Common Core Math – Details

Problem-Attic has more than 25,000 questions aligned to Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Roughly 25% are free-response, multi-step, or open-ended questions and tasks. See below for design highlights, or check out these sample documents.

The questions cover grades 1–8 and high school. Here’s the breakdown:

The overall average is nearly 2000 questions per grade or subject and 60 per standard. For a complete list of CCSS math standards and the number of questions for each, please see this pdf document.

The Common Core Math database is available by subscription. All questions are original. There is no overlap with NY Regents Exams or other states’ released tests in Problem-Attic. To help you evaluate the content before you subscribe, we’ve posted many sample documents and made a large number of questions available for use in the Play Area.

For more information about CCSS, state adoption, and how the standards are meant to improve teaching and learning, please visit www.corestandards.org.

Design Highlights

• All questions in the Common Core math database are hand-written by highly qualified teachers and curriculum specialists. (They are not algorithm-generated.) In addition, their alignment and phrasing is carefully reviewed by EducAide Software, the maker of Problem-Attic, which has more than 20 years of experience developing questions for national and state standards.
• The database is intended for instruction and assessment. Alignment to the standards is as tight as possible while still allowing some flexibility for teaching, not just testing. While most questions will function very well for measuring student progress, in accordance with the standards, some questions are included for challenge, extra credit, and extending ideas.
• Questions are aligned to only one standard. There is no duplication. For questions that can conceivably go with multiple standards, we went for the best fit. We also tried to keep similar questions together, so that it’s not necessary to jump through multiple standards to find variations.
• All questions are paired for pre- and post-tests, makeup tests, etc. You will not notice this on the sample documents, but if you visit the Play Area, it will be apparent that two questions in-a-row are always similar. This provides a nice balance between repetition and variety and also helps with test security, as the two questions, which are close in difficulty and style, can be assigned to different students and graded the same way. The “parallel forms” can be created automatically. For more details, click here.
• The questions are rich with graphics and interesting scenarios, including real-world data. With the editor, you can use these graphics and scenarios as the basis for new questions. Also, Problem-Attic does very intelligent formatting and will not repeat directions, figures, or other “stimulus” which appears in successive questions.

Please note:

• Problem-Attic has options that help you locate the exact questions you want, plus formatting options to change their appearance. For example, there a Filter button to show only free-response questions, or show multiple-choice questions that can be turned into free-response. (That can be done automatically for about two-thirds of the database.) Also, Problem-Attic can add all kinds of answer spaces for open-ended questions and tasks: numberlines, coordinate systems, grids, even snippets of graph paper. For test accommodations or students with special needs, it can reduce the number of choices, increase font size, spread problems out on the page, and so on.
• When viewing problems for a particular standard, you’ll see up to 100 per page. Often there will be more. Be sure to scroll to the buttom of the page and click Next, to view them all. The questions are organized generally by level of difficulty and, by default, the easiest come first. Problem-Attic lets you reverse the order. You can try this in the Play Area. Press the Sort button to put the most rigorous questions, usually open-ended or multi-step, at the top.