Search Results for: Math forum
Financial ability correlates w/ maths skills not financial education: Revisiting Madison’s 2007 Math Forum
James Pickford: But they don’t appear to do much financial training in Shanghai? One of the report’s most interesting conclusions was that the best way of teaching financial literacy is not necessarily by instruction in the classroom. Far more important as indicators of proficiency were mathematical skills and personal experience with financial products. So Chinese children, who […]
Math Forum Audio / Video and Links
Video and audio from Wednesday’s Math Forum are now available [watch the 80 minute video] [mp3 audio file 1, file 2]. This rare event included the following participants: Dick Askey (UW Math Professor) Faye Hilgart, Madison Metropolitan School District Steffen Lempp (MMSD Parent and UW Math Professor) Linda McQuillen, Madison Metropolitan School District Gabriele Meyer […]
Math Forum: Wednesday 2.22.2006 7:00p.m.
There’s been no shortage of discusion regarding math curriculum. Rafael Gomez’s latest event, this Wednesday’s Math Forum should prove quite interesting. The event will be at the Doyle Administration Building (McDaniels Auditorium) [Map] from 7:00 to 8:00p.m. Participants include: Dick Askey (UW Math Professor) Faye Hilgart, Madison Metropolitan School District Steffen Lempp (MMSD Parent and […]
Community Forum – Math Task Force Recommendations
There will be 2 forums to receive community feedback on the Math Task Force report/recommendations.
* Monday, December 8 – 6:00-8:00pm at Memorial High School
* Tuesday, December 9 – 6:00-8:00pm at La Follette High School
There will be a brief presentation on the task force recommendations, followed by a break-out session for community feedback and comments.
The Superintendent will use the feedback and comments in developing his recommendations for the Board.
As a reminder, the Math Task Force info can be found at http://www.mmsd.org/boe/math/
Thank you.
Arlene
Minnesota’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Forums
In the process of researching where the U.S. ranks internationally in science and math education, I discovered that one of the Democratic presidential candidates (the one who’s governor of a Southwestern state) keeps citing our nation’s current rank as No. 29 (or, on a good day, No. 28) after our having been No. 1 throughout the world.
Apparently neither statistic is true, however, which suggest that it may be Bill Richardson himself who needs a bit of remedial math.
This is not the first time our national educational system has been politicized. Fifty years ago, a global scientific effort called the International Geophysical Year (IGY) encompassed 11 Earth sciences: aurora and airglow, cosmic rays, geomagnetism, gravity, ionospheric physics, longitude and latitude determinations (precision mapping), meteorology, oceanography, seismology and solar activity.
The Soviet Union celebrated IGY by launching the first artificial satellite (Sputnik) one month into the event on Oct. 1, 1957. We countered with the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts and the discovery of mid-ocean submarine ridges, which was an important confirmation of plate tectonics.
Immediately following the successful orbiting of Sputnik, attendant paranoia regarding U.S. loss of the space race converted our collaboration with the country into a major retooling of the nation’s school curricula. The focus would now be on science and mathematics.
It’s impossible to deny a general decline in these areas nationally versus India and a handful of other countries that emphasize science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education on a cultural level. In recent years, Minnesota has been adamant and resolute about creating and maintaining collaboration between the private and public sectors to improve these areas of learning among K-12 students statewide.
Providence School forum will explore fresh approach to math
Linda Borg writing in the Providence Journal: Michael Lauro, the district’s new math coordinator, will discuss plans for a curriculum called FASTT Math. PROVIDENCE – Osiris Harrell, an outspoken critic of the school district’s math curriculum, has invited parents and school officials to a meeting March 22 to discuss the effectiveness of the math program. […]
Teach Math!
Alberta Parents Union: We are urgently calling on Alberta to teach math teachers to teach math! That may seem like a silly request, but read on to find out which math-like-substance is being sold to teachers as “teaching math” now. It’s a perennial struggle in parent advocacy. Parents want to know the basics are being […]
Remedial math at Harvard
S. Mac Healey and Angelina J. Parker “Students don’t have the skills that we had intended downstream in the curriculum, and so it creates different trajectories in students’ math abilities,” Kelly added. Despite the schedule differences, MA5 will reflect the material and structure of MA and MB, collectively known as Math M. “Math MA5 is actually embedded […]
Mississippi students of color outperform Minnesota’s in reading and math
Catron Wigfall: Despite spending far less per student than Minnesota, Mississippi has a better track record than Minnesota when it comes to helping its students of color grow academically. Mississippi’s overhaul of its reading pedagogy and its investment in training educators in the science of reading became a model other states are learning from. Mississippi […]
NYC launching new learning tool to help kids conquer ‘fear of math’ in public schools next fall
Aneeta Bhole The Big Apple is trying out a new equation to help boost sagging math scores. City officials unveiled a new public school math curriculum Monday aimed at helping students overcome their “fear of math” by emphasizing open-ended discussions. “Students develop a fear of math from the earliest grades, and we have kids who […]
“You shouldn’t expect to know how to read, do math, or make a life for yourself”
Luther Ray Abel: once you’re auto-graduated from one of the area’s failed schools. But if you’re a Marquette-educated city planner who grew up in Whitefish Bay and now has a place, a goldendoodle, and a job in the Third Ward, Milwaukee is everything a man could ever want. Ride the white-collar novelty streetcar that cost tens […]
Math wars podcast
The Disagreement Today’s disagreement is about the “math wars.”The “math wars” is a debate happening in K-12 education about the best way to teach math. Broadly speaking, there are two camps that have conflicting pedagogical approaches: Explicit instruction focuses on procedural fluency, guided practice, and repetition.Inquiry-based instruction focuses on conceptual understanding, open-ended problems, and productive […]
“is guilty of “academic and professional misconduct” for pointing out errors in the California math framework”
Joanne Jacobs: Brian Conrad, a math professor and director of undergraduate math education at Stanford, is guilty of “academic and professional misconduct” for pointing out errors in the California math framework, claims a letter to the university provost. The letter signed by Duane Habecker, a math administrator, charges that Conrad has “ventured into stochastic terrorism” […]
