Also, I am not convinced that DI is the best way for students to learn math. This quote from the article stood out to me, “…DI assumes all students can learn new material when (a) they have mastered prerequisite knowledge and skills and (b) the instruction is unambiguous.”  Since COVID-19, we see many students in classrooms that have gaps in their math knowledge, so they won’t have necessarily “mastered prerequisite knowledge and skills.” This poses a huge problem for teachers across our state as they need intervention techniques that they can implement while students are learning new material.

At the October 15th hearing, Shannon Malone mentioned that the Department of Education had just received a five-year $3.7 million SPDG grant. SPDG stands for State Personnel Development Grant. These grants are awarded from the Special Education Division of the U.S. Department of Education. On the U.S. Spending website, it says that the objectives of these grants are:

To assist State educational agencies in reforming and improving their systems for personnel preparation and professional development in early intervention, educational and transition services, to improve results for children with disabilities. As used in this program, "personnel" means special education teachers, regular education teachers, principals, administrators, related services personnel, paraprofessionals, and early intervention personnel serving infants, toddlers, preschoolers, or children with disabilities, except where a particular category of personnel, such as related services personnel, is identified.

So, the grant that they say will help implement the proposed standards is a special education grant. Dr. Meyerink’s research on intervention techniques now makes more sense. Now, my hard question is: How is this all related to the Standards Revision?

I want to remind everyone of the Goal of the Math Standards stated in the Board of Education Hearing, shown in the image below. We want ALL SD students to be mathematically proficient and able to problem-solve, think critically, communicate, and reason. I feel strongly that our current standards do that.

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards Part 2

Today I attended the SD Board of Education Standards Meeting to once again testify as an Opponent of the proposed math standards. In her rebuttal to the opposition testimony, Shannon Malone, Director of the Division of Learning and Instruction, mentioned that they have made several changes that we have suggested and that they have been listening to us. And, I agree with that. At the end, she paraphrased Governor Rhoden, from a November 22, 2025 article in The Dakota Scout when she said, "This department is committed to replacing Common Core with Common Sense."

I know what Common Core Math is, but I have no idea what is meant by Common Sense Math. Of course, I went to Google and here is what I found. There is a website called commonsensemath.com, where it seems that they are trying to sell study aids to help students learn math. I cannot really tell who runs this site, but, guess what, their help is aligned to Common Core Math. I also noticed that they did reference some NCTM articles on the site. Then I went to commonsensemath.org, which redirects to a site run by Edric Cane, who has written some books about teaching math. He has a PhD from the University of Michigan, although I don't know what content area his degree is in. He has taught math and has some interesting ideas. In addition, the Standards for Mathematical Practice came up when I googled common sense math standards. That was interesting to me since those are part of the Common Core Standards.

But, I have digressed a bit as I wonder why Governor Rhoden thinks that we need to get rid of our current standards, which are largely based on the Common Core? It is an election year and he is in a primary race for the Republican nomination in June. What if he loses the primary? We are then stuck with his "common sense math" standards if the Board approves them.

Maybe the data shows that we need new standards? Nope--the data actually shows otherwise. Table 1 shows the top twelve ranking states on the 2024 NAEP in 4th-grade math. The second column in the table explains how close each state's math standards are to Common Core. Notice that South Dakota's current math standards match Common Core more than 80%. More importantly, South Dakota's 4th graders are 9th in the nation on this assessment. 

Table 1: 2024 4th-Grade Math NAEP Top Twelve States

Then I looked at the 8th-grade math rankings, which is shown in Table 2 below. Again, South Dakota ranks 6th in the nation! Now let's look at states that are in both lists: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Utah, North Dakota, Minnesota, New Jersey, and South Dakota. Of these seven states, five of them (71%) have math standards that match the Common Core more than 80%. So, it seems that the Common Core Standards are working just fine!

Table 2: 2024 8th-Grade Math NAEP Top Ten States

Again, I am going to ask the hard question: If our current standards are enough for our students to be placing in the top ten on the 2024 NAEP Assessment, why do they need to be rewritten? Notice that I said rewritten rather than revised. A revision would look more similar to what we have now, and the proposed ones do NOT resemble our current standards. Here are the current SD K - 12 math standards if you want to compare.

