I have been away from school for quite a while and not at all familiar with the common core regents so when I was asked to help a friend’s son prepare I hesitated but agreed to tutor with the understanding that my skills were rusty and I might not be able to do all the questions.
Noah arrived for tutoring with a series of questions, some of which made no sense. We managed to find the regents the examples came from. Some were copied wrong and some were just indecipherable. I know I am pretty good at math and should have no problem with a high school topic but some were just impossible.
The worst part of these regents exam was the imbalance of questions. Most regents would have 5 questions on one topic and one to none on others and there seemed to be no consistently from year to year. Even a hard working student would have trouble preparing for this exam.
I teach in the local community college and every year I see students coming to class with weaker skills than the year before. Seeing this test helps explain. There is no emphasis on skills and almost no teaching of the things they need to know to succeed in college mathematics.
Common core is destroying future math students. It has destroyed Math education.
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