Sold a Story: The Aftermath
APM Reports: Banks: We have not taught the kids the basic fundamental structures of how to read. David Banks is the chancellor of the New York City public schools. Banks: We have gotten this wrong in New York and all across the nation. And many of us follow the same prescript of balanced literacy. And… Balanced […]
“Some schools with less than 5% proficiency in math and English are rated as “Meets” or “Exceeds” expectations on the current report card”
Will Flanders: WILL Research Director Will Flanders’s new policy brief, Needs Improvement: How Wisconsin’s Report Card Can Mislead Parents, provides an important explanation of how Wisconsin’s school report cards work and how the various inputs work towards a school’s score. Specifically, Flanders highlights: The Report (PDF). Underly and our long term disastrous reading results…. WEAC: $1.57 million for […]
Math Curriculum
Sharon Lurye: A few years ago she shifted her approach, turning to more direct explanation after finding a website on a set of evidence-based practices known as the science of math. “I could see how the game related to multiplication, but the kids weren’t making those connections,” said Stark, a math teacher in the suburbs […]
UC faculty speak out against reduced math rigor
Wesley Crocket: Faculty members in the University of California (UC) system have begun to speak out against their campuses’ adoption of lower math standards in order to bolster diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The controversy surrounds a policy enacted by a UC committee in 2020, which changed the admissions requirements for high school applicants in […]
‘Nation’s Report Card’ (NAEP) shows math skills reset to the level of the 1990s, while struggling readers are scoring lower than they did in 1971
Kevin Mahnken: COVID-19’s cataclysmic impact on K–12 education, coming on the heels of a decade of stagnation in schools, has yielded a lost generation of growth for adolescents, new federal data reveal. Wednesday’s publication of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — America’s most prominent benchmark of learning, typically referred to as […]
Forcing maths on teenagers is cruel and counterproductive: Rishi Sunak would be better focusing on primary schools than making students study the subject to age 18Forcing maths on teenagers is cruel and counterproductive:
Lucy Kellaway: Some years ago, shortly before I left the Financial Times, I gave a talk at a literary event in Oxford. Put up your hand, I said to the audience, if you are useless at maths — whereupon the arms of around a third of them shot into the air. At the time, I […]
Notes on math education
Summer Allen: A new study finds that high school students identify more with math if they see their math teacher treating everyone in the class equitably, especially in racially diverse schools. The study by researchers at Portland State University, Loyola University Chicago and the University of North Texas was published in the journal Sociology of […]
Notes on Parents and Math Rigor
Ellen Gamerman: On RussianMathTutors.com, a site promoting a Soviet-era style of math instruction, a sample question involves Masha, a mom who bakes a batch of unmarked pies: three rice, three bean and three cherry. The student must determine how Masha can find a cherry pie “by biting into as few tasteless pies as possible.” While […]
Math education outcomes: credit card edition
Sumit Agarwal, Andrea Presbitero, André F. Silva, and Carlo Wix: We study credit card rewards as an ideal laboratory to quantify the cross-subsidy from naive to sophisticated consumers in retail financial markets. Using granular data on the near universe of credit card accounts in the United States, we find that sophisticated consumers profit from reward […]
Wisconsin students’ math, reading scores drop from 2019
Scott Girard: In reading, Wisconsin eighth graders saw their average score drop by five points compared to a three-point drop for the nation. Wisconsin students hadn’t had an average score this low in NAEP data going back to 1998. The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, […]
How One School Is Beating the Odds in Math, the Pandemic’s Hardest-Hit Subject:
Benjamin Franklin Elementary in Connecticut overhauled the way it taught — and the way it ran the classroom. Every minute counted
Sarah Mervosh: It’s just after lunchtime, and Dori Montano’s fifth-grade math class is running on a firm schedule. In one corner of the classroom, Ms. Montano huddles with a small group of students, working through a lesson about place value: Is 23.4 or 2.34 the bigger number? Nearby, other students collaborate to solve a “math […]
The drops in test scores were roughly four times greater among the students who were the least proficient in both math and reading
Ben Chapman and Douglas Belkin: Scores released Thursday show unprecedented drops on the long-term trends tests that are part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “Nation’s Report Card.” The tests are administered to U.S. students age 9. The test scores reflect more than a pandemic problem, with experts saying it could […]
Literacy Scores by Country, in Reading, Math, and Science
Nathan Yau: Among 15-year-old students, here’s how 77 countries compare in reading, math, and science. Higher scores are better. Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health. The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic” 2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks […]
Controversy Rages as California Follows SF’s Lead With New Approach to Teaching Math
Joe Hong: At the heart of the wrangling lies a broad agreement about at least one thing:The way California public schools teach math isn’t working. On national standardized tests, California ranks in the bottom quartile among all states and U.S. territories for 8th grade math scores. Yet for all the sound and fury, the proposed framework, about 800-pages […]
“California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way”
Signatories: 1,105 as of November 5, 2021 California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way. Its proposed Mathematics Curriculum Framework is presented as a step toward social justice and racial equity, but its effect would be the opposite—to rob all Californians, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, who always suffer most […]
America’s math curricular decline
The Economist: America has a maths problem. Its pupils have ranked poorly in international maths exams for decades. In 2018, American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in the oecd, a club of mostly rich countries. American adults ranked fourth-from-last in numeracy when compared with other rich countries. As many as 30% of American adults are comfortable only […]
Proposed guidelines in California would de-emphasize calculus, reject the idea that some children are naturally gifted and build a connection to social justice. Critics say math shouldn’t be political.
