"School's out forever"

In the Wall Street Journal today:

From the moment my children left school forever ten years ago, I felt a radiant, ineffable joy suffuse my very being. Far from being depressed or sad, I was elated. There was a simple reason for this: From that point onward, I would never again have to think about the kids and school. Never, ever, ever.

I would never have to go to the middle school office to find out why my child was doing so poorly in math. I would never have to ask the high-school principal why the French teacher didn’t seem to speak much French. I would never have to ask the grade-school principal why he rewrote my daughter’s sixth-grade graduation speech to include more references to his own prodigious sense of humor and caring disposition, and fewer jokes of her own.

I would never have to complain that the school had discontinued the WordMasters competition, the one activity at which my son truly excelled. I would never have to find out if my son was in any way responsible for a classmate damaging his wrist during recess. I would never again have to listen to my child, or anyone else’s, play the cello.

I would never have to attend a parent-teacher meeting to find out why my daughter’s history instructor was teaching the class that England’s King Edward II didn’t have a son. A son named Edward III. A son who took special pains to publicly hang the man who allegedly killed his dad—and let the body rot for a couple of days, just to show how ticked off he was about his father’s mistreatment. All of which my kids knew because their mother grew up 5 miles from the castle where Edward II was heinously butchered. Leaving behind Edward III. His son.

“The timeline gets confusing back then,” the teacher explained when we visited him. No, it doesn’t. In history, this thing happened and that thing didn’t. If you didn’t know that, your students got crummy AP scores. And then they didn’t get into the best college. My wife and I weren’t going out of our way to embarrass the teacher. It was just…well…first you’re wrong about Edward III, and then you’re wrong about Henry III, and before you know it, you’re wrong about Richard III. Who knows where it all could lead?

But now it no longer mattered. The ordeal had ended; the 18-year plague had run its course; the bitter cup had passed from my lips. I would never quaff from its putrid contents again. Good riddance.

[snip]

From nursery school on, everything involving my children’s education was payback for an earlier mistake in parental judgment. A teacher told us that our little daughter wasn’t socially mature. Or emotionally mature. Or something. Giving her “the gift of time,” the teacher assured us, would mean that she would always be the oldest, and therefore the most confident, kid in class.

So we had her repeat the last year of nursery school. As it turned out, it also meant that she would be the smartest kid in class. And because of this, she would spend her entire school experience without a proper peer group, mostly bored out of her mind.

The fallout from this decision never stopped reverberating. My daughter disliked her first kindergarten teacher so much that we had to get her transferred to another class. She thought some of her middle school and high-school teachers were incompetent clowns. Some were. We had to arrange for her to jump from ninth-grade classes to 10th-grade ones, because the work was so dull. It was not a happy school experience.

On a more positive note, she ended up going to Harvard. Some might argue that holding her back a year and giving her the gift of time was what helped her get into Harvard. I disagree. We took bad advice because we didn’t know what we were doing at the time, and neither did the teacher. We were amateurs, which is a synonym for “parents.” If we had not held our daughter back a year, she would have gone to Harvard 12 months earlier.

It is famously said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to be Parent of the Day forever. And so it was with us.

Not content with the one foolish decision to hold our daughter back, we did the exact same thing with my son, making him repeat kindergarten, at the behest of the professionals. This was a humiliating experience that enraged him, because it permanently separated him from his peer group. For the next 13 years, his best friends were always one year ahead of him.

He never forgave us, and I can’t think of any reason why he should. Yes, we thought we were making the right decision at the time, but so did George Armstrong Custer. The results were similar.

My wife and I never regretted sending our kids to public school. A lot of parents pulled their children out of the public schools when they got to sixth grade, with the rationale that they wouldn’t get a proper education otherwise. My daughter went to Harvard, and my son got a free ride to law school, in part because they had several truly outstanding teachers, so the argument that public school holds students back didn’t exactly hold form for them.

Still, public school was no picnic for our kids. Public schools are designed to handle the vast majority of students, but they aren’t so good with those at the top or those at the bottom. [editor's note: wrong] A lot of my daughter’s teachers got fed up with her bellyaching about the insipid materials and the languid pace of learning, and would have preferred that we yank her out and send her to some precious private school.

That wasn’t going to happen. Public school is the great litmus test of democracy; if you don’t believe in public schools, you don’t believe in America. At least that’s what we believe. [editor's note: What?]

