Some 15 Years After Disastrous Debut, Common Core Math Endures in Many States

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Fifteen years after the calamitous rollout of the Common Core math standards, the once-derided strategy has proven its staying power, with many states holding onto the original plan or some close iteration.

While critics say it failed to boost student achievement — average fourth-grade math scores have dropped three points and eighth grade by nine since 2009, according to nationwide testing — its champions say it alone can’t improve test performance. Teacher preparedness and learning materials play a far greater role, they argue.

And they credit the Common Core for achieving something that had never been done before: building an on-ramp to algebra from arithmetic. 

Dave Kung, executive director at Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics, a professional organization that works in the higher education space, said this transition was critical, and a major departure from how the subject was taught in earlier decades. 

“The system I went through was largely arithmetic in elementary school and all of a sudden, bam, you hit algebra and suddenly it’s pretty theoretical and pretty abstract,” he said. “The ramp I’m describing is from the concrete nature of arithmetic to the more abstract world of algebra. The Common Core refocused people’s attention on student thinking and that’s an important thing.”

The Common Core was rolled out in 2010 to address the unevenness with which the subject was taught throughout the nation and deepen students’ understanding of this complex topic, often providing children with more than one way to solve a problem. 

Many teachers balked at the new approach and parents, flummoxed by not being able to help their kids with a subject they’d learned so differently, begrudgingly headed back to school for tutorials.  

It took years in many cases for schools to create or adopt the curriculum needed to support the standards. Meanwhile, political foes labeled the standards as federal overreach and school communities buckled under the constant testing pressure with many students opting out of related exams. 

Despite these challenges, math experts say dozens of states still use the standards, some by their original name and others under new monikers. The Common Core has, in many cases, survived even as states across the country revamp their standards to combat poor student performance and wrestle with how to make math and STEM pathways more inclusive. 

While Oklahoma and Florida are among those that dropped the standards — Sunshine State leaders were gleeful about abandoning what they called “crazy math” — others have kept them while making some modifications. 

Louisiana is one such location, changing a reported 21% of the standards in 2016. Fourth graders saw their NAEP scores jump six points between 2022 and 2024 while eighth graders moved a single point. State schools chief Cade Brumley credited the state’s back-to-basics approach for students’ success. 

In Wisconsin, the Common Core remains largely intact, surviving three U.S. presidents and all of the politicization of education that has come with each new term. 

Mary Mooney, a mathematics education consultant with the state, was serving Milwaukee Public Schools when the standards first arrived in 2010. She said her district was uniquely receptive thanks in part to its strong focus on professional learning.  

“At the district level, we were incredibly excited for the Common Core,” Mooney said. “It was finally going to tell us what mathematics is. We thought it was a collection of skills that helps you get an answer. But the Common Core did an amazing job of building better narratives about what mathematics really is and why it is important to every student.” 

She said it helped teachers make connections they hadn’t before. 

“Everybody was challenged with these standards to think differently about mathematics,” she said, adding some teachers, for example, didn’t realize multiplication was so closely tied to elements of geometry. “That was the power of the Common Core. But you really needed good professional learning to see the beauty and power in those standards.”

And while some lament the Common Core for its perceived lack of impact on test scores, Kung said he isn’t too concerned about the standards’ relationship to students’ grades. 

He said the National Assessment of Educational Progress and state tests often reflect “straightforward procedural stuff,” adding, “if a student lost a little bit of that, I’m kind of OK with that if what they gained is a better understanding of what is going on.”

As a historical analogy, he noted that at some point students lost their ability to use slide rules. And nobody bemoans that, he said, adding there are some elements of mathematics — what he calls “the drill-and-kill stuff” — for which there are no remaining proponents. 

When Wisconsin was given a chance to jettison the standards during a review process a few years ago, Mooney said, the state opted to keep them, driven by their success and the effort it took to learn and adopt them. And the Common Core made educators rethink the notion of math fluency, which often equated to speed. 

There are far better goals, she said.

“When you think about being fast, you tend to have memorization as the only strategy for understanding your facts,” she said. “We added ‘flexible’ and ‘efficient,’ which helped teachers … to teach the math behind the facts and not simply getting an answer.”

Arlene Crum, director of math for Washington state until last year, said state law requires the education department to periodically revise its learning standards. The review began when Crum still worked for the state, she said, adding she urged officials to stay true to the Common Core for three critical reasons. 

First, she said, the standards were sound. And districts had been working for the last 10 years to make sure their instructional materials were aligned to it at her office’s request, she said. 

“So, I felt it would be a huge task for districts to have the rug suddenly pulled out from them,” Crum said. “And because it’s a national set of standards, there are a ton of resources to help teachers with it.”

Josh Recio of the Charles A. Dana Center in Austin said the Common Core works best in the younger years and in getting students ready for the challenges of algebra, a gateway course to higher-level math in high school and college. 

“Most people realize the K-8th grade Common Core standards do a really nice job of preparing students for algebra in high school,” he said. “There is something to be said for having guidance, for having people who are very smart and understand these issues that students face and took the time to write down a set of standards to prepare students for high school. There is a progression of learning that makes sure you are successful once you get there.”

The Gates Foundation provides financial support to Charles A. Dana Center and to The 74.

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