Jacey Fortin: If everything had gone according to plan, California would have approved new guidelines this month for math education in public schools. But ever since a draft was opened for public comment in February, the recommendations have set off a fierce debate over not only how to teach math, but also how to solve […]
“used surveys in early 2020 to assess how students felt in their math classes and what teachers thought about their own efforts to help students feel like they belong”
Scott Girard: Key findings include that classroom and school belonging are distinct and that teachers with more confidence in their ability to teach math had a stronger sense of classroom belonging among their students. The research also found there was no systematic difference in math classroom belonging across racial/ethnic groups or by gender. “I’m heartened […]
A new law allows students to graduate from high school without the ability to read, write, or do math.
Frederick Hess: Despite these numbers, some on the left have decided that the answer is not to insist that schools use the $190 billion in emergency federal COVID school aid to help students catch up and even excel, but to launch a nihilistic crusade in service to a warped mantra of “equity.” This is the same notion […]
Baltimore High School Students Perform Math & Reading at Grade School Level
Chris Papst: “My son is really in desperate need of tutoring in math,” Gray told Project Baltimore. “And, how did my son pass if he didn’t know none of this math?” Now, Project Baltimore has obtained student assessment scores from just one class, in one high school, that show how widespread the problem appears to […]
Gov. Kate Brown signed a law to allow Oregon students to graduate without proving they can write or do math. She doesn’t want to talk about it.
Hillary Borrud: For the next five years, an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level. Gov. Kate Brown had demurred earlier this summer regarding whether she supported the plan passed by the Legislature to drop the requirement […]
“Social Justice Math” & California
Joanne Jacobs: California’s new Mathematics Curriculum Framework has become a political hot potato, reports Lawrence Richard on Yahoo News. The state education board will postpone a decision on implementation for 10 months in response to critics who charged it would “de-mathematize math” and prevent high achievers from taking advanced classes. 2007 Math Forum Connected Math Discovery […]
Replace the Proposed New California Math Curriculum Framework
Independent Institute: California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way. Its proposed Mathematics Curriculum Framework is presented as a step toward social justice and racial equity, but its effect would be the opposite—to rob all Californians, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, who always suffer most when schools fail to teach […]
The impact of a lack of mathematical education on brain development and future attainment
George Zacharopoulos, Francesco Sella & Roi Cohen Kadosh: Formal education has a long-term impact on an individual’s life. However, our knowledge of the effect of a specific lack of education, such as in mathematics, is currently poor but is highly relevant given the extant differences between countries in their educational curricula and the differences in […]
Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
Elizabeth Green: When Akihiko Takahashi was a junior in college in 1978, he was like most of the other students at his university in suburban Tokyo. He had a vague sense of wanting to accomplish something but no clue what that something should be. But that spring he met a man who would become his […]
There Is No Such Thing as “White” Math
Sergiu Klainerman: I am not at all qualified to introduce today’s guest writer, Sergiu Klainerman. I barely eked out a C+ in high school calculus, while Sergiu is a professor of mathematics at Princeton who specializes in the mathematical theory of black holes. He’s been a MacArthur fellow, a Guggenheim fellow and is a member […]
Civics: Math Rigor…
Brian Reidl: It is not just random social-media postings. In March, MSNBC’s Brian Williams went on the air and endorsed a tweet that stated: “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. U.S. Population, 327 million . . . He could have given each American $1 million.” His guest, New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay, concurred that […]
Madison School District to use some federal COVID-19 relief funds for online math instruction (Fall 2020 Referendum tax & Spending increase plans continue)
Logan Wroge: The Madison School District will spend close to $500,000 out of the $8.2 million the district estimates it will receive from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to shore up its mathematics instruction for elementary and middle school students. Using CARES Act money, the district plans to: • Purchase […]
Options for giving math talks and lectures online
Terry Tao: As part of social distancing efforts to slow down the spread of the novel coronavirus, several universities have now transitioned, or begun transitioning, to online teaching models. (My home university of UCLA has not yet done so, but is certainly considering the option. UPDATE: we are transitioning.) As a consequence, I thought it might […]
Company drops lawsuit against parent who has led opposition to Wake’s math curriculum
T Keung Hui: The provider of Wake County’s controversial high school math curriculum had dropped its lawsuit against a Cary parent who is leading the fight to get the program dropped from the district’s schools. The Mathematics Vision Project had filed a lawsuit in July in a Utah state court accusing Blain Dillard of making […]
Blocks from the glitz of Fiserv Forum, a Milwaukee school flounders and a community shrugs
Alan Borsuk: Let me suggest that at least a bit of our attention should focus on the Wisconsin Conservatory of Lifelong Learning, known as WCLL (pronounced “wickle”). There seems to be a surge of unsettling things happening on the Milwaukee education landscape, some of them just more of the same (low student achievement, divisive politics) […]
We need to change how maths is taught in schools
Bobby Seagull: Being good at maths does not necessarily make you good at managing money. You might be able to use Pythagoras’ theorem, but can you compare the merits of a fixed-rate mortgage with a floating one? And while you can handle quadratic inequalities, how confident would you feel working out credit card interest? Finishing […]
Math from Three to Seven
Math from Three to Seven: A question of culture When I was a grad student at UC Berkeley (in the late 1980s), it was under- stood, among my American classmates, that the Eastern Europeans were simply better. They weren’t genetically superior; indeed, many of my Amer- ican classmates, myself included, were themselves descended from Eastern […]
Mathematics I use
Fan Cross: Recently, on an online forum, a question was posed: How much, and what kind, of mathematics does a working programmer actually use? Here is my answer. First, I and almost all programmers use a lot of boolean logic, from evaluating boolean expressions for conditionals and loop exit criteria, to rearranging the terms of […]
Rethinking High School Math
Joanne Jacobs: But what will happen to math achievers who do want to take calculus and pursue STEM majors in college? Will they get what they need in untracked classes? Black students are more likely to wait until 11th or 12th grade to take Algebra 1, according to the U.S. Education Department, he reports in […]
Checking In: Are Math Assignments Measuring Up?