It was easier with my son than with my daughter, but only because he hated the very idea of school. Our daughter didn’t object to school per se; she just wanted it to be more challenging. Our son wanted school to go away, especially after we pulled the repeating-kindergarten stunt. He never complained that school was boring, that he hated his classes or that his teachers were dimwits. He just didn’t like school. Full stop. He’d rather play sports or videogames or stay at home watching movies and reading the books he wanted to read. He didn’t stop hating school until he went to college and got to major in classics.

My kids hated cant and they hated lies. They hated the bloodless, inanimate way history was taught to them. At dinner every night, they would pump me for the real truth about history, not the dreary, politically correct twaddle they were taught in school.

They wanted to hear about the Holy Innocents, about St. Lucy, about the Golden Horde, about the time a young French archer fatally wounded Richard the Lionhearted, and on his deathbed Richard the Lionhearted said, “Don’t do anything nasty to that feisty little kid,” and his generals said “OK.” And then, about five minutes after King Richard died, they flayed the kid alive.

They wanted to hear about Alexander the Great, Lady Godiva, Judas Iscariot, Erwin Rommel and unexpected nuances in Apache torture methods. They didn’t want to hear that the Iroquois lived in longhouses and respected women and had a governmental structure that exerted a profound influence on Thomas Jefferson. They wanted to hear about what the Iroquois did to their French Jesuit captives. [editor's note: yes, well, the reason your kids could hear about what the Iroquois did to their French Jesuit captives at the dinner table is that they had parents who didn't go to public schools & thus knew what a Jesuit was]

There were other problems along the way. Personal problems. When my son was around 14, he suddenly became very morose and angry. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that a kid at school was giving him a hard time and had attacked him with a particularly nasty turn of phrase.

My son was big; his tormentor was not. I asked him if he was afraid of the boy, and he said no. I told him to go to school the next day, grab the boy by the throat, jam him into an empty locker and say that he would knock all his teeth down his throat if he ever bothered him again.

“But I’ll get suspended if I do that,” he protested.

“Oh. I see. You’ll get suspended, and you’ll have to spend a few days at home watching television. Where’s the downside there?” [editor's note: yup, that was pretty much our attitude]

My son got a funny look on his face. He stopped being morose. He stopped being angry. He never told me what happened the next day at school. But I think that cheap punk got jammed right into a locker.

My wife was mortified when she heard about the advice I’d given my son. It seemed so crude, primeval. But it worked. As I explained to her at the time, we were both just doing the best we could with the resources available to us. We were making this stuff up as we went along.

[snip]

There is a central paradox about being a parent and trying to get your kids to profit from their school experiences. You go into it hoping that your children will be happy, all the while knowing that your own school experience was mostly miserable. You think you can make things better for your children, because surely things have changed since you were young—no more nuns with thick, fearsome rulers, no more priests who get a kick out of slapping boys’ faces—but in the end you can’t save your kids from the inevitable.

The greatest American novel is “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It’s about a kid who hates school. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is about a kid who hates school. “The Catcher in the Rye” is about a kid who hates school, “A Separate Peace” is about a kid who hates school, and so are scores of other books.

School seems to be an almost universally unpleasant experience. You can try to sugarcoat it, yes, but you know from personal experience that school is horrid. There you are with all that imagination and energy, and yet you’re trapped inside all day reading books you don’t want to be reading and learning things you don’t want to be learning from teachers who often don’t want to be teaching.

Then one day it’s all over, and your children leave—and you and your spouse find yourselves staring at each other from either side of an empty nest. And there’s only one thing you can think to say to each other: Thank God that’s over.

Mr. Queenan writes the weekly Moving Targets column. This essay is adapted from “The Dadly Virtues,” recently published by the Templeton Press.

Another year, another school board election

Needless to say, I cannot resist a school board election.

Letter to the editor:

At the September 23, 2013 meeting of the Board of Education, Superintendent Kris Harrison briefed the board on his plan for the district.

His plan is drawn from Tony Wagner’s 2008 opinion piece, “Rigor Redefined,” available here.

Wagner believes the world is changing so rapidly that by the time today’s children reach adulthood, most of the knowledge they learned in school will be obsolete.

