Tutors tackling Common Core math
Terry Jacobs and his son, Tyler, go through math homework.
An example of a Common Core math problem
Huntington Learning Center directors Samantha Long, foreground, and Dayanna Volitich work on students’ schedules for the day.
Common Core standards for math education have been mandated in Pennsylvania since 2013. Since then, there’s been a spate of confounded parents posting their kids’ homework to social media as they complain of the assignments’ complexity – and their inability to help.
Tutoring agencies are starting to capitalize on the frustration. Two new tutoring companies have joined the local ranks of education institutions over the past few months. They’re looking to help students get a leg up on the methodical problem-solving of Common Core mathematics while relieving parents of their aggravation. The privately owned Take Home Tutor LLC and the newest branch of the Huntington Learning Center franchise on Oak Spring Road both started taking students in August.
“I’m finding kids are rising to the challenge of Common Core methods. It’s parents who are having trouble with their children’s homework, and understandably so, because they’ve never experienced this system before. And so I try to show parents this is making their child a more advanced learner,” said Briana Conroy, 25, a fourth-grade teacher and tutor with takehometutor.com, an Avella-based company.
Owner Terry Jacobs, 27, a web developer, said he formed the online tutor directory because of dual frustration of helping to find employment for his wife, Samantha, a teacher, as well as helping his 8-year-old son, Tyler, with homework.
“There’s a bit of employment limbo for newly accredited teachers right out college. So we’re trying to work with new graduates to help them get acquainted with teaching on a one-to-one basis while also providing direct experience to students from recent grads who have been trained in this new era of Common Core,” Jacobs said. He said Tyler’s third-grade homework even tripped him up.
“He brought home problems asking him to round up to the nearest one or 10 and then add them up to what wasn’t the exact answer. So they basically wanted you come up with a quick answer based off of rounding. It threw me off a bit because it didn’t give an example. It was supposed to be based off certain numbers, and that wasn’t explained. We weren’t schooled that way. We were taught, ‘Here’s a problem, provide the answer,’ so long as you can show your work. Now, it’s specific work that needs to be shown,” Jacobs said.
Parts of the redesigned SAT test launching in March will include aspects of Common Core, according to directors with Huntington Learning Center in Washington. But the difficulty spike is there even for those nowhere near standardized testing.
“Kindergarten teachers have been saying, ‘I’ve never had this much expected of my students.’ They’re seeing math word problems right off the bat,” said director Samantha Long. She said the Washington branch opened to accommodate an overflow of students from Peters Township, and pupils as far away as Ohio and West Virginia have signed up because there aren’t nearby tutoring centers.
“But parents are beginning to understand that this system that expects students to know multiple methods – it’s making them better learners across the board,” Long said. And more than ever, it comes down to ABCs.
“Reading comprehension is at the core of everything now. Word problems can be super intimidating, but the tip I give is to think of these problems as if they’re a foreign language. Math and English have common roots, and borrow from each other to explain the other’s concepts. So I tell students to use what they recognize to translate what they don’t understand and get beyond a surface-level reading of a problem. They have to unpack what’s beneath so they can tease out the relevant information, and disregard the noise. The amount of relevant information to solve a problem hasn’t changed; all the extra information a student has to choose to ignore has increased, and that’s part of the challenge,” said assistant director Dayanna Volitich.
The difficulty may have spiked due to unfamiliarity, but the range of concepts students are expected to learn at each grade level are being simplified and reduced, according to the director of Mathnasium, in McMurray, which has been tutoring students for nearly 12 years.
“There’s more focus now. There does seem to be fewer concepts for K-8, but they’re going into those concepts deeper,” said owner and operator Steve Ross, 46.
“Before Common Core, basic algebra, stats and geometry were introduced at lower grade levels. Now, it’s a focus on arithmetic at all levels, and introducing early the traditional pre-algebra concepts, like integers, order of operations, fractions and decimals,” Ross said. In other words, things a student can apply in the real world. And for Ross, the switch is working.
“There’s scant hard data yet, at least in Pennsylvania, if Common Core is working. But anecdotally, I notice the concepts last with them longer as they go through school; they need fewer refreshers. It’s more rigorous, and they benefit because of that,” he said. Early data from the state, however, shows Common Core may be importing its benefits to standardized testing.
Pennsylvania students on average caught on to new PSSA tests better than their peers on the national stage. In Grade 4, 45 percent of Pennsylvania students posted proficient math scores – better than the 39 percent proficiency across the U.S., according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Grade 8 math scores hovered at 37 percent proficiency in 2014-15, beating the national average of 32 percent.
Experts say students spelling out every possible solution and method to check their work is training better “world learners” and problem solvers who can analyze complex situations for employers. Still, parents will probably feel left on the sidelines until Common Core is no longer referred to by its name, and its novelty worn off as part of an expected curriculum. The company directors say tutoring can help parents and students lost in the fray.
“Students have a lot of distractions these days – more than we ever had as students,” said fifth-grade teacher and Take Home Tutor educator Chris Foster. 33.
“In a classroom, you may be able to do small groups, but you can’t get a true one-on-one scenario for an hour at a time unless they can stay after class. If a student is struggling, we need to get to them so they’re on the right page and can succeed,” Foster said.