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California Math Scores Among The Lowest Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer October 15, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO -- Thank goodness for Mississippi and Alabama. If not for the two southern states, California students would be at the bottom of the national heap in mathematics, according to the 2009 Nation's Report Card released Wednesday. The abysmal standing, which reflects in part the state's diverse population, hasn't changed much over the years. California consistently has ranked among the lowest-scoring states in the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally mandated assessment of a sampling of fourth- and eighth-graders across the country. On...

About 30 percent of fourth-graders and 23 percent of eight-graders in California tested proficient math tests from the National Assessment of Education Progress, ranking the state near the bottom nationally. Only students in Mississippi, Alabama and Washington, D.C. had lower scores on the tests, commonly referred to as the "nation's report card." (See an interactive graphic on the scores here.) Nationwide, 38 percent of fourth-graders and 33 percent of eighth-graders performed at proficient levels. Scores for English tests will be released in coming weeks. Fewer than 170,000 students in the country were tested per grade in the exams administered last...

Blame the lack of reform on teachers’ unions that are “extraordinarily powerful.” They quote a study of state-level politics that found teachers’ unions to be the single-most-powerful interest group in the entire country throughout the 1990s. This lets unions block reforms, like pay for performance and the firing of incompetents, which are not in the interest of their members. It is ironic that the United Auto Workers union has taken so much heat for contributing to the economic woes of U.S. manufacturing. One might argue teachers’ unions should get a bigger part of the blame simply because they’ve put their...

Maybe we need to wake up. The other day I went to the Web site of Bell Labs, one of the country's premier research outfits. I clicked at random on a research project, Programmable Networks for Tomorrow. The scientists working on the project were Gisli Hjalmstysson, Nikos Anerousis, Pawan Goyal, K. K. Ramakrishnan, Jennifer Rexford, Kobus Van der Merwe, and Sneha Kumar Kasera. Clicking again at random, this time on the Information Visualization Research Group, the research team turned out to be John Ellson, Emden Gansner, John Mocenigo, Stephen North, Jeffery Korn, Eleftherios Koutsofios, Bin Wei, Shankar Krishnan, and Suresh...

For many students, bungling more than half the questions on a test would mean an F and all that comes with it — months of remedial work, irksome teachers and, perhaps, a skimpy allowance. But on New York State’s math exam this year, seventh graders who correctly answered just 44 percent of questions were rewarded with a passing grade. What gives? Three years ago, the threshold for passing was 60 percent. In fact, students in every grade this year could slide by with fewer correct answers on the math test than in 2006. In math this year, 86 percent of...

The first math tutoring session with my daughter and her friend Laura had ended. I sat in the dining room, slumped in my chair. "You look sick," my wife said. "I am," I said. My daughter—subjected to the vagaries of Everyday Mathematics, a math program her school had selected and put in effect when she was in the third grade—was having difficulty with key concepts and computations. She was now in 6th grade, and with fractional division, percentages and decimals on the agenda, I wanted to make sure she mastered these things. So, near the beginning of 6th grade, I...

Math students in this high-performing school district used to rush through their Algebra I textbooks only to spend the first few months of Algebra II relearning everything they forgot or failed to grasp the first time. So the district’s frustrated math teachers decided to rewrite the algebra curriculum, limiting it to about half of the 90 concepts typically covered in a high school course in hopes of developing a deeper understanding of key topics. Last year, they began replacing 1,000-plus-page math textbooks with their own custom-designed online curriculum; the lessons are typically written in Westport and then sent to a...

Intel chairman says US education lacking By SANDRA CHEREB Associated Press Writer May. 12, 2009 RENO, Nev. -- The outgoing chairman of the world's largest computer chip maker says the United States needs to rethink its approach to public education and raise the bar for academic achievement in mathematics and science if it hopes to be competitive in a 21st century world. "We haven't even chosen to compete in this area yet," Craig Barrett, retiring chairman of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Corp., said Monday. "We're still operating as though we're the only game in town."

Fifty Years of Math 1959 - 2009 (in the USA ) Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter girl took my $2 and I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help...while he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried. Why do I tell you this? Because...

