When the Common Core State Standards were introduced in Illinois in 2010, teachers became very adept at planning hyper-focused units that “dove deeply” into the content and worked to develop students’ mathematical habits through the Common Core’s Standards for Mathematical Practice. It was an exciting time; as a math teacher in Illinois, I (Anne) got to solve and learn about rich tasks, there were more opportunities for cross-school collaboration than ever before, and I spent time thinking about the “how” of facilitating problem-solving in my classroom.

So why, then, were my students performing so well in the short term and so poorly in the long term, when their learning and understanding of the content seemed so deep? Why did students who I taught in seventh grade swear to me in eighth grade that they had never heard of similar geometric figures, when we spent six weeks studying them and they rocked every assessment at the end of the unit?

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