Kate Swenson
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It seems that the main “benefit” from switching to federal standards is to address insecure policy-makers’ “comparison anxiety” when they head into the interstate “locker room” to compare the rigor of their states’ standards. It’s hard to envision how students will benefit.

The whole notion of state and federal standards is quite frightening–Orwellian really. The concept stems from the incorrect assumption that all students need to learn the same things and that their needs in later life are standardized. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It would be hilarious to ask the major backers of the push for federal standards to sit for an aligned test themselves–I’d bet a steak dinner that all would fail miserably and that many broken #2 pencils would litter the floor.

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I have looked at the common core standards and I suggest we approach the analysis from “What would the United States look like if these standards actually were implemented?”

Few college graduate baby boomers today can demonstrate competence in the range of pages 43 to 62 of the proposed high school mathematics standards found at http://www.corestandards.org/ I cast that question to target COLLEGE GRADUATE boomers, not simply high school graduate boomers.

Imagine what this country will be like when almost all adults will have studied quadratic equations and we no longer have a country clogged with opinion leaders who dismiss their own need to be competent in math – compared to international standards.

For example, can today’s average 50-something “Use technology to exhibit the effects of parameter changes on the graphs of linear, power, quadratic, square root, cube root, and polynomial functions, and simple rational, exponential, logarithmic, sine, cosine, absolute value, and step functions”?

The standards put forth that every 12th grader in the U.S. (and thus all adults) would be competent in algebra and geometry. This significantly would change the current snapshot of the average U.S. adult resident.

In 2030, we would expect all retail workers, all construction workers, all preschool aides, all bus drivers, all auto mechanics, all administrative assistants, even all journalists, broadcast anchors and English professors, etc., to have obtained a functional competence in algebra, geometry and basic trigonometry before they finished high school. The new expectation of the average U.S. worker would be tremendous.

The “Mathematics | High School—Functions” section of the standards includes:

“Interpreting Functions;
Building Functions;
Linear, Quadratic, and Exponential Models;
Trigonometric Functions;
Limits and Continuity;
Differential Calculus;
Applications of Derivatives;
Integral Calculus;
Applications of Integration; and
Infinite Series.”

I have encountered way too many professional educators and opinion leaders who shift nervously when asked if they can express functionality in these types of math standards.

If we’re going to stay united as 50 states, rather than devolve into a new era of peacefully negotiated secession, this country has to get off its collective butt and crank up the brain. Could California expect even more than what’s put forth by these standards? Sure. But we don’t yet have consensus that we really, really, really expect every U.S. adult to meet the level of the proposed national standards. Gaining support for these minimum standards is a good place to start.

- Chris Stampolis
Trustee, West Valley/Mission Community College District
Member, Democratic National Committee
stampolis@aol.com

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