Keith Dysarz: Nearly every state includes measures of college- and career-readiness in their accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act, and the quality of classroom assignments can help gauge whether students are being prepared for success beyond high school. What is Equity In Motion? In this series, we look at how issues or equity […]
Just teach my kid the math
James Tanton: It is astounding to me that mathematics – of all school subjects – elicits such potent emotional reaction when “reform” is in the air. We’ve seen the community response to the Common Core State Standards in the U.S., the potency of the Back to Basics movement in Alberta, Canada, and the myriad of […]
13 Baltimore City High Schools, zero students proficient in math
Chris Papst: Project Baltimore analyzed 2017 state test scores released this fall. We paged through 16,000 lines of data and uncovered this: Of Baltimore City’s 39 High Schools, 13 had zero students proficient in math. Digging further, we found another six high schools where one percent tested proficient. Add it up – in half the […]
Déjà vu: Madison elementary school students explore the district’s new math curriculum
Amber Walker: MMSD highlighted the success of the new math curriculum in its annual report, released last July. The report said the first cohort of schools using Bridges saw an eight-point increase in math proficiency scores and nine-point gains in math growth in one school year on the spring Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) exam […]
Math. It’s not just for breakfast any more.
David Burkehead: This is just simple math. People compare some “big ticket” item with “small ticket” items and don’t mention how the very large numbers of those small ticket items add up, or how very little the large ticket item would really stretch among the many to whom those small ticket items apply. So when […]
Michelle Obama at WWDC: Bad Math Teachers Drove My Daughters Out of STEM
Slashdot.org: “I have two daughters now who are perfectly good in math, but they had one or two bad math teachers and they are done. That’s what happens to girls. They walk away from tech and science. And there’s something going on that is not just about the girls. There’s something going on with how […]
(2009) What impact do high school mathematics curricula have on college-level mathematics placement?
James Wollack and Michael Fish: Major Findings CORE-Plus students performed significantly less well on math placement test and ACT-M than did traditional students Change in performance was observed immediately after switch Score trends throughout CORE-Plus years actually decreased slightly Inconsistent with a teacher learning-curve hypothesis CORE-AP students fared much better, but not as well as […]
Why Singapore’s kids are so good at maths
aJeevan Vasagar: The classrooms at Admiralty are sparsely decorated. When I visit a class of 13-year-olds, there’s a single artwork on the back wall; a paper cut-out of a cherry tree scattering blossom. At the front, where the teacher stands, is a whiteboard, a projector, a Singapore flag and a clock. I am later told […]
For Pi Day, key figures on math and education in the U.S.
Monica Anderson: For almost 30 years, math enthusiasts have been taking part in festivities on March 14 to honor an infinitely long number beginning with 3.14 – the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, otherwise known as pi. The first official Pi Day was March 14, 1988, when physicist Larry Shaw led staff […]
Goodbye, maths and English. Hello, teamwork and communication?
Alex Gray: It’s no longer enough to fill your CV with impressive grades. Employers are looking beyond qualifications to figure out what other skills their candidates have. Cognitive skills in topics like maths and English have long been used as to measure the calibre of a job candidate. But a report by The Hamilton Project, […]
K-12 Math Rigor? Are High School Graduates Capable Of Basic Cost/Benefit Calculations…
Kevin Carey: The problem, from a regulatory standpoint, is that they borrow a lot of money to obtain the degree — over $78,000 on average, according to the university. The total tuition is $62,593. And because it’s a graduate program, students can also borrow the full cost of their living expenses from the federal government, […]
Big bang for just a few bucks: The impact of math textbooks in California
Cory Koedel and Morgan Polikoff, via a kind Dan Dempsey email: Textbooks are one of the most widely used educational inputs, but remarkably little is known about their effects on student learning. This report uses data collected from elementary schools in California to estimate the impacts of mathematics textbook choices on student achievement. We study […]
Madison School District Middle School Math Specialist Program
Madison School District Administration (PDF): Project Description: MMSD has provided funding to support coursework in the content and teaching knowledge of middle school teachers of math. Toward that goal, a partnership was formed back in 2010 between the District, the UW-Madison School of Education, the UW- Madison Department of Mathematics, and the University of Wisconsin […]
The Economist’s Washington correspondent wonders why his offspring are being taught swimming so well and maths so badly
James Astill: Yet my children’s experience of school in America is in some ways as indifferent as their swimming classes are good, for the country’s elementary schools seem strangely averse to teaching children much stuff. According to the OECD’s latest international education rankings, American children are rated average at reading, below average at science, and […]
Culture, Gender, and Math
Luigi Guiso, Ferdinando Monte, Paola Sapienza, Luigi Zingales: results, we classified countries according to several measures of gender equality. (i) The World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index (GGI) (10) reflects economic and political The existence (1), degree (2), and origin (3, 4) of a gender gap (difference between girls’ and boys’ scores) in mathematics are […]
Meet the New Math, Unlike the Old Math
Kevin Hartnett “Overall, there’s a movement towards more complex cognitive mathematics, there’s a movement towards the student being invited to act like a mathematician instead of passively taking in math and science,” said David Baker, a professor of sociology and education at Pennsylvania State University. “These are big trends and they’re quite revolutionary.” Pedagogical revolutions […]
Meet the New Math, Unlike the Old Math
Kevin Hartnett: If we could snap our fingers and change the way math and science are taught in U.S. schools, most of us would. The shortcomings of the current approach are clear. Subjects that are vibrant in the minds of experts become lifeless by the time they’re handed down to students. It’s not uncommon to […]
A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors. The results are concerning.