Thus the school’s traditional mission of imparting knowledge to a new generation should be subordinated to a new mission: helping students master seven “21st century skills” Wagner claims to have identified. (Wagner spends the second half of his essay denigrating Advanced Placement classes and their teachers.)

Two years later, the superintendent has acted on at least five of Wagner’s seven “skills.” This has had the effect of actually increasing the need for tutors, because teaching knowledge is not the district’s priority. Teaching “21st century skills” is. That’s why we now have flipped classrooms, learning stations in 6th-grade math, children sitting in pods peering at iPads and Chromebooks, guidance counselors ordered not to help students draw up lists of colleges, and a Shark Tank project in the middle school. (The last two innovations fall under skill number 4: “Initiative and Entrepreneurialism.”)

What unifies Wagner’s list of seven “skills” is the absence of knowledge, and that’s the first problem. Cognitive scientists have spent years trying to explain that knowledge stored in long-term memory is different from knowledge stored on Google. To think critically, you need the former. When you think without knowledge, all you’re doing is taking your clichés for a walk.

A second problem: Wagner’s piece was published before the crash. It was wrong then (as a few minutes on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website reveals), but it’s even further off base today. The 21st century Wagner imagined, with its happy, humming global society and its ever-increasing “abundance,” is not the 21st century we got. Our children got world recession and Charlie Hebdo.

But the most important problem is the fact that all of these changes are being made without the consent of the people. No member of the board has expressed enthusiasm for changing the mission of the school to the teaching of 21st century skills, yet three members of the board have allowed the superintendent to proceed.

I hope the next board will have the strength to change course.

Catherine Johnson

Allison on Math Nights

MSMI has done several parent math nights.

When we are asked to give a math talk by a school and it is well attended, it is because the parents are upset. If it is very well attended, it is because the parents are in an uproar about the math program.

Since we generally are going in to fix the math program, or to support a math change to it, our goal is first to name the problem. We explain the issue (nationally, not just locally, not just here, wherever we are, but nationally) is that US curricula are not preparing kids for algebra. We tell parents what they know intuivitely but can't name. We tell them what they've watched their older kids suffered through. Then we explain we need to change what we teach, when we teach it, and what the teachers know about the maththey teach to fix it. When we are done, generally, parents calm down and give us the benefit of the doubt.

Usually, the second math night (a followup) has 1/4 of the turnout the first one had.

If a math night has no attendees, it is because math is doing just fine--the parents are concerned about some other problem.

Parents don't have time to go to meetings if things are fine. They go to indicate their disapproval or their concern.

We also found if the *children* put on the math night, as one of the grade night programs, it is well received--so if we want parents to learn about the math program, learn the games to practice math facts, etc. then it needs to be a child-centered event. Parents come when kids put on a math carnival. They even enjoy it. It does not need to be fuzzy math--kids LOVE stumping their parents at mental math calculations and bar modeling.

We tell parents what they know intuivitely but can't name.

Knowing intuitively that something is amiss: this is the chronic problem parents face. You know something--your cognitive unconscious knows something, rather--but you can't name it.

I remember, when I first became politically engaged here, living in a state of chronic anxiety that a) I didn't know what I was talking about and b) I was about to be publicly called out on not knowing what I was talking about. I spent hours Googling and reading, and reading and Googling, to make sure everything I said and wrote in my district had already been said and written by someone who did know what they were talking about.

Kitchen Table Math was incredibly important to that effort. I wrote posts to put into words what my cognitive unconscious already knew (or suspected), and I said nothing, in district, without ktm commenters vetting it first.

Funny thing: at some point I stopped feeling anxious, and I stopped obsessively fact-checking myself.

I hadn't become an expert on math or math instruction or public schools in general, but somehow I knew enough to feel confident that anything I said -- even something I said off the top of my head -- would be in the realm. Which it generally was.

I also, and I hesitate putting this in print, developed a sense of how thin my adversaries' knowledge was. That's not a criticism. Administrators can't possibly know everything about every subject (that's the problem with central administrators choosing math curricula), and an administrator who went to ed school before constructivism was in full bloom may not actually know that much about the doctrine and its history, however committed s/he may be to "rolling out" one constructivist initiative after another.

In short, at some point it dawned on me that I could pretty much say whatever I wanted and get away with it. I could get sloppy and no one would know but me.

That came as a bit of a shock.

I see politicians and pundits differently now.

