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An assessment partner our district is working with developed an item that asks students to “simplify” a polynomial. In verifying alignment with the CCSS, I noticed that simplifying is notably absent, in favor of rewriting expressions and performing arithmetic on polynomials. I can infer a rationale for the choice of language in the standards, but I’m interested in hearing from the authors themselves about this choice.
Joshua, the standards do indeed quite consciously avoid the word “simplify”, the point being that different forms of expressions are useful for different purposes, and there is often no mathematical reason to call one of those forms the simplest. This is in accord with MP7, Look for and make use of structure. Students are expected to be able to make strategic choices about what manipulation they perform for the purpose at hand, rather than respond mechanically to commands like “simplify”.
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