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In the past, American textbooks have emphasized different word problem types, including coin problems, age problems, consecutive number problems, mixture problems, … These are not explicitly discussed in the HS Algebra standards. Do you recommend that we move away from these word problem types as we implement the Creating Equations standards (with the Math Modeling connections) ?
There are two ways of taking your question, and I’m not sure which you intend. I don’t have anything for or against any particular word problem types; within any type, there can be good or bad problems, and it’s not the type that determines that, it’s the details of how the task is posed. All types are welcome!
However, maybe you mean that textbooks have emphasized the classification of problems into types, with a separate section for each type. I think that’s a bad idea because it encourages a mode of teaching and learning where students learn to solve problems by recognizing the type and then calling on the specialized method for solving that type. There’s usually some complicity between the teacher and the student here; the teacher makes sure that problems of a given type are framed in a particular way so that the student can recognize the key words and solve the problem by invoking a memorized template, without having to reason through the problem. It’s better if students see problems of different types posed different ways, and learn to see underlying mathematical similarities between them, not superficial verbal similarities.
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