Sixth-graders improved three points in both math and reading, to 54 and 53 percent, respectively. Source: Tulsa World
Posted on 07/28/2012 9:38:35 AM PDT by maggiesnotebook
More woeful elementary core curriculum education news from the state of Oklahoma, and specifically in Tulsa and surrounding areas. Headline: Elementary Test Results Dip, and they have dipped "to the lowest rates in years." The good news is, about 24 years ago, Tulsa schools took 6th graders out of elementary schools and moved them into what was transitioning from Junior High School to Middle School. That bright idea is apparently now being corrected and 6th graders are moving back to elementary school where they are better served. The fact is, students across the nation are failing in mathematics and science. Many High School graduates are put in remedial reading classes so they can qualify for college. Appalling. We have convoluted math to the extreme. Our education system continues to be in crisis as we pour billions and billions of dollars into teaching and administration. With half my brain tied behind my back, I know that funding is not the problem. The article and video below will raise your eyebrows, give you a migraine and if you care about your child's future, you will be madder than heck. It's one of the most important pieces I have read on education, other than Kevin Jennings moving out of Obama's Safe Schools Czar office. Please pass this to family and especially to parents who are dismayed at their child's lack of interest in mathematics.
The district's overall fourth-grade reading proficiency rate fell 10 percentage points to 42, and third-grade math is down 9 points to just 48 percent overall. Moderate losses were seen at the fifth-grade level, with math and reading proficiency down 6 and 5 points respectively to 52 percent and 49 percent overall.The New MathSixth-graders improved three points in both math and reading, to 54 and 53 percent, respectively. Source: Tulsa World
by Grumpy at Grumpy Opinions
Years ago when I got out of the service unemployment was high, and no one really wanted Vets, the general assumption was we were all crazy– a slight exaggeration. The construction industry was a little different, cray was normal and it paid well, provided you were willing to get paid for what you produced, instead of the time you put in… The only problem was you were on your own for things like insurance, and the winters were rough on cash flow. That was when I started learning there was more money in selling the materials, then there was in nailing it together..
A couple years later I was managing a lumber yard. One evening I wrote a guy up for 160 feet of baseboard molding, and set him to the kid in back to get loaded up.. and went back to what I was doing.. A couple minutes later the came to and asked how many pieces he should give the customer. The kid was eighteen and had graduated from High School less than a month before..
I looked at him and said ” You’ve got sixteen footers back there, the stuff’s in ten piece bundles, the customer has a racks on his truck, so sixteens are fine.
The pride of the local school system just stood there for a full minute looking at me, then he said “Yeah, but how many pieces do I give him?”
I had to explain to this kid, who had just Graduated High School that ten times sixteen equaled 160-
Over the years I’ve heard people complain about the lack of very basic skills kids have when they finish High School. Educators have demanded and gotten more money, smaller class sizes and the latest and greatest in modern educational tools. The result is a lower quality finished product than we had fifty years and hundreds of billions of ago. Now we’ve gotten to the point that everyone is blaming everyone, the parents blame the schools and the teachers, In turn the schools and the teachers blame the parents.
Every year the experts come up with a new solution, but it will cost money. Somehow the experts don’t get blamed– they just get more money out of the deal.. Before we go any farther, take a look at the video.. The narrator gets much better as she gets into her subject, she’s not so good at first.
Explaining New Math, no - really (video) I’m not so sure if I’d have been able to solve a simple multiplication problem if I’d been taught bu any of those methods. However that’s what the experts say works.. at least while they’re selling the school districts new curriculum models, and very expensive books to go with them.
I sat my almost eleven year old grandson down and we watched the video together, he’s been taught everyone of the algorithms except the lattice method.. Then he laughed a little..
He told me last year as Florida’s FCAT Testing Season was approaching his teacher was having a really hard time getting her students to understand the clusters, thingamajigs and whatever’s the new math calls for.. She was getting desperate. Finally she said “Screw this”, and started erasing everything on the black board.
Then she said.. “You don’t have to show your work on the FCAT, let me show you how to do this stuff right. It didn’t take long for the class to figure it out, when it was taught the way it had been for generations.. before the experts made it better.
