ABSTRACT
Educational politics can exist in all types of forums: local, national, or international. Sometimes, local politics beat us up the most because it involves things happening right in educator's own backyards. Tied directly to the Common Core assessments, which were then tied to teacher evaluations, the Common Core State Standards have combusted into one of the biggest political forums that education has ever gone through. School districts across the nation have created new positions within their administrative ranks to attempt to support teachers with Common Core curriculum and new packaged programs from some of the nation's largest publishers. Using new methods of problem solving in order to rethink math concepts became one of the major criticisms of those who know their basic math facts versus those who lost such skills by zeroing in on, exclusively, Common Core problem-solving strategies. Programs such as Eureka Math came along and touted an irresistible offer that such a program would lift students' math scores.
