Common Core Algebra 2 Pdf

[Claudio Davey]

Underthe Common Core State Standards, Algebra 1 is a much tougher course than what was taught previously in most states, teachers and standards experts say, in part because many of the concepts that historically were covered in that high school class have been bumped down into middle school math.

There are also algebra concepts taught in the 8th grade common-core standards that were not taught at all in most previous state standards, according to Hung-Hsi Wu, a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. Those include the concepts of congruence and similarity as related to algebra, and the fact that the slope is the same between any two points on a nonvertical line.

Both California and Minnesota approved policies mandating 8th grade Algebra 1 for all about seven years ago, though California later backed off and made the practice optional for districts. Some individual districts require students to take Algebra 1 before the end of 8th grade as well.

Between 1990 and 2011, the share of 8th graders enrolled in Algebra 1 or a higher math course nearly tripled, from 16 percent to 47 percent, according to a study by Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

And while the common-standards document strongly advises against skipping material, acceleration is still possible, and districts can do it several ways. The appendix of the common-core math standards suggests a three-years-in-two option, in which students take the content of 7th grade math, 8th grade math, and Algebra 1 in the last two years of middle school. The San Mateo-Foster City district plans to use that option.

In San Francisco, students will be able to accelerate later in high school, taking a compressed version of Algebra 2 in 10th grade that also includes precalculus topics. Then they can take calculus senior year.

Coverage of efforts to implement college- and career-ready standards for all students is supported in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at www.gatesfoundation.org. Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.

A version of this article appeared in the June 03, 2015 edition of Education Week as With Common Core, Algebra Course Undergoes a Face-Lift

Every Saturday morning at 10 a.m., Jason Zimba begins a math tutoring session for his two young daughters with the same ritual. Claire, 4, draws on a worksheet while Abigail, 7, pulls addition problems written on strips of paper out of an old Kleenex box decorated like a piggy bank.

And four years after signing off on the final draft of the standards, he spends his weekends trying to make up for what he considers the lackluster curriculum at his daughter's school, and his weekdays battling the lackluster curriculum and teaching at schools around the country that are struggling to shift to the Common Core.

Zimba and the other writers of the Common Core knew the transition would be tough, but they never imagined conflicts over bad homework would fuel political battles and threaten the very existence of their dream to remodel American education.

The Common Core would drive publishers and test-makers to create better curricula and better tests and push school districts and teachers to aim for excellence, not just basic proficiency, for their students. And the guidelines would arm every principal, teacher and parent with the knowledge of exactly what it takes to get into college and succeed.

As much as supporters emphasize the democratic origin of the standards and count out the dozens of experts and teachers who were consulted, the Common Core math standards were ultimately crafted by three guys whose only goal was to improve the way mathematics is taught. That, some experts argue, is what makes the Common Core better than the standards they've replaced.

"It was a design project, not a political project," says Phil Daro, a former high school algebra teacher who was on the three-man writing team with Zimba and William McCallum, head of the math department at the University of Arizona. "It was not our job to do the politics while we were writing."

On the surface, Zimba, 45, seemed an odd choice for a major national project like Common Core. McCallum and Daro were well-known and admired in the world of math and education. McCallum is a prominent mathematician who has authored algebra and calculus textbooks and helped write Arizona's K-12 math standards. In 2009, Daro was a senior fellow at a for-profit curriculum and teacher-training company, America's Choice. In the 1990s, he was involved in developing California's math standards.

In contrast, Zimba was an obscure physics professor at Bennington, an elite liberal arts college in Vermont. He wrote a quirky math and parenting blog with posts about complex physics problems, his kids, and the occasional political issue, including a 2011 post titled, "Numbers Don't Lie (but Michele Bachmann Does)."