Politicians and pundits are churning out an awful lot of content.

How often do they actually know that what they're saying is true?

How much fact checking happens in politics?

I'm guessing not too much.

More Connected Math Woes, This Time in Pennsylvania

The Riverview School District enrolls about 1,100 k-12 students in Oakmont and Verona Boroughs, Pennsylvania.

From an online news blog, the Plum-Oakmont Patch

The Riverview School Board meeting on Monday had the largest attendance in years, according to school board members. Parents filled the high school library, and in a citizen comment session that lasted two hours, they discussed their concerns about the middle school Connected Mathematics 2 program.

The parents had a lot of familiar things to say:

Among the parents' concerns were the group work involved, the participation aspect of the class, the frequency of testing and the combination of students at different math levels in the same classroom.

Parent Joseph Knapp said his son struggled in the class because of the way it was structured.

"I, unfortunately, found the Connected Math program to be an unorthodox way of teaching students," he said. "It seemed like the students taught themselves, in theory.

"They have groups where they figure out problems and are encouraged to come up with the ideas on their own. I thought that was ridiculous. In sixth and seventh grades, you need instruction."

Parent Tim Lazor said his son usually did very well in math class until he took the class this year. Lazor said he doesn't think the program has the support of the students or the teachers who are teaching it.

"I don't think the teachers bought into this," he said. "That's a critical component.

Eight years to find a new curriculum?

Superintendent Charles Erdeljac said district officials had been looking for a way to improve the math curriculum for about eight years. He said to participate in the Math and Science Partnership of Southwest Pennsylvania, the district would have to implement Connected Math 2 or MathScape—the only two programs with the National Science Foundation's "stamp of approval."

Scores declined?

When asked by parents about Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Scores, principal Jay Moser said the scores of last school year's seventh graders dropped by 9 percent, according to primary figures from the state department of education.

Hmmn I guess math is different in small-town Pennsylvania.

Erdeljac said district officials are going to continue to monitor the program and data associated with it to ensure it is a good fit for students.

"On the one hand, we have to have fidelity to the program as it's intended to be taught, but on the other hand, we're Riverview," he said. "We need to find out how this program can be most successful here at Riverview…we're still in the process of making this program Riverview's Connected Math program."

are we having fun yet?

Two memories of this math controversy in SCASD never fail to make me chuckle when I think back on them.  The first was a comment posted on the CDT site after the Ed Mahon wrote his first article on the subject, entitled “The Great Math Debate”.  The commenter wrote, “If you say ‘math debate’ over and over again, it sounds kind of funny.”

The second one happened at a math information session for parents last spring.  The district curriculum staff were telling the parents how much fun Investigations was for their children, and a parent raised his hand and said, “You know, it’s okay if my kids don’t have so much fun if they learn some more math.  They have plenty of fun at home.”

Parents for Quality Math Education

Another rude awakening

Last year, my first-born was in enrolled in our local public school in second grade, and although he spent 6 or 7 hours there each day, he came home with tons of homework and a good deal more learning remaining. I started to think, “Why am I sending my kids to school, when the school sends them back to me to educate?” A friend later complained to me that when they gave her son a book report, it meant at least 5 hours of her own time working on it with him. Another parent told me how great the tutoring was at the chain store down the street from her. All this got me to thinking: if I’m ultimately in charge of my kids’ education, why do I feel so powerless? . . .

I assumed that the government knows best what, and how, to teach my kids. It’s an assumption I was raised with, one I never challenged, until now. Well, you know what they say about you when you assume…

“It’s always worse than you think?” Well, that’s what we often say around here.

Another parent gobsmacked by our public schools

Back to School: Part One

the Kumbaya statement

for all you David Kaplan fans out there:

unity, yes, but not yet time for Kumbaya

Paul B on his short, happy career in politics

A long time ago I worked for a major computer manufacturer and lived in a very small town. The town was investigating their first computer purchase and I volunteered to be on the committee doing the investigating.

I managed to convince my company to donate every last bit of equipment just for the PR benefit but the deal fell apart after months of political warfare.

Long story short, the politicos could not agree on whose office would get the printer. It seems the analysis and critical thinking boiled down to this nugget...

The printer 'owner' would have all of the 'power' by virtue of seeing and distributing all the reports that it spit out. Absent an agreement on this nit, the whole deal went down and they continued without a computer system for years afterwards.