Brian Resnick: But Michèle Nuijten, a PhD student at Tilburg University in the Netherlands who co-created Statcheck, has her sights on fixing a much smaller but surprisingly impactful problem in science: rounding errors. “When starting this project, I wouldn’t say [this was a big problem],” Nuijten tells me. “We’re detecting when people are making rounding […]
Great Mathematicians on Math Competitions and “Genius”
Less Wrong: mentioned in Fields Medalists on School Mathematics, school mathematics usually gives a heavily distorted picture of mathematical practice. It’s common for bright young people to participate in math competitions, an activity which is closer to that of mathematical practice. Unfortunately, while math competitions may be more representative of mathematical practice than school mathematics, […]
U.S. Wins First Place at International Mathematics Competition in Hong Kong
Mathematical Association of America: “We are very excited to bring home another first-place IMO award, which serves as a recognition for the the high standard of mathematical creativity and problem-solving capabilities we have in our country,”said Po-Shen Loh, lead coach for the U.S. team and associate professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University. “We are […]
Wayne State drops math as general ed requirement
David Jesse: Wayne State University has subtracted mathematics from the list of classes all students must take to graduate. Up until now, students had to take one of three different math classes before they could earn their degree. Now, depending on their major, students may be able to squeak through college without taking math. The […]
Commentary On K – 12 Math Preparation
Vauhini Vara: Teachers pack their items outside of Everest College, in City of Industry, California, one of the shuttered Corinthian Colleges. Last year, I met fifteen former students and graduates of Corinthian Colleges who had taken a remarkable action to protest the collection of their student debt. Corinthian, a for-profit institution that was, at the […]
U.S. high school seniors slip in math and show no improvement in reading
Emma Brown The nation’s high school seniors have shown no improvement in reading achievement and their math performance has slipped since 2013, according to the results of a test administered by the federal government last year. The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, also show a longer-term stagnation in 12th-grade performance […]
Explaining Your Math: Unnecessary at Best, Encumbering at Worst
Katherine Beals & Barry Garelick: “In general, there is no more evidence of “understanding” in the explained solution, even with pictures, than there would be in mathematical solutions presented in a clear and organized way. How do we know, for example, that a student isn’t simply repeating an explanation provided by the teacher or the […]
Naming Coordinates, Feedback and Revision – Math Mistakes
Math Mistakes: I notice that the kid didn’t write them as (x,y) but wrote them as x,y. I wonder how come he did that? Or, more precisely, I wonder if he doesn’t see much of a difference between (x,y) and x,y or if three is some other reason for leaving off the parentheses. Related: Math […]
The Man Behind Modern Math
John Steele Gordon: Mathematicians often deal in abstractions that are quite beyond the ken of non-mathematicians. For instance, in 1637, the Frenchman Pierre de Fermat conjectured that there is no whole-number solution for the equation An + Bn = Cn where N is greater than two. He famously wrote in the margin of a book […]
Will Our Understanding of Math Deteriorate Over Time?
