Audacious Idea #2: Placement by mastery, not age

My apologies to Gas Station Without Pumps -- I forgot a direct link to the post Placement by Achievement, which is http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/placement-by-achievement//

Somehow I got from Megan Golding's audacious idea (see here) to the blog Gas Station Without Pumps's discussion of eliminating age-based grade level instruction in math, and instituting placement by achievement.

This approach to placing kids has long been popular with parents of gifted children (though for some reason not with school teachers and administrators). It has gone by many names (subject acceleration, readiness grouping, grouping by ability or skill or mastery, … ). I prefer the name placement by achievement, since we are not accelerating students but letting them move at whatever velocity best suits them, and we can’t measure “readiness” but only what has already been achieved. Ability is not the point, achievement is. I guess that “grouping by mastery” is ok, but “mastery” seems to me a more cumbersome word than “achievement” and “mastering” a subject seems to me appropriate for post-baccalaureate studies.

Personally I prefer "placement by mastery", but reasonable people may differ.

In another post, GSWP discusses the recent article by Bill Evers and Ze'ev Wurman, advancing the idea that the California state math standards are superior to the proposed Common Core standards. (I believe California adopted the Common Core standards -- if Evers and Wurman are correct, look out, afterschooling! -- but I digress).

GSWP goes on:

My opinion is that the whole notion of age-based grade levels is wrong and twiddling with the standards won’t fix that. There is value to having standards that all schools and curricula must meet, but I wish that the standards were not labeled with grade levels. There are students ready for algebra long before 8th grade, and students who are barely ready for it by the end of high school. Having students progress through the standards based on mastery, rather than age, would be greatly helped by not labeling the standards with grade levels.

One specific criticism of the Common Core that Evers and Wurman raise, that there is a big jump at 8th grade because the K–7 standards are too weak to provide sufficient support for the 8th grade algebra standards, is probably a valid one and should certainly be considered by the State Board.

Discussions on the Common Core:

• Alternative to the Common Core
• Professor Milgram's Full Review of Grade Level Common Core Math Standards
  

Audacious Idea #1: Illustrate Every Math Standard

Megan Golding is a 10th grade math teacher in Georgia. She has come up with an audacious idea:

I have a simple, if huge, goal: I want to publish a podcast for every single [Georgia Performance Standard] standard and element.

Sure, I’ve seen Khan Academy. It’s great! My addition is real state standards correlation (most of what I’ve seen that’s supposedly correlated to Georgia’s math standards is of shallow, if at all, relevance).

I’ve found that in math, my students want me to repeat the same explanation several times until that light bulb comes on. The podcast allows me to put an explanation in a kid’s hands and let him rewind & replay as much as he needs. Build in a little practice, and you have a nice little remediation tool.

Go look at her first post & do leave comments there.

Wouldn't it be great if every state had a video library like that?

[Cross published at Academic Remediation]

Critique of Envision Math by Casting Out Nines (Robert Talbert)

From January, 2008:

Four questions about this:

1. Should it be a requirement of parenthood that you must remember enough 5th grade math to teach it halfway decently to your kids?
2. Does the smartboard come included with the textbooks?
3. Did anybody else have the overwhelming urge to yell “Bingo!” after about 2 minutes in?
4. When will textbook companies stop drawing the conclusion that because kids today like to play video games, talk on cell phones, and listen to MP3 players, that they are therefore learning in a fundamentally different way than anybody else in history?

The last question is all about the research-free digital nativist assumption that is the source of many lucrative curriculum deals these days. Data, please?

I've added emphasis

basically laughing it off the blogosphere for its happy-clappy, uncritical acceptance of unproven digital nativist frameworks and for going way over the top with smartboards. Little did I know that my own offspring would be in the middle of it just three years later. So, in an effort to process what she’s doing (for me, for her, and for anybody else who cares), this is the first of what might be many posts about the specifics of enVisionMATH, as viewed by a parent whose kid happens to be learning from that curriculum, and who also happens to be a mathematician and math teacher.

So I suggest you bookmark Casting Out Nines and see what develops.

So "Teaching Doesn't Matter"...

I disagree with the administrator that teaching doesn't matter. I believe that in order for students to experience long-term success in mathematics, excellent teachers must be allowed to use excellent curriculum. With that said, I would agree that content plays a major role.

Please refer this administrator to Hung-Hsi Wu's website.
Of particular interest:
How to Prepare Students for Algebra, American Educator, 2001
Must Content Dictate Pedagogy? (2005)

And also to this great article by William H. Schmidt (2008)
What's Missing From Math Standards? Focus, Rigor, and Coherence