That was the beginning and end of my career in the world of politics.

Given what I am learning about the world of local school boards, I think these people were right.

The person who owns the printer owns the power.

What do you think?

More anon.

the natives are restless

How much of this has to do with that asinine Everyday Math? I'm fighting every week with the teachers to keep a calculator out of my kid's hands until she can do arithmetic on her own, something she's eminently capable of doing someday (she's six, for crying out loud). Yes, including long division (not that it's part of the curriculum -- why think for yourself when you can use the outboard brain?) and maybe some introductory algebra. These teachers, who'd stare like deer in headlights if asked to calculate the future value of anything and come out with a number, give me this endless stream of talking-point baloney from the Everyday Math "how to reassure parents who are scared because it's not like the math they remember" book. They don't understand why I'm so stuck on the idea that my daughter should be able to do her own adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying. AAARGH.

Amy from Iowa

You can vote to "Recommend" your favorite comments on the story. Amy got my vote.

Speaking of Everyday Math, remember this?

parents ageing out

palisadesk is on a roll:

As for parents changing the system -- good luck with that. Bureaucracies, especially large and monopolistic ones, are notoriously impervious to customer complaints. Those in charge know that even the most militant parent will "age out" of the battle in a decade or less, and a new crop of starry-eyed, or simply naive, customers will present themselves.

Letter from a Child

Thomas Sowell from the Hoover Institution takes time out to write about one of those inane letter writing assignments, but from the perspective of a recipient. It's a nice piece, except don't you think he should have complained to the teacher instead of the parents?

He starts be recognizing the general problem:

Parents send their children to school to acquire the knowledge that has come down to us as a legacy of our culture — whether it is mathematics, science, or whatever — so that those children can grow up and go out into the world equipped to face life’s challenges.

Too many “educators” see teaching not as a responsibility to the students but as an opportunity for themselves — whether to indoctrinate a captive audience with the teacher’s ideology, manipulate them in social experiments, or just do fun things that make teaching easier, whether or not it really educates the child. (Emphasis mine.)

But then he brings in parents as complicit:

Unfortunately, the dumbed-down education of previous generations means that many parents today see nothing wrong with their children being manipulated in school, instead of being educated.

Such parents may see nothing wrong with spending precious time in classrooms chit-chatting about how everyone “feels” about things on television or in their personal lives.

Well, okaaaayy, but a lot of parents have a big problem with this...it's just that we have had our collective hands slapped enough to know that that any objection will either (1) fall on deaf ears or (2) result in some type of subtle or not-so-subtle retaliation played out on our kids.

But while our children are frittering away time on trivia, other children in other countries are acquiring the skills in math, science, or other fields that will allow them to take the jobs our children will need when they grow up.

You betcha. It would be nice if someone pointed that out to the NCTM which reportedly just issued its high school guidelines. Now to the letter from little Johnny:

[S]chools are supposed to prepare children for the future, not give teachers opportunities for self-indulgences in the present. One of these self-indulgences was exemplified by a letter I received recently from a fifth-grader in the Sayre Elementary School in Lyon, Mich.

He said, “I have been assigned to ask a famous person a question about how he or she would solve a difficult problem.” The problem was what to do about the economy.

Oh yeah, we've been there. Stupid, stupid assignment. We tell our kid, just do it and get it over with. So what does Tom do? He's well-intentioned, but he writes back to the PARENTS!

What earthly good would it do your son to know what economic policies I think should be followed, especially since what I think should be done will not have the slightest effect on what the government will in fact do? And why should a fifth-grader be expected to deal with questions that people with Ph.D.’s in economics have trouble wrestling with?

Damn straight. But, ah, the parent didn't come up with the assignment.

The damage does not end with wasting students’ time and misdirecting their energies, serious though these things are. Getting students used to looking to so-called “famous” people for answers is the antithesis of education as a preparation for making up their own minds as citizens of a democracy, rather than as followers of “leaders.”

Indeed!

The fad of assigning students to write to strangers is an irresponsible self-indulgence of teachers who should be teaching.

Yeah! But, honest, I didn't ask for this assignment!
Then, predictably, his final pronouncement:

[T]hat practice will not end until enough parents complain to enough principals and enough elected officials to make it end.