He grew up as an outsider. Raised in a working-class household in suburban Detroit, he was the first in his family to go to college. He chose Williams College in Massachusetts. Academically, the school was a good fit. Financially, it was more of a challenge. His friend Eric Mabery said the two got to know each other because they were the only poor people on campus. "He was the only person who had several jobs," said Mabery, now a biologist at a San Francisco startup. "He was the only other person who couldn't fly home. We had to take the bus."

But from Williams, Zimba's career took off. He was chosen for a Rhodes scholarship to England's Oxford University in 1991. At Oxford, he befriended a Yale student from Manhattan, David Coleman. Coleman went on to become a consultant for McKinsey, the global consulting firm. Zimba returned to Detroit to do stints of factory work to help support his family, but eventually he headed to the prestigious math department at the University of California, Berkeley for a Ph.D. in mathematical physics. In 1999 he reconnected with Coleman, who had an idea for starting an education business.

At first, they considered going into educational video games, but they scrapped the idea in favor of an even bigger educational trend: standardized testing. The No Child Left Behind Act was still around the corner, but a growing education reform movement, which insisted that holding schools more accountable for student test scores would increase performance, had already pushed many states to expand standardized testing.

Coleman and Zimba's business, the Grow Network, found a niche in the burgeoning field of testing by producing reports that helped schools, teachers, parents and even students themselves interpret results from the new exams. "To design a successful assessment report, you need to be thoughtful about what the teacher really needs, what the student really needs," Coleman says.

Thanks to Zimba, Coleman added, they were. Zimba had a genius for creating reports that were mathematically precise but also humanely phrased, Coleman says. Grow Network was hired by states like California and districts like New York City and was eventually bought out by the educational publishing giant McGraw-Hill for an undisclosed price.

Zimba and Coleman went their separate ways. Coleman stayed on a bit longer with the company under McGraw-Hill. After a brief stint at a liberal arts college in Iowa, Zimba landed at Bennington, where Coleman's mother was president. Zimba and Coleman stayed in touch, often discussing a problem that had bothered them during their years studying standardized tests.

"We looked at a lot of standards," Zimba says. "Previous standards ranged from terrible to not good enough. The best of them were little more than test blueprints. They were not a blueprint for learning math."

Every state had its own standards, which varied widely in their expectations for students. For instance, some states required students to memorize the times tables, but about a third of states didn't, according to Zimba.

In 2007, Coleman and Zimba wrote a paper for the Carnegie Corp., a foundation with interests in education (and one of the many funders of both The Hechinger Report and NPR). "We were just trying to think about what could really matter in education," Coleman says. "What could actually help? One idea we thought is that standards could be really focused and better. At Grow we'd spent so much time with the endless vast and vague standards."

The paper got the attention of several groups that had latched on to a similar idea, including the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, one of the original leaders of the Reagan-era standards movement. A couple of years later, when the two organizations joined forces to draft a set of "fewer, clearer, higher" standards, Coleman and Zimba were picked to help lead the effort.

The CCSSO contracted with a new organization Zimba and Coleman founded, Student Achievement Partners. It declined to disclose the amount of the contract or the total spent on the development of the Common Core but said funding was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (another supporter of NPR), Carnegie and other foundations, as well as state membership dues from CCSSO and the NGA.

In September 2009, Zimba started writing the Common Core math standards. Although his second daughter was due the same month, the standards were all-consuming. Zimba recalled getting a text in the delivery room from one of his co-writers telling him to stop responding to emails about the project: "It's time to be a dad now."

That fall, though, finishing the Common Core math standards came first. He was still on the faculty at Bennington, although on leave for part of the time, so the standards were mostly written at night, in "the barn," an old garage on his property that he had transformed into a study.

They started with a blueprint that laid out what students should know by the end of high school. It was written by Achieve, a nonprofit founded for the purpose, and by the testing groups College Board and ACT. Then they began consulting the research on math education and enlisting the ideas of experts in various fields of mathematics. During the course of the next year, they consulted with state officials, mathematicians and teachers, including a union group. Draft after draft was passed back and forth over email.

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