An Analysis and Comparison of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Singapore Mathematics Curriculum Framework

Abstract

In this analysis and comparison we look at the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Singapore Mathematics Curriculum Framework, standards documents that guide primary and secondary mathematics education in the United States and Singapore respectively. The official Common Core State Standards for Mathematics website claims that the standards have been developed to be "internationally benchmarked, so that all students are prepared for the 21st century". Singapore has recently been recognized as a world leader in mathematics education. We investigate the claim that the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics are internationally benchmarked by comparing the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics to the Singapore Mathematics Curriculum Framework. We first give a brief overview of both mathematics standards documents. Then we proceed to determine the alignment of the two sets of standards, both in terms of the coverage of mathematics topics and levels of cognitive demand, using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum content analysis method. We find that the two standards documents are similar in terms of content coverage, but that the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics exhibit higher percentages of standards that require higher levels of cognitive demand.