A recent American Institutes for Research (AIR) assessment noted that Common Core standards are not matching National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) standards at the fourth grade level:
“There are substantial differences in some content areas, particularly areas where NAEP assesses content that the CCSS has shifted to later grade levels…Only 62% of NAEP grade 4 algebra items were associated with a standard in the CCSS at or below grade 4; only 57% of grade 3 and 4 CCSS standards within the operations and algebraic thinking domain had at least one NAEP item associated with them.”
Translation: Common Core has changed algebra teaching and learning in grades 3 and 4 only to push it back to grade 5, with only 57% of Common Core standards matching NAEP standards.
Also, continuing this trend, NAEP found that Common Core introduces probability and proportional reasoning, among important math concepts, to higher grades instead of teaching them at earlier grade levels.
Looking at eighth grade math, NAEP found that only 42% of content taught in grades 6-8 under Common Core matched NAEP standards. The NAEP was surprised and said, “Considering the CCSS [i.e. Common Core] intent to focus more deeply on fewer topics, the percentage of standards with no clear link to a NAEP item was unexpected.” Meaning, Common Core claimed to dive deeply into fewer topics in order to teach them well, but it did not achieve that goal.
