Math standards don’t make grade
In spring 2016, Oklahoma adopted new math and English language arts (ELA) standards after making the decision drop the Common Core. In doing so, it was well within its rights. But Oklahoma also has a responsibility to make sure its standards are strong, clear and rigorous. For ELA, the state has accomplished this.
But for math, it fell short.
Academic standards are the foundation upon which much of public education rests. They dictate the knowledge and skills that students are expected to master, grade by grade, and communicate those expectations to educators, parents, curriculum writers and other stakeholders. That’s why we at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute have been reviewing state standards for more than 20 years: These benchmarks will shape much of what students do and learn in the school year now underway.
In a new report that we published last month, our teams of reviewers examined Oklahoma’s ELA and math standards. The former fared reasonably well, earning a score of seven out of 10. But the math benchmarks received a five out of 10 and an overall rating of “weak.” That means their shortcomings are severe enough that the state should revise or replace them at once.
For example, there is no expectation in the new standards that Oklahoma students be able to instantly recall basic math facts such as 2+2=4. And there are several gaps at the high school level related to vital math areas such as trigonometry (where benchmarks are underdeveloped) and probability (where many standards are missing entirely). As a result, students will graduate less prepared for college and the workplace than the vast majority of their peers from other states.
At every grade level, multiple standards fail to establish clear and specific expectations for students. And in some cases, they include entries that are too vague to be of any real use to teachers, such as “draw conclusions and make predictions from information in a graph” and “apply probability concepts to realworld situations to make informed decisions.”
Fortunately, the standards’ many shortcomings are fixable, and policymakers should act now by further developing the trigonometry standards to more fully prepare students for future STEM courses; revising benchmarks related to probability and statistics to make them more complete, specific and coherent; and revisiting any and all standards that call for conceptual understanding and reasoning.
“We are capable of developing our own Oklahoma academic standards that will be better than Common Core,” Gov. Mary Fallin argued when the state enacted its current standards. That may be true, but the current benchmarks aren’t better. And they are in serious need of revision.