Yup, it's our own darn fault. Blame us for that lousy education our kids are getting! But that's a little unfair to Mr. Sowell, because he really believes (no snickers now) that parents have power.

Parents need a union.

Tracy W on the speech

Tracy W responds to Mike Petrilli's post at Flypaper:

Here’s an African-American president, speaking to the NAACP, and arguing for reform in our schools and responsibility in our homes and community.

Notice the lack of any responsibility for schools. If school staff, the paid professionals, aren’t responsible for learning, why pay them?

And if parents are going to be responsible, then they should have the money, which they can then use to hire teachers if they think it’s worthwhile.

Writing instructors everywhere (I include parents in this category):^* save this Comment to show your students.

This is one of the most succinct rebuttals of an argument I have ever read.

It is a fantastically difficult feat to pull off.

As to Tracy's point, I would love to see a system where parents did the hiring, which is what is taking place in the world of homeschooling now.

I imagine that if parents did the hiring some teachers would establish 'private practices' while others might be employed by schools with an organizational structure similar to a community college, perhaps, or to a law firm. The school would employ teachers and provide health insurance, but would not assign students to classrooms. Parents would choose.

I can also imagine that these schools would have school-wide "positive behavior" systems in place, offering parents a happy and safe environment for their kids. For most parents, "happy and safe" is priceless, and such schools would be swamped with customers.

As in a law firm, teachers might have tenure; presumably they would also have a great deal more authority over what they teach and how they teach it.


^* Mary Hake says that she helped all of her kids with their school writing assignments, and she advises parents to do the same. I'll get my interview with Mary assembled shortly.

informed consent

I am not a fan of "innovation" as defined by edu-folk.

Innovation as defined by edu-folk: "letting schools and teachers try things" without informed consent from parents.

I'm against it.


here's an innovation

My district, a few years back, purchased Open Court, one of three Scientifically-Based Reading Research (SBRR) curricula that qualified for Reading First funding (pdf file).

Next year we're dumping Open Court and buying Fountas & Pinnell, a curriculum that did not qualify for Reading First funding and is deemed "Not Acceptable" by the National Council on Teacher Quality (pdf file).

Any particular reason why we're doing this? Any data or evidence that Fountas & Pinnell produces better results than Open Court?

Don't know.

Hasn't come up.



These 19 curricular projects have essentially been experiments.
Westchester schools & their curricula

in today's email

For Immediate Release
July 13, 2009 Contact: Celia Lose 202/745-2176 (until 7/15) close@aft.org
AFT’s Weingarten Calls for School Reform To Be Done ‘With Us, Not to Us’
Major Educational Address Calls for Collaboration and Innovation

subject line: AFT's Weingarten Calls for School Reform To Be Done "With Us, Not to Us'


Strange.

I feel exactly the same way.

comments needed, part 2

Sorry - I'm horribly late with this, but it's probably worth taking a few minutes to leave a comment here.


parents are responsible for results
CA Math Frameworks: parents must be "involved" in math education at all grade levels
CA math framework: Responsibilities of Teachers, Students, Parents, Administrators
parents are the problem
outsourcing to parents

CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

time to put the public back in public schools

National Coalition Presents "Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards and Assessments" and Seeks Seat at National Standards Writing Table

The United States Coalition for World Class Math, a new non-partisan organization of concerned parents collaborating with professional mathematicians, educators, and others to promote improvements in K-12 mathematics education, has just issued its "Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards and Assessments." It is also asking to be included in the decision-making process for the national mathematics standards currently being developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers in concert with several other educational organizations.

"Extraordinary numbers of grassroots groups have formed in recent years to learn more about current issues in mathematics education and to promote improvements in K-12 mathematics curricula," says Coalition co-founder Timotha Trigg. "Many parents believe there is already a crisis in mathematics education and fear that poor standards, if adopted by states on a national scale, would make the situation even worse."

For example, the most recent Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) found that only 6% of U.S. eighth grade students perform at the advanced level in mathematics, whereas 40 - 45% of eighth graders in top-performing countries reach this level. The poor performance of U.S. students on these and other state, national, and international assessments has not only spurred interest in creating national mathematics standards, it has also motivated many parent groups to unite under a single banner and to design a document setting forth their own principles for K-12 mathematics standards and assessments.

