Tehachapi schools introduce first Common Core textbooks

The Tehachapi Unified School District’s new math text books based on the Common Core standards appear to be well constructed and free of the impediment of incoherence that parents and opponents have discovered in some states. The subject matter is thoughtfully and cleverly linked to other areas of learning and to the broader world.

The Environmental Science book for a new high school class of the same name, on the other hand, may disturb some parents who are not comfortable with the activist drift of the material. This book is not designated as Common Core.

The elementary school math books are colorful and fun and certainly will engage the students. While written in English, the texts provide main concepts and words in Spanish, which will be helpful both to English-learners and to Spanish-learners. Children will get their own workbooks.

In the new parlance, math sentences (not “problems.”) are either true or false, not correct or incorrect. Equal parts of something are “equal shares.”

The texts reinforce number concepts in written English. The number at the bottom of page 403, for example, also is written as “four hundred three.”

The textbook material links the student with parents and online resources. The “take-home activity” in a beginning elementary book addresses a parent: “Ask your child to tell you a number that is greater than 59 and a number less than 59.” Another activity suggests: “Show your child the time on a clock. Ask him or her what time it will be in 30 minutes.”

Referring to a color illustration in the primary textbook, a child is asked to determine how many beaks they see on two parrots and how many trunks on four elephants. Then the students need do some additional thinking – determining how many feet on the three penguins, and how many ears on four lions. At the bottom of the pages, additional questions connect the math to the larger world– “Where do parrots live?” and “Where do elephants live?”

The textbook publishers offer support programs in the form of video tutorials.

In a nudge to move the young generation toward universal metric measurements and away from historic English methods of measurement, the textbook writers use the metric standard not as an ancillary tool, but as the main tool. Students are asked to figure out solutions in hectares rather than acres, kilometers rather than miles.

Filled with charts, illustrations and real-world examples, the upper-grade textbooks present basic algebra, geometry and calculus in a contemporary manner, drawing on the youngsters’ worlds of internet, cell phones and media in all its forms as teaching tools.

The Environmental Science textbook makes an effort to be even-handed -- Forde Files gives the writers snaps for identifying the clouds coming out nuclear power plant stacks as water vapor. While the charts and presentations are excellent, Forde Files finds some of the phrasing to be not fully formed – that is, to be more philosophy than science.

Some of the material already is outdated; the chart of top world oil producers is behind since the United States outstripped Saudi Arabia. Some of the conclusions lack perspective (see the sidebar on sea otters that disregards the impact of the furry critters on abalone and other shellfish populations). The text gives generous exposure to the theory of climate change.

In the tradition of USA Today with short paragraphs and fifth-grade level language, the textbook completes every paragraph and concept by the end of each page.

The environmental textbook covers important issues like land use, population impact and the environment as it relates to economics – pulling it together on page 537 in a unified political perspective regarding the earth’s resources based on Garrett Hardin’s 1968 theory, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin’s theory basically is a repudiation of the Adam Smith’s philosophy of “enlightened self-interest” – that is, per Hardin, some entity, utilizing forms of coercion, has to control all the greedy people because people won’t control themselves.

The text, under the heading “Regulation and Economic Incentives,” closes with the following:

“The hardest resources to manage are those that are not easily controlled. Problems with such open access resources are called the tragedy of the commons. Without cooperation, individuals try to get as much as they can, and the resources are depleted. In the end, everyone loses.”

The textbooks have been available for inspection at the school district headquarters most of the summer. Parents now can see them at the school sites.