Watered down by fuzzy math, "whole language" reading and feel-good grading, public school instruction isn't what it used to be. Therein lies a great profitmaking opportunity: Supply the education that schools don't. Kumon, a Japanese firm that has been selling afterschool tutoring in its home country for half a century, broke into the U.S. market in 1983 and finds no shortage of customers here. Kumon now has 1,300 centers and 194,000 students in the U.S., double its enrollment in 2001. That puts it well ahead of its two main competitors, SylvanLearning and Huntington Learning Center. Most Kumon students are between...

The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued. The study suggests that while many girls have exceptional talent in math — the talent to become top math researchers, scientists and engineers — they are rarely identified in the United States. A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly...

WASHINGTON: Americans may like to make fun of girls who are good at math, but this attitude is robbing the country of some of its best talent, resear chers reported on Friday. They found that while girls can be just as talented as boys at mathematics, some are driven from the field because they are teased, ostracized or simply neglected. "The US culture that is discouraging girls is also discouraging boys," Janet Mertz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who led the study said in a statement. "The situation is becoming urgent. The data show that a majority of the top...

Algebra in eighth grade was once reserved for the mathematically gifted student. In 1990, very few eighth graders, about one out of six, were enrolled in an algebra course. As the decade unfolded, leaders began urging schools to increase that number. President Clinton lamented, “Around the world, middle students are learning algebra and geometry. Here at home, just a quarter of all students take algebra before high school.”1 The administration made enrolling all children in an algebra course by eighth grade a national goal. In a handbook offering advice to middle school students on how to plan for college, U.S....

Parents concerned with latest math curriculum Georgia parents were outraged after thousands of students failed statewide math exams in May. Now with the start of a new school year, parents fear for their children as the state expands the new math curriculum to high schools. Fayette County parent Wendy Ashabranner worries how her son will handle this new math when he starts at Fayette County High on Monday. He was among the 38 percent of the state's eighth-graders who failed the state's new, redesigned math exam, which was based on harder material. While parents and teachers expected some students to...

Fast Learners Montgomery County officials say accelerating students in math will better prepare them for college, but a revered teacher says it's time to step on the brakes. By Emily Messner Sunday, August 3, 2008; Page W20 It's the day before final exams start at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, and Eric Walstein is teaching a class he calls "a travesty." It's not that he minds teaching Algebra II, but these students are in Blair's acclaimed math and science magnet program, and traditionally the magnet hasn't bothered with the course -- the kids were smart enough, and their...

I was reading about the math curriculum at the Lexington, MA public schools at the site above. For grades 1-5, it says they will "Continue with Everyday Mathematics (EDM) as our core elementary curriculum. Purchase pilot ancillary materials to address identified program gaps and needs of special populations. Both Singapore Math and Saxon Math, teacher and student materials, will be purchased by the special education department to pilot with various students based on individual needs." I think of Singapore and Saxon math, which are both pretty popular with homeschoolers, as being for kids of normal abilities (not just for the...

My wife and I have 3 children (ages 1, 3, and 5), and we recently purchased a home in Winchester, Massachusetts, because its schools have a good reputation and its students do well on the MCAS . I looked at the "Academics" section of the school district web site and found "Math literature lists" (what happened to textbooks?) for various grades. The 4th grade list at http://mail.winchester.k12.ma.us/~mkerble/mathlists4.doc lists dozens of books, including Count your Way Through Africa Count Your Way Through Arab World and 7 move "Count your Way" books Amazon says the "Count your Way Through Africa" book "uses...

If you believe that girls fare significantly worse on math than boys in high-school tests, you would have been right — twenty years ago. Thanks to a concerted effort by parents and schools to get more girls in advanced math classes, the test-score disparity has completely disappeared, according to the National Science Foundation:

Zip. Zilch. Nada. There's no real difference between the scores of U.S. boys and girls on common math tests, according to a massive new study. Educators hope the finding will finally dispel lingering perceptions that girls don't measure up to boys when it comes to crunching numbers. "This shows there's no issue of intellectual ability--and that's a message we still need to get out to some of our parents and teachers," says Henry "Hank" Kepner, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in Reston, Virginia. It won't be a new message. Nearly 20 years ago, a large-scale study...

Today’s headlines mostly got it wrong: * The New York Sun said "Study Shatters Myth That Boys Are Better At Math." * The New York Post said "Girls = boys in math skills." * The New York Daily News said "Math gender differences erased." * The New York Times said "Math Scores Show No Gap for Girls, Study Finds." Only the Wall Street Journal got it right: * "Boys' Math Score Hit Highs and Lows." This is, of course, a political topic. This is evidenced by the Times beginning their take on the story by recalling the fate of Larry...