“That was my first thought, too. Students are always asking, “When am I ever going to need to know this?” Math should be taught using real world applications.”
I taught my kids reading in 2 months, before they turned 4 years old (it’s really, really, easy using traditional phonics). Once they learn to read, they use it every day of their lives and will NEVER question you again why they had to learn all those weird sounds.
Math, though, takes years (half a decade, roughly to get them ready for Calculus), and that’s doing it the traditional way (i.e., without calculators or pictures of Nelson Mandela). Kids will learn math, provided two things are done: 1) They are taught TRADITIONAL math, and (2) parents stick to it. But no, kids can get by quite well, most days of their lives without doing math, not to mention how easy it is to stay clear of Algebra and Trig. So, yea, they will question why they have to go through all that crap.
But math separates the men from the boys when it comes to the real world. Without math, opportunities are limited (hence the drive of liberals to prevent minorities from learning math - they need to keep their voting blocks intact), with math there are no limits.
It’s up to parents to understand this and push the kids through...and that’s life.
“(instead of the math-phobic ditzes who constitute 85% of the population of ed majors)”
I tend to call teachers drug and sex-crazed animals, at least during their college years...or certainly the Ed-majors that I went to college with.
“I remember (its been some years ago) reading a book by Thomas Sowell about education in this country.”
The book is “Inside American Education” and it is frightening. It’s 20 years old. I read that book and vowed to NEVER let my kids step foot in public school. I kept that vow and certainly don’t regret it. And, as scary as that book is, things have only gotten worse since.
Exactly! It is parents who are and have **always** done the teaching. The school is merely sending home a very expensive afterschooling curriculum.
My prediction:
If every government school in this nation were to disappear tonight, the **same** kids getting an education today would get one tomorrow. The same children NOT getting an education would not get one tomorrow.
Why?
Answer: Because little to NO learning happens in a government school. If children are learning it is due to the afterschooling and preschooling done by the parents, the child with his home assignments and projects, and paid and unpaid tutoring.
We spend **more** on K-12 education ( federal, state and local) than the military and studies have NEVER been done to prove that government schools teach anything at all. Studies have NEVER been done to show what is actually learned in the classroom as compared to what knowledge is IN THE HOME due to the parents, child, and tutoring.
I agree 100% on the importance of math. When I wrote that post, I was thinking of one of my sons who is mathematically-inclined but, ironically, never enjoyed math. Yet, he was able to move ahead in math on his own, just by holding himself to a higher standard. He’s always aiming for a perfect score.
Both of my girls had Catholic educations. They were both very ready for college.
“Both of my girls had Catholic educations. They were both very ready for college.”
Great to hear, and great job.
“I was thinking of one of my sons who is mathematically-inclined but, ironically, never enjoyed math. Yet, he was able to move ahead in math on his own, just by holding himself to a higher standard. He’s always aiming for a perfect score.”
Believe me, 2 of my kids absolutely HATED math. But, as a parent, I didn’t care. It is far too important to be subject to their tastes at that age. They got some sore butts, but learned their math - and love me to this day for putting them through it.
“Answer: Because little to NO learning happens in a government school. If children are learning it is due to the afterschooling and preschooling done by the parents, the child with his home assignments and projects, and paid and unpaid tutoring.”
Exactly. We sent our kids to Christian schools, but we always knew that it was for day-care, and maybe filling in a few loose ends, like history and some other stuff. But they were at least 6 years ahead in math and reading when they started, so we never expected any learning there (we just continued the math at home - the reading was long finished).
Congratulations on a job well done!
upchuck, sorry, the video is in the the article at my blog. I can’t get videos to post here. It’s really worth watching.
upchuck, sorry, the video is in the the article at my blog. I can’t get videos to post here. It’s really worth watching. http://www.maggiesnotebook.com/2012/07/convoluting-math-betraying-our-childrens-future/
“Congratulations on a job well done!”
Thanks, and dittos-back.
And you make the case for you being a pompous ass.
Now that the niceties are out of the way, while you are right about needing to read to be able to understand, however without the proper math training their education is incomplete.
And you make the case for you being a pompous ass.