Jill Gladstone, who helped to spearhead the Coalition, states, "This document is intended to help inform the Common Core State Standards Initiative, the 46-state effort that will result in K-12 mathematics standards and assessments for public school students in participating states." Key points of the Coalition's Design Principles, found at United States Coalition for World Class Math, include:

Top-rated mathematics standards (MA, IN, and CA) should be used as a model; University mathematicians must play a key role in establishing priorities and ensuring mathematical content is appropriate and clear in both standards and assessments; and The findings and recommendations of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, which reviewed more than 16,000 research studies, must be followed.

Gladstone adds, "Our website is generating a tremendous amount of interest nationwide. Each week, at least one new state chapter is being formed by parents who are counting on us to make their voices heard. These parents have earned a seat at the decision-making table as a core of common mathematics standards and assessments is constructed. We look forward to participating as a full partner in the effort to create world class mathematics standards and assessments for our children."

Contact Information:
Jill Gladstone 908-672-2070
Timotha Trigg 610-388-6220
E-Mail: USWCmath @ yahoo.com
Website: www.usworldclassmath.org

CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

comments needed

Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards


CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

edweek
educationweek

United States for World Class Math

Just in: a website for people like us who want a seat at the table when it comes to national math standards:

United States Coalition for World Class Math

Check out their Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards:

1. All students should be expected to master foundational concepts and skills – especially in arithmetic – that are prerequisite to an authentic Algebra I course in a logical progression from grade to grade in the elementary and middle school years. The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) should be the guiding document describing appropriate mathematical content.

2. The K-7 standards should be designed to prepare as many students as possible for an authentic Algebra I course in Grade 8. K-7 standards should be based on the "Critical Foundations of Algebra" described on pages 17-19 of the NMAP’s Final Report. Standards for authentic Algebra I and Algebra II courses should be based on "The Major Topics of School Algebra" described on pages 15-16 of the NMAP’s Final Report.

3. Standards-based alternatives could be written for less prepared students and alternate paths after algebra and geometry for high school students, depending on student achievement, interests, and career goals. For example:

a. The standards document could outline the possibility of a two-year course spanning Grade 7 and Grade 8 based on Grade 7 standards for students who, at the end of Grade 6, are judged to need more time to master foundational concepts and skills for Algebra I.

b. The standards document could outline a two-year course spanning Grade 8 and Grade 9 based on authentic Algebra I standards for students completing Grade 7 who are judged to need two full years to master Algebra I standards.

4. As emphasized by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, "a focused, coherent progression of mathematics learning, with an emphasis on proficiency with key topics, should become the norm in elementary and middle school mathematics curricula. Any approach that continually revisits topics year after year without closure is to be avoided." Placement of the standards should reflect the grade level at which mastery is expected, and standards should not be repeated from year to year.

a. The sequence of the standards should be logical and hierarchical, following the structure of mathematics itself and should be modeled after the strong standards in California, Indiana, and Massachusetts.

b. "Benchmarks for the Critical Foundations" (pages 19-20 in the National Mathematics Advisory Panel’s Final Report) and recommendations from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Curriculum Focal Points should be used for grade level placement.

c. Concepts and skills, once mastered, should be used in subsequent years with a minimum of review.

5. In order to focus on building solid foundations for the more advanced mathematics – including algebra – that occurs in Grades 8-12, extraneous topics including aspects of geometry such as tessellations, nets, statistical approaches to geometric properties, much of data analysis, probability and statistics, and non-algebraic concepts such as pattern recognition should not be present in the K-7 standards.

6. In Grades K-7, the distribution of content by strand should be stated explicitly as percentages at each grade level and should change as students move up through the grades.

a. Early grades should concentrate on the arithmetic of whole numbers and measurement, with a limited amount of geometry and graphing. Certain aspects of algebra, as well as preparation for algebra, should be present from the earliest grades, as is the case with the California and Massachusetts standards.

b. Students should be expected to acquire automatic recall of basic number facts at least to 10 x 10 and 10 + 10.

c. Students should be expected to understand and use the standard algorithms of whole-number arithmetic in the early elementary grades (i.e., addition, subtraction, multiplication, and long division).

d. Students should be expected to understand and use the standard definitions for operations with fractions in conjunction with the standard algorithms of whole number arithmetic to compute sums, differences, products and quotients of fractions, including fractions expressed as decimals and percents.

e. The algebra strand gains emphasis in the middle grades, focusing on the content specified by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel.