This article is about parents who are teaching traditional math at home on the sly to their children. The previous article was pulled. Perhaps it was due to quoting Fox. I hope this thread is not pulled, the topic deserves discussion. Wintertime

French primary school children will be learning multiplication tables by rote and conjugating verbs in the pluperfect tense under a back-to-basics programme to be introduced after the summer holidays. Critics denouced Xavier Darcos, the Education Minister who developed the plan, as old-fashioned, out-of-touch and reactionary, and unions called for a strike over the reform.He responded by saying: “It's not by listening to a great pianist for hours on end that you become one, it's by doing your scales.” The programme is an attempt to prioritise French and mathematics on a primary school curriculum that has been loaded with subjects such...

...So if our high school math and science scores are dropping, our children are dreading these classes, and we ourselves can barely go through the times tables, then why aren’t we demanding real tutelage in math and science? Why is it socially acceptable not to understand fractions, percentages, and exponents, not to mention basic science principles that don't change with time or opinion? One reason, I submit, is relativism. ~~ Relativism allows everyone to be right, and puts our feelings ahead of everything else. We all know that it is not fun to find out that we are wrong about...

American students’ math achievement is “at a mediocre level” compared with that of their peers worldwide, according to a new report by a federal panel, which recommended that schools focus on key skills that prepare students to learn algebra. “The sharp falloff in mathematics achievement in the U.S. begins as students reach late middle school, where, for more and more students, algebra course work begins,” said the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed two years ago by President Bush. “Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college compared to students with...

Willie Angelo's grasp of math, never firm, took a sharp nose dive just before Christmas. "Towards the end of last semester, it was all building up," said Angelo... "It was too much for me to handle." So there he was at a recent early-morning tutoring session with his teacher, struggling to learn polynomials - mathematical expressions studded with digits, X's, exponents and parentheses. He's not alone. Students across Colorado are struggling with math, according to results of statewide achievement tests. And the test scores go down as the students get older. The vast majority of students - 68 percent -...

...Tegethoff used to teach what she called "very boring math," using worksheets of addition and subtraction problems. Now her lessons delve into algebraic thinking. By the third grade, Viers Mill Elementary students are solving equations with letter variables. Long considered a high school staple, introductory algebra is fast becoming a standard course in middle school for college-bound students. That trend is putting new pressure on such schools as Viers Mill to insert the building blocks of algebra into math lessons in the earliest grades. Disappointing U.S. scores on international math tests have added to the urgency of a movement that...

According to M. J. Mcdermott, a meteorologist and Q13 Fox News (Seattle) weather reporter, the ongoing American mathematic illiteracy may be the result of misguided “reformed math” curriculum which fails to teach students the internationally recognized, efficient multiplication and division algorithms that older generations of Americans learned. Instead, children are encouraged to problem-solve without first developing efficient problem-solving techniques in multiplication and division. Math by CalculatorAs McDermott notes in her video, textbooks such as the 4th and 5th grade versions of Everyday Mathematics devote copious pages to non-germane topics such as a full-color 48-page world atlas to assist students in...

Do you know what math curriculum your child is being taught? Are you worried that your third-grader hasn't learned simple multiplication yet? Have you been befuddled by educational jargon such as "spiraling," which is used to explain why your kid keeps bringing home the same insipid busywork of cutting, gluing and drawing? And are you alarmed by teachers who emphasize "self-confidence" over proficiency while their students fall further and further behind? Join the club. Across the country, from New York City to Seattle, parents are wising up to math fads like "Everyday Math." Sounds harmless enough, right? It's cleverly marketed...

Burden of Proof Published On Wednesday, December 06, 2006  9:17 PM By LOGAN R. URY Contributing Writer At 10:02 a.m., the door to Science Center room 109 creaks opens, and 11 young men shuffle in. Some wear worn baseball caps and faded sweatshirts, others jeans and scuffed loafers. Whispering and rubbing sleep out of their eyes, they slowly settle into their seats, filling only two rows of their long and narrow classroom. Class begins immediately as Professor of Mathematics Dennis Gaitsgory dashes in, dressed haphazardly in a button-down over a gray undershirt, most likely plucked from the same pile as...

