Are Common Core Standards More Focused?

For anyone stumbling onto this blog, I am currently working on an analysis of the Common Core advocates that the old standards were too broad and not focused.  I will put my fnding up here as I get them and update this page as I go.  For starters, just initially in looking numerically at the standards, it appears that CCSS advocates are again overstating the case. For example, in Oregon I have counted the number of standards at each Grade Level in the "old" Standards and compared those figures to the number of CCSS at each level.  In each case, there are more CCSS standards than old Oregon standards.  And again, initially just looking, the old standards are more concise than the Common Core.  I will provide examples.  For now here are the counts:

As of right now, it might be valid to question whether sheer numbers is enough to make the case.  Tentatively, I can say it looks compelling enough to raise questions to look into the claim further.  Let me give you an example of the qualitative differences:

Old Oregon Standards:

K.1.1     Connect numbers, including written numerals, to the quantities they represent, using various physical models and representations.

K.1.1     Count objects in a set using one-to-one correspondence and produce sets of given sizes.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4
Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4.A
When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4.B
Understand that the last number name said tells the number of objects counted. The number of objects is the same regardless of their arrangement or the order in which they were counted.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4.C
Understand that each successive number name refers to a quantity that is one larger.

Two observations: Common Core claims to be more focused and address fewer topics per grade level.  You can see here that not only are there more Common Core standards than the old Oregon standards, but that there are more than one skill or topic combined into one standard.  Again, I think the case that Common Core is "more focused' is not proven, at least not to me yet.  I will return to this, but for now, I have some Father's Day activities to attend.

You can review the Common Core standards in the meantime.

UPDATE:  In order to examine the question of weather the US needs new standards because the old standards were a mile-wide, inch-deep, I used TIMSS survey information and compared the number of topics addressed each year versus instructional time per year for each of the A+ country and the U.S.  It turns out that the U.S. does address more topics (17) than four of the six A+ countries, except Japan and Belgium (Flemish).  If you contol for instructional time per year, though, I found that the number of topics per hour addressed in fourth grade U.S. classrrooms is right at the median of the comparison countries:

Some notes: to find per instructional hour, I divided the total topics by the number of instructional hours spend on math per year.  I multiplied the topics per hour by 100 (across the board) to create the same scale chart above.  So, for example, topics per hour would be divided by 100.  The U.S., thus, addresses about .08 topics per hour copared to about 1.2 in Korea.

These results do not support the view that U.S. math classes address too many topics in too short of time, thus the mile-wide, inch-deep criticism must be revamped to take this evidence into consideration.  In future updates, I will analyze some of the literature that the criticism is based on, mostly the work of William Schmidt from Michigan State which is based on a fatally flawed assumption, as you will see when I have time to get that part done.