The problem with Math

I've been attending curriculum meetings because that's my special interest. I've taught at every level if only briefly and over the past thirty years much of my computer science career has been dedicated to automating manual or ineffective business processes.

Now, I am not actually ON the curriculum committee but that's a whole other story.

The point of this post really is that I strongly felt that EO Smith was academically doing a pretty good job of educating our kids. At face value this seemed to be the case. The more exposure I have to the teachers and curriculum the less enamored I am with what I seeing and hearing.

Lately there's a push to force MORE math as a prerequisite for graduation. We had a lively discussion on the subject. The math department continues to disappoint me in their offerings (more about that in a future posting).

But the decision about math was put on hold for want of more information. The LA Times series we read yesterday continues talking about California's experience with the genre:

The course that traditionally distinguished the college-bound from others has denied vast numbers of students a high school diploma.

"It triggers dropouts more than any single subject," said Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer. "I think it is a cumulative failure of our ability to teach math adequately in the public school system."

When the Los Angeles Board of Education approved tougher graduation requirements that went into effect in 2003, the intention was to give kids a better education and groom more graduates for college and high-level jobs. For the first time, students had to pass a year of algebra and a year of geometry or an equivalent class to earn diplomas.

The policy was born of a worthy goal but has proved disastrous for students unprepared to meet the new demands.

In the fall of 2004, 48,000 ninth-graders took beginning algebra; 44% flunked, nearly twice the failure rate as in English. Seventeen percent finished with Ds.

In all, the district that semester handed out Ds and Fs to 29,000 beginning algebra students — enough to fill eight high schools the size of Birmingham.

Among those who repeated the class in the spring, nearly three-quarters flunked again.

The school district could have seen this coming if officials had looked at the huge numbers of high school students failing basic math.

Lawmakers in Sacramento didn't ask questions either. After Los Angeles Unified changed its policy, legislators turned algebra into a statewide graduation requirement, effective in 2004.

Now the Los Angeles school board has raised the bar again. By the time today's second-graders graduate from high school in 2016, most will have to meet the University of California's entry requirements, which will mean passing a third year of advanced math, such as algebra II, and four years of English.

furthermore...

"If you want to believe you're for standards, you're going to make kids take algebra. It has that ring of authenticity," said Robert Balfanz, an associate research scientist with the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "But you're not really thinking through the implications. There may be no good reason why algebra is essential for all high school students."

What we are beginning to examine here is education policy run amok. Politicians and overpaid administrative zealots are cheered for advocating ever higher and tougher standards as our children are sacrificed to this nonsense - a generation of unwitting sheep being led to educational slaughter.

We have got to re-evaluate what we're doing and no question is too obvious to ask. The more anyone truly examines the devastating after affects of NCLB and its zealot army of fools the more one remembers an old NAACP homily, A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Except these days we are witnessing with quaint disregard the wasting of generations of students to whom the love of learning and the tools of intellect are being systematically destroyed nationwide.

And, as the bad joke goes, our school is contemplating following the lemmings over that same cliff.

Connecticut has to wake up. This is the Land of Yankee Ingenuity for cripes sakes. Why are are schools dissolving into idiocy? At EO I'd like the Board to re-evaluate our math program and re-calibrate it to the needs of the community and students and I'd like to see the State Department of Education get out of the way and let some schools re-vitalize their curriculum including Region 19.

Can the legislature put a moratorium on NCLB? Get this educational policy cancer off our backs.

Rethinking Curriculum

In today's Courant, a commentary by Wick Sloane addresses many issues having to do with higher education yet touches on a number of issues that apply to high school policy and organization as well.

From: Higher Education Needs Cash, Vision - January 22, 2006 By WICK SLOANE

"...the very basic cost driver of higher education is the unexamined assumption that a degree must be four years worth of credits, which many students cannot complete even in five years.

This four-year model was developed in the 14th century at the University of Bologna. Part of the reason the curriculum took four years to impart was a shortage of books. That is no longer a problem, yet we still abide by this ancient model. Would we send an injured child today to a 14th-century hospital? Is that what we are doing in higher education?

What about innovation? The past 50 years have produced what scientists and educators call the cognitive revolution. What are the opportunities to use modern tools for learning?

Our daughter carries her language lab for Arabic with her in an iPod. Look at the new short books: "No-Nonsense Guides" or "A Very Short Introduction" to dozens of topics, from A - Ancient Philosophy to W - Wittgenstein, with stops at Darwin, Descartes, Shakespeare and Socrates. What about the Quick Study Bar Charts? At least the new dean of my Yale School of Management ought to be alarmed at how good that $4.95 "Management" guide is.

These tools are not a substitute for a great teacher. They are excellent sources on topics once available by the semester only. Can't they be used, under the direction of skilled teachers, to impart a high-quality education in less than four years?

Other than some intermittent efforts at online learning, I don't see any movement for change."

We are examining this very issue about our high school. That is, is the current organization and learning model the best way to educate our young citizens? The High-stakes Testing paradigm has long ago drowned out any real concern for the education of our young people in favor of magic metrics "accountability" games.

All policy makers these days are under great pressure to fix the educational crisis of the fleeting moment. So, every news article crying that a high school graduate can't balance a checkbook becomes an Arnold Swartznegger moment - TIME TO GET TOUGHER! (And tougher is never, ever tough enough - talk show afficiados can't press the "Inflict Pain" button often or hard enough).

So school boards have easy choices;

MORE Math! (or whatever)

MORE Accelerated Math taught by educational-NO-Nonsense, knock-you-out, serious-math-gorillas! (and, BTW, why aren't fetuses listening to banking tapes instead of Bach?)

EVER HIGHER EXPECTATIONS of students, over-worked parents, anybody willing to be the fall guy for the students perceived academic foibles (Expectations are the latest magic fix - all you have to do is say you're raising expectations and miracles happen - Jesus would be envious at how effective this is in educational rhetoric).

If we now require three years, why not four? five?

Or maybe we just invent a course that puts out the educational outrage of the moment - a checkbook course, a contract reading course, a manage your money course, and so on for every co-incidental minutia.

This is how it goes for the most part. Society confronts educators to show more muscle. But none of these solutions really address the fact that our kids aren't learning to learn and don't know how to think. Balancing checkbooks is addition and subtraction not the absence of more Calculus. And testing for addition and subtraction shows kids can add and subtract all right, or memorize vocabulary words, or whatever. But they're all unrelated test factoids. We have to get better at this.

We need to change the way we do education and we will. NCLB must be the first piece of loose, worthless baggage to get jettisoned.

More from the commentary...

"Also, if there are any Gallup-type surveys on what students want in education, I haven't seen them. Why do we know more about how much caffeine students want in what form each day than we do about learning preferences?"

Are we afraid that they're thinking despite school? Asking students is called respect. What a concept.