Nine Hillsboro, Ore., parents are teaching their 7th and 8th graders math at home over concerns that their children’s math scores have dropped significantly since the implementation of curricula aligned with the Common Core State Standards.
According to a report that first aired on Portand’s KATU newscast on Nov. 12, the parents believed their children were “distraught” because of their poor math grades at Evergreen Middle School in Hillsboro, which is about 20 miles west of Portland. Julie Craig said her daughter’s math grade dropped from an A to a D.
Every school day, some of these Hillsboro parents keep their children home from school in the morning for an hour of math instruction, often at the kitchen table. Then the children are sent to school. Other parents are opting for online math instruction for their children, according to the report.
Rian Petrick, Evergreen Middle School’s principal, supports the new math standards.
“Our teachers feel like [the Common Core curricula] is the best thing for our kids,” Petrick said in the television interview. “It’s making them really have to look much deeper into mathematics than they have in the past.”
A recent survey found that nearly 50 percent of parents admitted that they struggle to help their children with their homework. I’m not sure how many parents—no matter how concerned they are about the common core—will choose to replace their child’s classroom teacher and join these Oregon moms for kitchen-based math lessons in the future.