Lance Fortnow: Scientific American writes about rescuing the enormous theorem (classification of finite simple groups) before the proof vanishes. How can a proof vanish? In mathematics and theoretical computer science, we read research papers primarily to find research questions to work on, or find techniques we can use to prove new theorems. What happens to […]
Lifelong Math Tax: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
Chico Harlan: At Buddy’s, a used 32-gigabyte, early model iPad costs $1,439.28, paid over 72 weeks. An Acer laptop: $1,943.28, in 72 weekly installments. A Maytag washer and dryer: $1,999 over 100 weeks. Abbott wanted a love seat-sofa combo, and she knew it might rip her budget. But this, she figured, was the cost of […]
On B-School Test, Americans Fail to Measure Up; “Improve K-12 Math”
Lindsay Gellman: New waves of Indians and Chinese are taking America’s business-school entrance exam, and that’s causing a big problem for America’s prospective M.B.A.s. Why? The foreign students are much better at the test. Asia-Pacific students have shown a mastery of the quantitative portion of the four-part Graduate Management Admission Test. That has skewed mean […]
Parents feel ‘unequipped’ to help children with maths
Josie Gurney-Read: “It’s not a subject, maths, it’s a language. A language, without which, we cannot communicate. The teaching of arithmetic and algebra, for example, is like teaching the grammar of this language.” It will perhaps be unsurprising to most that Carol Vorderman, who spent 26 years as co-host on the Channel 4 quiz show […]
A Math Teacher on Common Core
Brooke Powers: Before Common Core I was a typical math teacher. I had my curriculum maps and and state standards which read like a skill and drill check list that I marked off one by one whether the kids understood them or not. I used really “great” methods and math terminology like “butterfly method”, “keep […]
On Remedial Math
Ron Schacter Many of the graduates entering college from New York’s Hampton Bays High School in 2011 weren’t ready for higher education math. At neighboring Suffolk County Community College, 68 percent of the first-year students from Hampton Bays had to take remedial math. “These numbers were horrifying to us and created a real sense of […]
Deja Vu on Madison Math: Algebra: The most-failed class for Madison freshmen
Molly Beck: “When you look at the data, there’s something not working, clearly,” she said. “And if you know being on track in ninth grade is key to a student’s success then it’s our obligation to change that.” She said the district will be strengthening the quality and consistency of algebra instruction across schools so […]
Teacher group: Math is ‘the domain of old, white men’
Danette Clark: According to a Teach for America website, culturally responsive teaching in math is important because “math has traditionally been seen as the domain of old, White men.” As reported earlier this week, Teach for America groups across the country are committing themselves to “culturally responsive teaching,” a radical pedagogy used by communist Bill […]
Math wars: Rote memorization plays crucial role in teaching students how to solve complex calculations, study says
Joseph Brean: In a finding sure to inflame the math wars, a team of neuroscientists has revealed the crucial role played by rote memorization in the growing brains of young math students. Memorizing the answers to simple math problems, such as basic addition or the multiplication tables, marks a key shift in a child’s cognitive […]
21% of University of Wisconsin System Freshman Require Remedial Math
Karen Herzog: Regent Margaret Farrow said K-12 must be a strong partner in preparing high school students for college. “We’re not, quite frankly, creating this situation we’re trying to solve.” Starting next year, all 11th graders in Wisconsin pubic schools will be required to take the ACT college-readiness exam that universities use in their admissions […]
America’s Math Crisis
Dick Resch Americans could use a crash course in math. According to a new study from the Brookings Institution, jobs in science, technology, engineering and math are vacant for more than twice as long as other positions — largely because employers can’t find people with the math and science skills to fill them. In fact, […]
American Teens Achieve Mediocrity In Financial Literacy, Local math & reading background
Michelle Hackman: When it comes to financial literacy around the world, American teens are middling. The United States may fuel the world’s largest economy and operate its most robust financial system. But compared to the financial prowess of teenagers in 17 other countries, U.S. teens come off downright mediocre. That’s according to a new study […]
On College Debt & lack of K-12 Math Teaching
Heidi Moore: And the contract terms on private college loans are rigid to the point of cruelty. Borrowers have almost no say and little ability to renegotiate the terms if financial trouble occurs – an inevitability. Many private lenders don’t allow students to pay down the principal of a loan, which means endless payments just […]
Dumping Everyday Math? The Future of Seattle Elementary Math Education Will Be Decided on Wednesday
But I would suggest an even more important vote will occur on Wednesday, one that will decide the future of tens or hundreds of thousands of Seattle students over the next decade: the Seattle School Board’s vote on the future elementary math curriculum. As I have noted in previous blogs, Seattle Public Schools is now […]
2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math
Michael Rubinkam: What could be so horrible? Grade-school math. As schools around the U.S. implement national Common Core learning standards, parents trying to help their kids with math homework say that adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing has become as complicated as calculus. They’re stumped by unfamiliar terms like “rectangular array” and “area model.” They wrestle […]
Solve math problems with logic
An educational and enrichment workshop was recently conducted by the Galileo Enrichment Learning Program where the multi-awarded mathematician and Singapore Math advocate Dr. Queena Lee-Chua together with her son Scott, shared with the participants the fundamentals of Singapore Math and demonstrated how this fun learning approach is used to solve word problems.
Multi-awarded mathematician and Singapore Math advocate Dr. Queena Lee-Chua shared with the participants the fundamentals of Singapore Math and demonstrates how this fun-learning approach is used to solve word problems.
The workshop, held at Nuvali Evoliving AVR, Sta. Rosa City, Laguna, was organized by Galileo Sta. Rosa, attended by parents and their kids, as well as by teachers from different pre-schools and elementary schools in and outside Manila. It was indeed an enlightening and engaging time for everyone as the mother and son tandem proved to the audience that complex mathematical problems can be solved with simple math logic.Much more on Singapore Math, here.
Related: Math Forum Audio/Video.
The Surprising Impact of High School Math on Job Market Outcomes
The economic returns to education are well documented. It is also well-known that college graduates with certain majors will earn more than others and find it easier to land a job. But surprisingly, the courses students take in high school also make a difference, when the courses are mathematics. Even among workers with the same level of education, those with more math have higher wages on average and are less likely to be unemployed. These findings suggest that even students ending their formal education after high school can increase their future earnings by investing in more math courses while in high school.
High school graduates earn more money in general than high school dropouts. This well-known fact is a powerful incentive to finish high school. But is it just the diploma that counts, or do the particular courses students take while in high school matter for their future job prospects? Students can opt for a variety of courses, from vocational tracks to advanced placement classes for college credit, during their final four years of required education.