7. The organization of the standards should change at Grade 8.

a. In grades K-7, standards should include multiple strands of mathematics, with their relative weight appropriately adjusted through the grades.

b. For algebra and beyond, standards should be given for a single-subject course sequence (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-calculus, etc.) and their components re-ordered for alternative integrated mathematics courses. The standards for the Geometry course should require students to do proofs and to understand postulates, theorems and corollaries.

8. Mathematical problems should have mathematical answers.

a. In general, students should learn techniques for problem solving that can be applied to many contexts. Problems should be contextualized in the "real world" only when the context is sensible and relevant and contributes to an understanding of the mathematics in the problem.

b. Standards documents should include example problems. The level of difficulty of these problems should reflect mathematical complexity rather than non-mathematical issues.

9. K-12 math standards should meet the criteria specified by the American Federation of Teachers. They should be:

a. Clear and specific enough to provide the basis for a common core curriculum.
b. Rooted in the content of mathematics.
c. Clear and explicit about the content and the complexity students are to learn.
d. Measurable and objective.
e. Comparable in rigor to the standards of A+ countries, with grade-level specificity.

10. Standards documents should appropriately emphasize the attainment of procedural fluency. Students must be competent in performing all K-7 tasks without using a calculator.

11. Standards documents should only address mathematical content; language pertaining to pedagogy should be excluded.

12. As emphasized by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, mathematicians should be included in greater numbers, along with mathematics educators, mathematics education researchers, curriculum specialists, classroom teachers, and the general public, in the standard-setting process and in the review and design of mathematical test items for state, NAEP, and commercial tests.


CO Coalition for World Class Math
CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

status quo la-la-la

....This makes sense when one considers the basic motive people have to defend and justify the status quo. People have a need to believe in a ‘‘just world’’ that is orderly and predictable and in which people get what they deserve (Lerner, 1980). According to system justification theory, people are motivated to view existing social arrangements as legitimate, even when this justifies their own disadvantaged position (e.g., Jost et al., 2004; Jost & Hunyady, 2002). In fact, those with the least power in a system are sometimes the most likely to support and defend that system (Henry & Saul, 2006; Jost et al., 2003). Research reveals that people actively perform their own cognitive and ideological work to preserve their sense that the status quo is desirable and just (e.g., Haines & Jost, 2000; Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002).

There are psychological benefits to accepting the status quo. System-justifying beliefs and ideologies are palliative in that they decrease negative affect and increase positive affect as well as satisfaction with one’s situation (Jost & Hunyady, 2002; Jost et al., 2003). Wakslak and colleagues (2007) demonstrated that system justification leads to a significant reduction in emotional distress, both in general and with regard to moral outrage, guilt, and frustration.
Legitimacy Crisis? Behavioral Approach and Inhibition When Power Differences are Left Unexplained
Pamela K. Smith Æ John T. Jost Æ Ranjini Vijay
Soc Just Res (2008) 21:358–376

These researchers are looking at blacks and women, etc. I'm curious whether they would find similar phenomena in parents whose children are attending public schools.


tactics used to maintain the status quo
Diagnosis Diagnosed by Galen Alessi
on a certain arrogance
inputs & outputs
a rare victory
code of silence
code of silence, part 2

"reality" in Palo Alto

I think it depends on the elementary school. My kids are in middle school now and they have quizzes. I'm not opposing EDM on my own family's account, since my kids aren't in elementary school any more. But, having survived TERC and managed to become proficient in math through our own non-PAUSD enrichment, my kids are an example of what you should not have to do. And I care about the kids whose parents can't coach them through. I hated having to spend precious playtime grinding on math while they wasted their time in school, but at least I was able to get them where they needed to go. In our family's experience, this is a town of special deals, where if you get something for your own family you shut up about the problem, but I am against special deals too and think public education should serve everyone.

Posted by reality, a member of the JLS Middle School community, on Mar 30, 2009 at 2:36 pm

ignoring parents in Palo Alto
welcome to the Grand Canyon
a teacher-mom on Everyday Math
the plot thickens
enlightenment
Steven H on Everyday Math in Palo Alto
where parents get their information
"reality" in Palo Alto

Parents frustrated over math texts
Teacher committee recommends new math text
Ed Week on the ed wars

interview with my cousin re: her experience with EM