That was a week and a half ago. I am thrilled today that almost all of my students can divide and convert fractions to decimals (based on a test). I am scheduling one-on-one tutoring with the other students to ensure that they will be able to do so, too. I realized that what they needed was a recipe, something to follow every time so that it was systematic. I was kind of intimidated that we would get so far behind in the actual physical science material that we wouldn’t be at the level necessary to take the first periodic assessment...

Mathematics literacy is a new civil rights battleground, according to the renowned activist and political organizer Robert Parris Moses. Using the same ideas and methods that he once used to fight for voting rights in the South, Moses is working to increase access to quality mathematics education through the Algebra Project, a nationwide program that he founded... Today, Moses says, many young people are excluded from full participation in the country's economy because they lack mathematical literacy... The ubiquity of computers makes abstract, quantitative reasoning skills critical to a wide range of job opportunities... Moses founded the Algebra Project...

The Evolution of Math in the United States Last week I purchased a burger and fries at McDonalds for $3.58. The counter girl took my $4.00 and I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies. While looking at the screen on her register, I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried. Why do I tell you this? Because of...

The rules of algebraic functions do not vary from nation to nation or from state to state. In Indiana and eight other states, the test to measure students’ comprehension of those rules will no longer vary. Yes, it’s a step toward national academic standards. And yes, it makes sense for Indiana students to demonstrate understanding of mathematical concepts that are the same in Bangalore and Bluffton, Newark and New Haven. Indiana is among the first nine states that will participate in end-of-course testing for.......................

W. Stephen Wilson teaches mathematics at Mayor Bloomberg 's alma mater, Johns Hopkins University. Last fall he conducted an experiment on the students in his Calculus I course. Professor Wilson administered the same final exam to last fall's students that he used for the same course in the fall of 1989. He chose that year because he was able to obtain data for both his exam and the SAT math scores for both cohorts of students. The surprise: the 1989 students did much better than their 2006 counterparts. Everyday much ink is spilled discussing the failure of America's schools. Most...

"Reform math", sometimes called "fuzzy math" or "rainforest math",is taught in the vast majority of public schools even though it is a demonstrable failure. While those of us who follow k-12 education can tell you that these curricula cripple children and are a threat to our economy and national security, this brief, lucid video by an appalled mom who also has a local TV job makes the point very effectively by showing a small part of what the problem is. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI By the way, note that McDermott fails to point out that the even the alternative...

SEATTLE — For the second time in a generation, education officials are rethinking the teaching of math in American schools. The changes are being driven by students’ lagging performance on international tests and mathematicians’ warnings that more than a decade of so-called reform math — critics call it fuzzy math — has crippled students with its de-emphasizing of basic drills and memorization in favor of allowing children to find their own ways to solve problems.

STATE WOULD PAY ABOUT $300,000 FOR EVERY 30 STUDENTS By Linda B. Blackford HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER POLL | Should Kentucky spend the money on 'I Can Learn'? State education officials are planning to spend $2 million to help middle school students with math, but much of that money could be spent on a controversial and expensive computer program that has not been approved by state math specialists.The I Can Learn program, created by a private New Orleans company, has made headlines both for its disputed effectiveness and for its political connections, which have brought it millions of dollars in federal...

Low participation in math and science activities by girls is keeping them from achieving their full potential and weakening the nation's ability to compete, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Monday. "We need definitive insights into what goes wrong, when and why," Spellings said. She asked her department's Institute of Education Sciences to review existing research and determine why girls are not as well represented in the sciences as boys. Schools have put more emphasis on math in the past five years because of the No Child Left Behind law, which requires testing and yearly progress in the subject. "This is...

A question given to students during a practice test for a math final at Bellevue Community College has students — and others — shaking their heads because of what they say is a lack of racial sensitivity. It refers to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice although it doesn’t mention her by name, a civil rights activist said. The question read: "Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300-foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second." The Condoleezza question went on to ask when the watermelon will hit...

From: Rev. Wayne Perryman DoubleBro@aol.com Dear Friends The following sample math problem was given to students as part of their final exam at Bellevue Community College in Washington State. I was asked by black students to represent them in this matter. Some of these students attend my church. I am asking all of you and your friends to e-mail the school at the following e-mail addresses and express your outrage: Advising@bcc.ctc.edu, tpritcha@bcc.ctc.edu, and amatsumo@bcc.ctc.edu. The following is the math problem given to the students. The Problem: Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300...