Data for the tables came from the following sites.

https://edgate.com/standards/us-comparisons 

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/

Let's Talk about the South Dakota K - 12 Proposed Math Standards Part 1

First of all, I want to thank the members of the Math Standards Review Committee for all of the work they have done and continue to do to try to get the proposed K - 12 math standards where they need to be. They were given quite a task and having only 2 days to work together in Pierre really wasn't enough time to do what they wanted--at least some members of the committee feel that way. I know that they are continuing to work on the standards, based on public feedback. 

I also want to thank all the wonderful math educators and parents that have submitted feedback on the standards. A special shout out to the Watertown school district for 3.5 pages of feedback on the K - 4 standards! In total, there are about 25 pages of feedback, but the link above has some comments cut off so it could be longer. The proposed standards themselves only make up 37 pages so the fact that there are 25 pages of public comment is incredible, and I want to thank everyone who has contributed comments. 

However, the fact that there are 25 pages of comments on a 37-page document says something about the document itself. It seems to say that there is a lot of stuff missing! While I understand why some wanted to "simplify" the standards, it seems like now they might be too simple. 

Math is a complicated subject and it is difficult to teach well. I doubt that people will disagree with that statement. Our current standards often give examples of how to teach some of the standards, which is helpful to teachers, especially new teachers. For reference, the current standards are about 81 pages. So, we have lost 44 pages, and I feel like that is a lot of information to lose.

If we look at states that do well on the 4th grade and 8th grade math portions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the length of their K - 12 mathematics standards documents, we see that they tend to be long, as illustrated in Table 1. I want to point out that when counting pages, I didn't count the introduction pages or appendices, just the pages with the standards and any explanations at the beginning of the grade level.

Table 1: States that score well on the NAEP and page length of their math standards

Again, math isn't easy to teach, and teachers need guidance to help students learn and achieve their full potential. Minnesota recently rewrote their standards and their new document is actually longer, not shorter. Another thing that I find troubling is that I feel like there should be more emphasis on Data Analysis in our standards because we live in a data-driven world.

Where Everyone is a Bright Spot

It has been four years since my last post on this blog. I had recently been chatting with my students in our Technology class and they encouraged me to get back to it. Apparently, I have a lot to say!

Once again, I just got back from the 2026 SD STEM Ed conference in Huron, SD. This conference was very different for me because I am currently serving as President of SDCTM, so I had a lot more responsibilities. While I was nervous, everything went well, and I stayed on script (mostly).

Some of the highlights for me were:

• Meeting RunningHorse Livingston and getting to interact with him and hear his story! Storytelling is so important for our students and I think we need to share our own stories more.
• Getting to see John Golden, one of my Twitter friends, and participate in one of his sessions, with my students and alumna.
• Hosting important conversations about the Proposed SD K - 12 Math Standards. A shout-out to the Department of Education for bravely showing up to listen to awesome math teachers.
• Watching alumni present and shine--we had three of them present. Colin Marsh had a session on Building Thinking Classrooms, where people could share their journey, asking for advice, and give tips. Leanne Holdorf did a session on how she uses Breakout Boxes in her classes--with a breakout for everyone to solve. Emily Siemonsma shared lessons that she is creating from her experience working at SURF, where students have to determine airflow at certain places underground based on the information given.
• Presenting awards to some awesome people and getting to witness awesome teachers get recognized for all they do every day!
• Hanging out with some of the best math, science, and STEM teachers in South Dakota!

I stayed an extra night so that I could watch project pitches by teachers in the STEM Leadership Cohort, funded by the E-CORE project. I am involved in the E-CORE project and I wanted to hear about projects these awesome teachers had decided to lead. And, let's just say, I was so inspired by them! They were vulnerable, creative, and so passionate about their projects. It is going to be on my list of things to do after the conference every year!

One of the teachers wanted to acknowledge others for their hard work, dedication, and inspiration, so she had one of our friends, Kevin Smith, create a thank you card. I don't think it is on the website yet, but he has some amazing items! 

I want to thank all educators and exhibitors who attended the 2026 SD STEM Ed conference. You are all bright spots, which we desperately need in education right now!

