There’s an entire TikTok category of videos, Why is Common Core Math Bad. If you go to Instagram, there’s a math teacher who’ll tell you,
If you’ve ever tried to read the Common Core’s Standards for Mathematical Practices, they’re almost impossible for math teachers to understand … and that means that students, parents, and administrators don’t stand a chance.
A writer at the Teen Mag writes to her peers,
The rigid approach of Common Core didn’t allow for the kind of flexibility that many students need, and the lack of support made it worse. We weren’t just facing academic challenges; we were facing a system that, despite its good intentions, failed to adapt to our needs … We’ve all felt the weight of a system that was meant to simplify education but often made it more complicated.
Everyone’s trying to get the word out: the Common Core mathematics standards just don’t work. And all the work to improve mathematics teacher preparation won’t get far so long as the lead weights of the Common Core standards weigh down math teachers. The Common Core sets the school district expectations, and it sets the state assessments. When the standard is bad, all teachers can do is the best they can with a framework designed for failure.
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And failure is what the framework produces. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), American test scores have shown sustained declines from 2019 to 2024. The lowest-performing 25 percent of students have shown marked declines since about 2015. American students also have seen their average scores plummet on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) mathematics test. Average American scores dropped from 478 in 2018 to 465 in 2022, below the average for developed countries. American per capita spending on education, meanwhile, remains substantially above the developed country average.
The Common Core is great for spending on mathematics, but terrible for mathematics results. Convert the mathematics problem of the rate of spending inputs to education outputs into an economics problem on Return On Investment, and you get a simple answer. Our states and school districts shouldn’t waste taxpayer money on a product that hinders our children from learning mathematics.
@chaldomom #commoncoremath #commoncore #math #teacheroftiktok ♬ Pink Panther – Mr. Blue
We don’t have to be satisfied with the Common Core mathematics standards any longer. The Archimedes Standards: Model PreK-12 State Mathematics Standards, jointly published by Freedom in Education and the National Association of Scholars, now offers states and school districts a better choice. The Archimedes Standards integrates content-rich standards with sustained attention to lucidity, practicality, flexibility, and democratic accessibility. They help ensure that all American students have the opportunity to learn mathematics for their own advancement and for the public good.
Mathematics teachers will look at The Archimedes Standards and post Instagram videos about how easy they are to understand. Tik-Tok will have a category of videos on Why the Archimedes Standards are good. The Teen Mag will run a cover story on The Archimedes Standards.
Maybe that last is a bit hopeful. But The Archimedes Standards weren’t just created for bureaucrats. They were created for all Americans—for math teachers, for parents, for students—and we created them to infect Americans with our love of mathematics. Because mathematics isn’t just a useful skill to prepare yourself for a job, or a national interest to help us build a better artificial intelligence to beat China in the Martian War of 2040. Mathematics is a hallway conversation about who should be the Most Valuable Player this year. Mathematics is figuring out how much water we’ll need if we buy a new swimming pool. Mathematics is counting cows and horses with your kids on a drive in the country, and mathematics is the smile on your face when you solve an equation and you realize, I figured that out, and it’s true.
We figure Americans will create TikTok videos about how much they like The Archimedes Standards because The Archimedes Standards is really good at getting Americans to learn math and to love math. And love is so infectious that people like to share it, any way they can.
Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote a sonnet, “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.” If Edna were writing today, she’d have that sonnet up on TikTok, and she’d have produced a GarageBand and iMovie arrangement of four versions of herself—each with hair dyed a different color—singing about Euclid and beauty and math in harmony, with beats stolen from Hamilton. And when she sang about how “heroes seek release / From dusty bondage into luminous air,” she’d have an image of The Archimedes Standards flashing neon-bright on the screen.
The Archimedes Standards aren’t just intended to get Johnny and Jane to add and subtract. They’re intended to be so good at teaching math that Johnny and Jane will tell the world about how good they are.
I think they’ll succeed.
Image: “2+2 ≠ 5” by Adam Fagen on Flickr
