To: Rep. McKell, M.,
Subject: Utah needs to adopt CA's math standards
Date: 2014-10-12T01:12:47Z
Body:
Dear Representative,
The tragic story below was posted to Facebook this week (a minority family) and illustrates the insane phenomenon of educators getting caught up in strategies and putting them above the needs of students. I hope you can see how damaging this is to children and their families. It doesn’t have to be this way.
I invite you to look at the incredible success that California’s math standards were producing before they lowered their standards to adopt Common Core all in an effort to get some Race to the Top money.
Imagine having minorities and lower socioeconomic students grow to be rated proficient in algebra by 8th grade at 6 times their normal rate. By adopting Common Core in the “integrated path,” Utah pushed completion of algebra 1 to 9th grade for most Utah students, the opposite direction of where top standards would take us.
Please read this article and consider adopting California’s excellent pre-Common Core math standards in Utah. They were specifically written to benchmark 6 months behind the high achieving nations of Singapore and Japan. Common Core is 2 years behind these nations by 8th grade according to Dr. Milgram at Stanford, and fall further behind in higher grades. Please use your influence to get Utah to adopt California’s math standards. It would change everything and put a portion of this Common Core fight behind us.
http://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/solution-utah-should-adopt-californias-math-standards/
Sincerely,
Oak Norton
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