Rep. Kevin Cramer Not Pleased With His Son's Common Core Math Homework

Even though North Dakota’s state legislators have had a robust debate over controversial Common Core education standards the state’s federal delegation has largely stayed silent on the issue. But it seems that Rep. Kevin Cramer is entirely happy with the standards. He tweeted out a picture of his son’s math homework seeming to argue that the problem solving method on display was needlessly complex.

I tend to be agnostic on Common Core, but that does seem like an odd way to solve a simple arithmetic problem.

I think one problem with the Common Core debate is that a lot of the opponents of the standards don’t like that their children are being taught to do things like solve math problems in ways that are different from what they were taught in school. But just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s bad, does it?

Still, I’m not seeing the advantages of this new method in this instance.

Update: A member of the state Senate emails after seeing this post: “This is a way better way to do math than common core. All math should be based on baseball.”

We could do worse.