Professor emerita of mathematics Marina Ratner at the University of California at Berkeley offers a scathing criticism of Common Core. She refutes the notion that Common Core standards are internationally bench-marked and says the new math curriculum will, to the effect, dumb down students.

To send Common Core to the dust bin of history and education “reform,” it will require the combined effort of politicians, educators, and parents.

From Dr. Susan Berry, who has written many pieces on Common Core, of Breitbart:

BERKELEY MATH PROFESSOR RATNER: COMMON CORE ‘WILL MOVE U.S. CLOSER TO BOTTOM IN INTERNATIONAL RANKING’

In an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal, Marina Ratner, renowned professor emerita of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, explains why the Common Core standards will make math education even worse in the United States and move the nation “even closer to the bottom in international ranking.”

Ratner writes that she initially experienced the Common Core standards last fall through her then-sixth grade grandson in Berkeley.

“As a mathematician I was intrigued, thinking that there must be something really special about the Common Core,” she recalls. “Otherwise, why not adopt the curriculum and the excellent textbooks of highly achieving countries in math instead of putting millions of dollars into creating something new?”

As she began to read about the controversial standards, however, Ratner says she hardly found any academic mathematicians who could assert that the Common Core standards were better than California’s pre-2010 standards – considered to be among the finest in the nation.

Ratner read that Bill McCallum, a leading writer for the Common Core math standards, indicated the new standards “would not be too high” compared to those of other countries in which math education has demonstrated excellence.


 
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