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Christopher, who is 12, wanted to get me a Christmas present of his own choosing this year. We both agreed that the best bet would be a book, so Ed took him to Barnes and Noble, where he found just the thing.
"It will make you laugh," he kept saying. "It's funny. It will be funny to you."
He was right.
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"So You Have to Teach Math?"
This is scary. There is a market of K-6 teachers who apparently didn't realize they had to (and weren't prepared to) teach math?
Just what our kids need; teachers using a survivor's guide to teaching.
I just about plotzed when I saw the title.
Actually, now that I look at it again I'm not quite as horrified. I had thought it was directed at Grades 6-8.
Even so, the title is beyond the pale.
Is that the same Marilyn Burns who wrote this article, arguing that kids should invent their own algorithms?
http://www.mathsolutions.com/documents/1994_Arith_Last_Holdout.pdf
That is pretty funny. And scary.
Same Marilyn Burns. And same Robyn Silbey who was a math coach at College Gardens when Singapore Math was piloted there (in Rockville MD). She says good things about SM, but sings a strange tune when she says that in the end, no textbook really matters, it's the teacher who matter. And she, like Leah Quinn of Montgomery County Public Schools is convinced that SM doesn't do a good job with fractions.
good lord
how anyone advocating constructivist math texts could argue that Singapore Math doesn't do a good job on fractions is beyond me
Just looked on Amazon.com to see an excerpt from said book. This section leaped out:
"What’s important to know about the national math standards?
"Our current national math standards, titled Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, are published by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics. Released in April 2000, our standards are built on several important ideas:"
Note the use of the term "our" as in "our standards". These are not national standards as in federal government standards. They are the standards of a private organization called NCTM. They make it sound like the standards are those written by the federal government and published by the NCTM. I've heard people refer to NCTM's standards as "national standards" before and when I question them on this, i.e, "Are these federal standards?" they quickly back down and say "Oh, no, these are NCTM's, a private organization." Why don't they say anything about California's standards, I wonder?
Note the use of the term "our" as in "our standards". These are not national standards as in federal government standards.
I had an argument with Ed about this over vacation.
He was close to the National History Social Science standards debacle.
Lynne Cheney set in motion the huge undertaking of writing national history standards, which states would have been free to adopt or not as they saw fit.
Then Lynne Cheney destroyed them on the eve of publication.
Ed says the standards are incredibly good, and I have copies of the books (which I haven't managed to read).
I keep telling him: the AHA needed to get behind the standards.
Ed says the AHA has no power, none, over K-12; everything is in the hands of the Social Studies people (whatever the equivalent organization is).
The social studies people were a problem all through the process of writing the standards; it took a huge amount of effort to bring them on board.
But I say, "So what?"
Take it out of their hands.
Ed argues that the AHA couldn't involve itself because the AHA as a matter of principle does not engage in partisan politics. During the Vietnam War, when virtually every member opposed the war, the AHA did not take a public position.
So once Lynne Cheney had made the standards a right-left issue the AHA couldn't weigh in.
I just don't get that.
The history social science standards were written by professional historians; the AHA in fact approved of and valued the work.
I see no reason for the AHA to simply accept the politicization of the standards and "go away."
At a minimum, once the brouhaha died down, the AHA should have done what Temple did with her animal welfare audit: they should have posted the documents to their website for the public to download.
While we were arguing about the History standards Ed said that some states had adopted them, New York included.
I looked up Fordham's rating of New York's history standards and they give NY A in American and world history.
It's interesting, because Ed and I both have the consistent impression that Christopher is learning important material in social studies. All the kids seem to be learning; you don't hear constant complaints about the social studies teachers (and I don't think you see tenuring of teachers widely regarded as weak).
Another interesting thing.
We also see Christopher as learning a great deal of solid content in his science courses.
Well, guess what?
Our science standards also receive a grade of A.
For us the problematic subject areas are math (a mess) and English (not a mess, but not what it should be).
Well....NY state math standards get a C and our ELA standards get a B.
Our perceptions of Christopher's classes coincide exactly with the Fordham Foundation's ratings of our state standards.
This tells me how important content is. Schools probably have more problems of every kind, including problems with teachers & teaching, when the standards aren't good.
I suspect good standards work the way Saxon Math works: good standards support teachers.
Here are the New York state Social Studies standards
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