Most high school graduates choose a curriculum that is far more rigorous than the minimum requirements. This is most evident in mathematics courses. For example, in 2009, 75 percent of high school graduates completed math coursework at the level of Algebra II or above. Most of these students could have stopped at Algebra I and satisfied the minimum high school requirements. Only six states required Algebra II for graduation as of 2006. About 11 required Algebra I, six required geometry, and the remaining 27 required only that students complete a minimum of three years of mathematics at any level.
The fact that so many students take a rigorous math curriculum is not surprising given that a minimum of Algebra II is necessary for adequate college preparation. But an analysis of detailed high school transcript data and employment outcomes suggests that a more rigorous high school math curriculum benefits even those who do not go to college. While math may be difficult for many, our findings indicate that the payoffs for all students may be substantial.Unsurprising, particularly when one encounters young people unable to comprehend cell phone costs, student loan terms or simply make change.
Related: Math Forum audio / video and Connected Math.
Voevodsky’s Mathematical Revolution
On last Thursday at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, Vladimir Voevodsky gave perhaps the most revolutionary scientific talk I’ve ever heard. I doubt if it generated much buzz among the young scientists in advance, though, because it had the inscrutable title “Univalent Foundations of Mathematics,” and the abstract contained sentences like this one: “Set-theoretic approach to foundations of mathematics work well until one starts to think about categories since categories cannot be properly considered as sets with structures due to the required invariance of categorical constructions with respect to equivalences rather than isomorphisms of categories.”
Eyes glazed over yet?
Grades are in: June’s final exams in math show more failure in Montgomery County Schools
Donna St. George, via a kind reader’s email:For another semester, Montgomery County high school students flunked their final exams in math courses in startlingly high numbers, according to new figures that show failure rates of 71 percent for Geometry and 68 percent for Algebra 1.
The numbers add to a phenomenon that goes back more than five years and came to widespread public attention this spring, setting off a wave of concern among parents as well as elected officials in the high-performing school system.
Latest math-exam figures show high failure rates persist in the high-performing school system.
The new figures, for exams given in June, show that failure rates worsened in Algebra 1 and Geometry; improved in Precalculus and Bridge to Algebra 2; and stayed fairly even in Algebra 2, Honors Precalculus, Honors Algebra 2 and Honors Geometry.
Overall, 45 percent of high school students in eight math courses failed their June finals — about 14,000 students out of roughly 31,000 enrolled.
Exactly what explains steep failure rates for exam-takers has been an issue of debate in recent months.
In a memo to the school board, School Superintendent Joshua P. Starr released a preliminary figure on test-skipping: As many as 500 students were no-shows for the Algebra 1 exam in June, accounting for one-sixth of the 2,912 students who failed the test.
Starr said student motivation was one of a half-dozen issues under study as a newly created math work group seeks to understand the failure problem and suggest ways to turn it around. Other possible causes cited include alignment between the curriculum and the exam, school system practices and policies, and the “cognitive demands” of the exam.Related: Math Forum audio & video along with a number of connected matharticles.
2004 (!) Madison West High School math teacher letter to Isthmus on dumbing down the curriculum.
Failing Math Curriculum in Seattle Public Schools
If I was a Seattle Public School parent, I would be getting angry now.
Why? Most Seattle students are receiving an inferior math education using math books and curriculum that will virtually insure they never achieve mastery in key mathematical subjects and thus will be unable to participate in careers that requires mathematical skills.
There are so many signs that a profound problem exists in this city. For example,
Parents see their kids unable to master basic math skills. And they bring home math books that are nearly indecipherable to parents or other potential tutors.
Nearly three quarters of Seattle Community College students require remediation in math.
Over one hundred Seattle students are not able to graduate high school because they could not pass state-mandated math exams.
Minority and economically disadvantaged students are not gaining ground in math.Much more on Seattle’s math battles, here.
Related:
Study: Schools And Colleges Are Teaching The Wrong Type Of Math
Community college students are needlessly assigned to remedial math classes to learn lessons they won’t use during their studies, according to new research from a Washington, D.C. group.
And the study also found that many high school graduates are not learning subjects they will need to use in their careers.
The study was produced by the Washington, D.C.-based National Center on Education and the Economy and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“What these studies show is that our schools do not teach what their students need,” the authors wrote, “while demanding of them what they don’t need; furthermore, the skills that we do teach and that the students do need, the schools teach ineffectively. Perhaps that is where we should begin.”Related: Math forum audio/video.
Republicans Should Love ‘Common Core’ National standards can revive the way we teach math and science.
The Common Core State Standards are a set of rigorous academic standards in mathematics and English language arts. They are the culmination of a meticulous, 20-year process initiated by the states and involving teachers, educators, business leaders and policy makers from across the country and both sides of the aisle.
The standards form a foundation for a high-quality education, have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, and are slated for full implementation in 2014.
Unfortunately, the Republican National Committee recently adopted a resolution rejecting the Core Standards, calling them a “nationwide straitjacket on academic freedom and achievement.” This resolution and efforts under way to repeal the Core Standards in several states are misguided and have to be resisted.
Mathematical education in the U.S. is in deep crisis. The World Economic Forum ranks the quality of math and science education in the U.S. a dismal 48th. This is one of the reasons the 2010 report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” by the National Academies warned that America’s ability to compete effectively with other nations is fading.
“Sadly, many teachers working with our children at the start of their mathematical journeys are not themselves comfortable with the mathematics they are trying to teach.”
I am moved to respond to Sol Garfunkel’s “Opinion” article.1 I am a long-time high school mathematics teacher in a public school. I started teaching around the time of SMSG and have been in the trenches throughout several of the math wars. I know Dr. Garfunkel’s fine work in creating interesting modeling projects and his outspoken opinion that using technology to solve problems that apply the mathematics we are teaching will better concretize students’ understanding of the underlying mathematics. It sounds like a fine idea, but the reality is often very different.
