Math Common Core Questions

Parents across the country are up in arms about math common core questions. These questions are thought to be overly complicated and involved. Parents and advocates have posted photos showing math questions made up of a labyrinth of numbers being “paired” and “broken apart” in a way that most adults never saw when they were in school themselves.

The outrage over the Common Core has led to headlines like A ridiculous Common Core test for first graders http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/31/a-ridiculous-common-core-test-for-first-graders/, and with parents threatening to pull their kids out of public school unless and until the math common core questions that people are seeing are improved or eliminated altogether.

Of course, most parents, while perhaps confused or overwhelmed by math common core questions, aren’t going to pull their kid out of school over them. But they are concerned that their child might not do well enough on the test to pass. This is a real concern for parents, since kids who fail the Common Core could be held back a year as their peers advance to the next grade. This has caused parents across the country to write to us, wondering what they can do to prepare their child for the math common core questions they’ll see on the test.

The answer should be familiar: make sure your child is ready. Whether you like the Common Core or hate it, it’s not going away anytime soon. Sure, some states have opted out of the uniform standards, but most states are using some variation of the Common Core in their schools. And even states that are continuing to use their own tests (Texas and Virginia) are continuing to challenge kids with difficult state-specific tests. So whether your child will see math common core questions or regular-old-math questions, they need to be prepared on exam day.