requiring algebra is nice and should be done, but in stages. how the LA school system fails all....

[acroyear]

From this LATimes article(reg required)

[Math teacher] Seidel did not appear to make a difference with Gabriela Ocampo. She failed his class in the fall of 2004, her sixth and final semester of Fs in algebra.

But Gabriela didn't give Seidel much of a chance; she skipped 62 of 93 days that semester.

but earlier in the article, the systems own flaws revealed themselves

Birmingham High in Van Nuys, where Gabriela Ocampo struggled to grasp algebra, has a failure rate that's about average for the district. Nearly half the ninth-grade class flunked beginning algebra last year.

In the spring semester alone, more freshmen failed than passed. The tally: 367 Fs and 355 passes, nearly one-third of them Ds.

and

Like other schools in the nation's second-largest district, Birmingham High deals with failing students by shuttling them back into algebra, often with the same teachers.

Last fall, the school scheduled 17 classes of up to 40 students each for those repeating first-semester algebra.

Educational psychologists say reenrolling such students in algebra decreases their chances of graduating.

"Repeated failure makes kids think they can't do the work. And when they can't do the work, they say, 'I'm out of here,' " said Andrew Porter, director of the Learning Sciences Institute at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

The strategy has also failed to provide students with what they need most: a review of basic math.

Teachers complain that they have no time for remediation, that the rapid pace mandated by the district leaves behind students like Tina Norwood, 15, who is failing beginning algebra for the third time.

Tina, who says math has mystified her since she first saw fractions in elementary school, spends class time writing in her journal, chatting with friends or snapping pictures of herself with her cellphone.

Her teacher wasn't surprised when Tina bombed a recent test that asked her, among other things, to graph the equations 4x + y = 9 and 2x -- 3y = -- 6. She left most of the answers blank, writing a desperate message at the top of the page: "Still don't get it, not gonna get it, guess i'm seeing this next year!"

In short, the system set itself up for utter failure. Rather than create a gradual improvement system where preparation for high school algebra was improved in the earlier grades, so that when the mandetory requirement was enacted, they had students ready for it; the system simply shoved this arbitrary requirement on a totally unprepared student body and simply let the failures fail. In short, I am disgusted with the school system far more than the students.

In fact, the guy responsible for this disaster used Cohen's own "i have one example, therefore i'm right everywhere" reasoning:

Former board President Jose Huizar introduced this latest round of requirements, which the board approved in a 6-1 vote last June.

Huizar said he was motivated by personal experience: He was a marginal student growing up in Boyle Heights but excelled in high school once a counselor placed him in a demanding curriculum that propelled him to college and a law degree.

"I think there are thousands of kids like me, but we're losing them because we don't give them that opportunity," said Huizar, who left the school board after he was elected to the Los Angeles City Council last fall. "Yes, there will be dropouts. But I'm looking at the glass half full."

On the other hand, Post columnist Richard Cohen's reaction to this is utterly wrong in every way as well.

Comments

[eac.livejournal.com]

OT1H, this disclosure reveals that my opinions about math instruction may be shaped by what some might consider an "unfair advantage"

I think it's utterly worth considering how "unfair advantages" work to help students learn. :)

And I think your observations about teachers and depth of math understanding are probably also spot on.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Well there's also the possibility -- as fits my reputation in school -- that I'm just gifted at math (which would make my opinions about how math should be taught an example of what I think theferrett referred to as "the tyranny of the exceptional individual", or something like that. But although I acknowledge that I'm smart (in the sense that I score very well on so-called intelligence tests), I suspect that my apparent gift for math is a combination of a) exposure to a superior instructional method early on, b) exposure to instructional methods suited to me personally, c) exposure to an especially gifted teacher using classical methods later on, and d) finding math pretty enough to want to look at it more closely.

That is, I think that my "natural advantage" in math was acquired rather than innate. But there's no control subject for this experiment, so I don't really know.

But I do think that Montessori is a superior method for most children, and that we would do better to make that the norm and reserve currently conventional methods for the few students not well suited to Montessori. So yeah, considering "unfair advantages" that can be shared, and how to distribute them to more of the population, is worthwhile.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

heh, i was the opposite. i am grateful for still having the aptitude for math *in spite* of all the elementary school systems tried to do to destroy it. i could have (in the way they do now for math-inclined students, at least in MD) managed to get through to calculus by 10th grade and gone on to greater things (like actually had calculus-based AP-Physics mechanics in my senior year) if the school systems I was in for 4th and 5th grades actually supported the idea that kids could do that.

instead, i got 2 years of *exactly* the same thing (3 digit by 2 digit multiplication/division), which was something i'd already demonstrated i'd mastered in 3rd grade...and then *6th* grade "GT" level gives me exactly the same shit for yet another year!

4 years of rote arithmetic and its a miracle i managed to keep interested in it enough to make it effectively a career (software development IS algebra, and i really feel that string manipulation is more complex than most of what an algebra 2 class throws at one).

[cozit.livejournal.com]

They're not completely able to teach the higher math kids. J's one of those. Poor kid has been (mostly) bored out of his skull with the math stuff since kindergarden. Even this year he's in 4th grade GT, being taught the 5th grade GT curriculm as well... which is the equivalent of 7th grade math, the year before pre-algebra, for the 'regular' tracks. They don't know what they will do with him next year (and his one friend who is being taught at the same level, but isn't quite as advanced as he is)... yet.

I'm seriously thinking of sending an e-mail to the coordinator who teaches the 6th graders who are at an equivalently advanced level... asking if there's any suggestions she might have.

Oh... and at home? He's actually playing with algebra I topics (so more than a grade above what he is being taught now). Yeah, we've glossed over most of the geometry stuff... but that's mostly because of a combination of lack of interest on his part, and lack of strength in it on ours (that was the class that started my downfall... since they'd had me skip alg. I that year to enter it, and I was trying to learn both at the same time... blech... I *might* have liked it, but the stress of that year was enough to kill that idea off for me).

At least math is fun for him... and he doesn't mind doing the "easy stuff" as they make sure that he doesn't have any glaring holes that need covered (like in the geometry direction).