Reposted from The Atlantic Common Core-era rules that force kids to diagram their thought processes can make the equations a lot more confusing than they need to be. At a middle school in California, the state testing in math was underway via the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) exam. A girl pointed to the problem on the computer screen and asked “What do I do?” The proctor read the instructions for the problem and told the student: “You need to explain how you got your answer.” The girl threw her arms up in frustration and said, “Why can’t I just do the problem, enter the answer and be done with it?” The answer to her question comes down to what the education … [Read more...]