Crisis in Education: We Can No Longer Sit Back and Watch

In the August 2014 IMPACT State publication, I wrote a commentary called, “Where have all the teachers gone?” While I am not usually one to say “I told you so,” I feel like that commentary could be published again right now and it would still be very relevant.

Last week there were numerous articles about teachers leaving the profession in record numbers and fewer students enrolling in education programs. These include:

From CNN, “Teachers are leaving and few people want to join the field. Experts are sounding the alarm”

From the Wall Street Journal, “Teachers are quitting, and companies are hot to hire them”

From NPR, “More than half of teachers are looking for the exits, a poll says”

Hopefully, as citizens, we are getting the message. Teachers are burned out, they are tired, they are not appreciated, and they are not paid well. For a moment, put yourself in a teacher’s shoes or even better yet, substitute in a classroom. If you were a teacher now, would you stay in the profession?

Many of you will say that this burnout is because of the Covid-19 pandemic and while that has certainly played a role, the fact is that teachers are not respected. Well, except between March and June of 2020 when everyone was praising teachers for all of their hard work to educate our children remotely. A headline from the Washington Post says, 'Teachers deserve to make a billion dollars’ — Shonda Rhimes, plus other homeschooling parents on appreciating educators.

Yet, even then, some predicted that the appreciation and respect for teachers wouldn’t last. The Economic Policy Institute asked the question “will it give them a voice in education and their working conditions?” Looking at what teachers in South Dakota are enduring, I believe the answer to that question is NO.

In 2016, the South Dakota legislature passed a bill that would increase our state sales tax by a half-cent to increase teacher pay in the state. This led to SD ranking 48^th in teacher pay, but that was short-lived as we are now back to being 50^th out of 51 in teacher pay.

What can we do? Here are some ideas, many of which are the same ones that I listed in 2014.

1. Respect teachers as professionals.
2. Increase teacher pay, not just the amount of money being allocated to the district.
3. Support teachers—send a thank you email, ask them how they are doing, substitute in the classroom.
4. Provide good mentoring to teachers in their first one to three years. Maybe each new teacher should have two mentors, one in their district that may or may not be in their content area and one outside the district in their content area.
5. Give new teachers an extra preparation period during the school day during their first and second year.

This is the third school year that teachers have had to deal with the pandemic, on top of their regular workload. Except for healthcare workers, many professionals have been allowed to work remotely for their health and safety. We have put teachers in the direct line of fire by not mandating masks in classrooms and giving up on contact tracing.

I just returned from the South Dakota STEM Education Conference, which is co-hosted by the South Dakota Council of Mathematics and the South Dakota Science Teachers Association. The conference was last held in February 2020. Every time I attend this conference I am always inspired by the many excellent math and science teachers in South Dakota. During Saturday's lunch, teachers who plan to retire this year were asked to stand up—everyone looked around the room with worried faces and miraculously no one stood.

There is a crisis in our state and our nation in education. Contact your representatives, substitute in a classroom, run for school board, etc. None of us can afford to sit back and watch because education is the future of our country and that future requires good teachers.

A New Normal

 

Before the fall semester began, I was very apprehensive about how it would go. I was worried about contracting COVID-19 and how that would affect my family. I was dreading wearing a mask, having to use a microphone to teach, and having a video camera in the room. I figured that we would be online within 3 weeks of starting the semester so why bother starting in person.

Today is the end of 5.5 weeks, and my classes are still meeting in person. Despite all of my fears, the semester is going well. I love being back in the classroom—there is nothing better than engaging with students in person. My students are learning a lot and are working hard, both at school and at staying safe by wearing a mask.

No, this semester is not the same as last fall because students aren’t studying in the building, hanging out in the Math Education Library, and faculty’s office doors are shut. But it is wonderful to be back on campus, to see my students in person, and to be in the classroom teaching. I have gotten used to the classroom technology and it seems to be working well for my students.

As the number of COVID cases rises dramatically in my state, I still feel safe going to work. More importantly, I look forward to going to work to see my students and to help them learn more mathematics. Fall 2020 is definitely a unique semester, but it has been a great one so far.