Now that the niceties are out of the way, while you are right about needing to read to be able to understand, however without the proper math training their education is incomplete.
Again, you make my case for me - resorting to the old liberal device of name-caliing when you don’t have an argument. I never said or implied that math shouldn’t be taught. I said that that’s not where the emphasis should be - it needs to be on reading and writing. Call me all the names you want - it won’t make up for the fact that you didn’t learn to read very well.
Let's review this, the article was about what's wrong with math education. You make a post that I didn't agree with and I simply made a post back to you which I ended this way.
I don't disagree that what you say is important, just that you left out a very important cog.
To which you replied
You misunderstood what I wrote, and possibly cannot understand the very idea - without reading comprehension, which takes a lot of reading and a lot of training - the students don’t learn how to think. You make my case for me
So a mild disagreement with you somehow makes you feel I can't comprehend and I make your case for you? WOW, to which I responded by saying you were a pompous ass which then brings about calling me a liberal.
You are a piece of work and this last post of yours kind of proves my point about you I think.
I also think I see why no one else on this thoughtful topic bothered to respond to you.
I will end any attempt to have a dialogue with you but simply tell you that I am sure beyond any doubt that I have a far better grasp of math than you and after reading your posts back to me am almost as sure that my reading comprehension is at a minimum as good as yours and a very high probability of being better. I know I used a couple of math terms in that last sentence which might make your comprehension difficult.
To everyone else on this topic I apologize for getting involved with this poster and dragging down the topic.
She’s only one teacher educator, in a small program. But when I think of how many kids are not exposed to a teacher in elementary school who can’t do, “hates” or “is afraid of” math because of her efforts, plus those who where her elementary students when she was in the public school classrom, the numbers get rather large. Still just a drop in the bucket, but still quite a legacy to have.
I knew a very smart Professor of Math Education who also was blessed with great common sense. As was suggested by someone else in this topic that using every day problems to teach math was a good approach. He had a whole series of labs cutting across K - 12 that were either everyday life situations that you could identify with or also riddles or puzzles that had a math basis for the solution. They tended to get and keep students attention.
However he also had something special he saved for students going into elementary education. He told them that the time in child's life when their mind is most open to math is in the elementary school age. And that sense most elementary teachers did not like math that put a special burden on them to work hard to have make sure students have the opportunity to learn math and that their fear of math did not hinder their students.
I have no idea how many he reached, but it does point out a flaw in our educational system.
For the most part this has been a very good topic and I bookmarked the utube above and also sent it to my daughter who after getting her kids into high school has become certified to teach math and has just gotten a job teaching high school math.
Calling someone an unpleasant name is what the liberals do - isn’t it? (Fascist, racist, bigot, etc.) You resorted to the same device, instead of simply stating your disagreement with me.
Yes, the article was on math education, and how children are being cheated. I was making the point that the very premise was faulty - it’s the mistaken idea, that began in the early 1950s, that math and science were the most essential subjects in school, and the accompanying neglect and devaluation of reading and writing that contributed to bringing our society to the mess it is in today. Many people, even intelligent, seemingly educated ones, can barely reason, because they can read only superficially, have not absorbed great literature, and have no cultural/historical references.
Whether a hundred people chime in to agree with me, or none, does not change the objective merit of what I say. And your attempt to disparage me because there is no supporting chorus - that’s an attitude that one encounters often among....liberals, who don’t have the ability to step out from the herd, because their identity and sense of self worth is defined by the group.
My father’s parents were both teachers, my other grandfather was a teacher, Mother was a teacher, and Dad taught until WWII, when he became an inspector working in a defense plant. Back in those days, teaching and nursing were the only professional fields open to women - which meant that women able to do professional grade work were essentially drafted into teaching. Which in effect subsidized education.I have two observations:
- If, like me, a child enjoyed word problems and despised number crunching, the teacher was more likely to harp on the lack of enthusiasm for number crunching than to recognize and reinforce, and strongly promote, competence in word problems. Most teachers hated the word problems themselves and didn’t elect to go into education because they were whizzes in mathematics.
- Today, with the advent of the khanacademy.orgweb site, math education can be done quite differently than traditionally.
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