Thousands of schools across the nation are responding to the reading and math testing requirements laid out in No Child Left Behind, President Bush's signature education law, by reducing class time spent on other subjects and, for some low-proficiency students, eliminating it. Schools from Vermont to California are increasing — in some cases tripling — the class time that low-proficiency students spend on reading and math, mainly because the federal law, signed in 2002, requires annual exams only in those subjects and punishes schools that fall short of rising benchmarks. The changes appear to principally affect schools and students who...

None, according to Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. EXCERPT: I am haunted by Gabriela Ocampo. ... failing algebra six times in six semesters, trying it a seventh time and finally just despairing over ever getting it. The L.A. school district now requires all students to pass a year of algebra ... Here's the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. ... Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by,...

It was 9:45 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Jane Reiser's mathematics class in Room 18 was stuffed with sixth- and seventh-graders. There were 32 of them, way above the national class size average of 25. Every seat was filled -- 17 girls, 15 boys, all races, all learning styles. A teacher's nightmare. And yet, despite having so many students, Reiser's class was humming, with everybody paying attention. She held up a few stray socks to introduce a lesson on probabilities with one of those weird questions that interest 11- and 12-year-olds: If you reach into your sock drawer in the...

WASHINGTON - Science and math have zoomed to the top of the nation's education agenda. Yet Amanda Cook, a parent of two school-age girls, can't quite see the urgency. "In Maine, there aren't many jobs that scream out 'math and science,'" said Cook, who lives in Etna, in the central part of the state. Yes, both topics are important, but "most parents are saying you're better off going to school for something there's a big need for." Nationwide, a new poll shows, many parents are content with the science and math education their children get — a starkly different view...

The only reason I passed algebra is because my mother literally sat with me every night in seventh grade as I wailed and wept over my cruel algebra homework, which she understood quite well but I never really did. (So much for the notion that all math-deficient girls need is math-whiz female role models.) I managed to keep the basic facts in my head just long enough to get a C in the class and do well enough on the SATs a few years later to get into UCLA, and that was the end of my algebraic education. In those...

At least 2,500 ninth-graders in Prince George's County will abruptly move this week from a standard one-year algebra course into a two-year program, shielding the struggling students from a state graduation test this spring that officials said they were likely to fail. The highly unusual shift comes midway through the school year in one of Washington's largest suburban school systems and in some respects runs counter to a regional trend of pushing students to take higher-level mathematics as early as possible. ....Starting Tuesday, those students will move into a retooled class called Algebraic Concepts. That will give them a one-year...

LAST spring, when he was only a sophomore, Jim Munch received a plaque honoring him as top scorer on the high school math team here. He went on to earn the highest mark possible, a 5, on an Advanced Placement exam in calculus. His ambition is to become a theoretical mathematician. So Jim might have seemed the veritable symbol for the new math curriculum installed over the last seven years in this ambitious, educated suburb of Rochester. Since seventh grade, he had been taking the "constructivist" or "inquiry" program, so named because it emphasizes pupils' constructing their own knowledge through...

Disabled students in wealthier school districts are scoring about as well in grade school math as general education students in large cities, according to state results released Thursday. Disabled students in ``low-needs schools,'' mostly in suburbs, had an average score of 707 out of 882 on the middle school math test. The cutoff for minimally meeting the state standard is 716. By comparison, general education students _ excluding disabled students _ averaged 713 in New York City; 700 in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers; and 714 in other urban and suburban schools.

Mathematics students have cause to celebrate. A University of New South Wales academic, Dr Norman Wildberger, has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit. What's more, his simple new framework means calculations can be done without trigonometric tables or calculators, yet often with greater accuracy. Established by the ancient Greeks and Romans, trigonometry is used in surveying, navigation, engineering, construction and the sciences to calculate the relationships between the sides and vertices of triangles. "Generations of students have struggled with classical trigonometry because the framework is wrong," says Wildberger, whose book...

Mathematics students have cause to celebrate. A University of New South Wales academic, Dr Norman Wildberger, has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit. What's more, his simple new framework means calculations can be done without trigonometric tables or calculators, yet often with greater accuracy. Established by the ancient Greeks and Romans, trigonometry is used in surveying, navigation, engineering, construction and the sciences to calculate the relationships between the sides and vertices of triangles. "Generations of students have struggled with classical trigonometry because the framework is wrong," says Wildberger, whose book...