Our problems in teaching mathematics begin in elementary school. Sadly, many teachers working with our children at the start of their mathematical journeys are not themselves comfortable with the mathematics they are trying to teach. They often only know one way to teach an idea and they may not fully understand how that method works and why it gives the right answers. Such a teacher confronted with an alternate creative method (perhaps suggested by a clever child or a seasoned colleague) may reject the alternative rather than trying to see how and why two methods produce the same result. Beyond stifling the creativity of students and discouraging them from trying to see how the mathematics works, such an approach is not fertile ground for applications and modeling projects in which creative exploration and possibly unorthodox methods are encouraged as a means of truly understanding what is happening. Teachers who lack confidence in their own understanding of the ideas may not want to include these sorts of activities in their classrooms.Related: Math Forum audio & video.
Math…. “Introducing the 97-Month Car Loan”
Last month Nakisha Bishop took out a loan to buy a $23,000 Toyota Camry and pay off several thousand dollars still owed on her old car. The key to making it work: she got more than six years–75 months in all–to pay it off.
“I had a new baby on the way, and I was trying to keep my monthly payment a little bit lower to help afford child care,” Ms. Bishop, a 34-year-old sheriff’s deputy in Palm Beach County, Fla., said recently. She pays $480 a month for the 2013 Camry, just $5 a month more than the note on her old car. The car won’t be paid off until her 1-month-old daughter is heading to first grade.
Ms. Bishop’s 75-month loan illustrates two important trends rippling through the U.S. auto industry. Rising new-car prices and competition among lenders to attract borrowers is pushing loans to lengthier terms. In part, banks see the longer terms as a way to attract buyers, by keeping monthly payments under $500 a month.Related: Math Forum.
It’s Time to Turn the Page on Math in Seattle Schools
Days are getting longer, the weather is warmer. The smell of spring is in the air. But if you inhale deeply down by JSCEE, there’s another smell. It’s the smell of math. After years of sideways movement, the stars are aligned for systemic changes to math instruction in Seattle Public Schools.
When you look at Seattle kids’ math achievement against other urban districts, Seattle might seem to be doing OK. As a district-level statistic, we’re not too bad. But closer inspection of disaggregated data and the view from inside the system prompt a cry for help. Seattle still has a large number of struggling students and a persistent achievement gap which we can’t shake. Outside tutoring has become commonplace, with math as the most frequent remediation subject. However, recent national and state developments have identified common ground and outcome-proven methods which can serve as a model for Seattle.
This brings us around to a community support initiative for math education. Seattle has a math-focused School Board, and Seattle’s new superintendent, Jose Banda, came to Seattle from proven math success with a diverse student population in Anaheim. Recent news reports are that staff at JSCEE are planning a K-8 math instructional materials adoption soon. Examples of success are scattered through Seattle classrooms and it’s time for those successes to take root across the district.Related: Math forum audio/video and Seattle’s “Discovery Math” lawsuit.
A Math Teacher on Common Core Standards
Stephanie Sawyer, via a kind reader’s email:
I don’t think the common core math standards are good for most kids, not just the Title I students. While they are certainly more focused than the previous NCTM-inspired state standards, which were a horrifying hodge-podge of material, they still basically put the intellectual cart before the horse. They pay lip service to actually practicing standard algorithms. Seriously, students don’t have to be fluent in addition and subtraction with the standard algorithms until 4th grade?
I teach high school math. I took a break to work in the private sector from 2002 to 2009. Since my return, I have been stunned by my students’ lack of basic skills. How can I teach algebra 2 students about rational expressions when they can’t even deal with fractions with numbers?
Please don’t tell me this is a result of the rote learning that goes on in grade- and middle-school math classes, because I’m pretty sure that’s not what is happening at all. If that were true, I would have a room full of students who could divide fractions. But for some reason, most of them can’t, and don’t even know where to start.
I find it fascinating that students who have been looking at fractions from 3rd grade through 8th grade still can’t actually do anything with them. Yet I can ask adults over 35 how to add fractions and most can tell me. And do it. And I’m fairly certain they get the concept. There is something to be said for “traditional” methods and curriculum when looked at from this perspective.
Grade schools have been using Everyday Math and other incarnations for a good 5 to 10 years now, even more in some parts of the country. These are kids who have been taught the concept way before the algorithm, which is basically what the Common Core seems to promote. I have a 4th grade son who attends a school using Everyday Math. Luckily, he’s sharp enough to overcome the deficits inherent in the program. When asked to convert 568 inches to feet, he told me he needed to divide by 12, since he had to split the 568 into groups of 12. Yippee. He gets the concept. So I said to him, well, do it already! He explained that he couldn’t, since he only knew up to 12 times 12. But he did, after 7 agonizing minutes of developing his own iterated-subtraction-while-tallying system, tell me that 568 inches was 47 feet, 4 inches. Well, he got it right. But to be honest, I was mad; he could’ve done in a minute what ended up taking 7. And he already got the concept, since he knew he had to divide; he just needed to know how to actually do it. From my reading of the common core, that’s a great story. I can’t say I feel the same.
If Everyday Math and similar programs are what is in store for implementing the common core standards for math, then I think we will continue to see an increase in remedial math instruction in high schools and colleges. Or at least an increase in the clientele of the private tutoring centers, which do teach basic math skills.Related links: Math Forum.
