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

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Sometimes the problem is developmental. Algebra is where even some *very* bright students run into trouble, because it's abstract, rather than concrete. (Hey, it's what took me down from GT with the GT kids a grade ahead of me, all the way back down to a "regular class" in my own grade... yeah, I got it... quite well actually :-))

Intervention is the reason I've got a job. But just in case you think "oh, great.. that county's got people helping the students out... remember I was hired as a *half* time Math *Assistant*. Not actually required to have all the background I have... either in the maths or in teaching.

Hey, on the bright side, I'm not seeing about half the kids I had last year at all, and first half to second half of this year, I've got more than a 50% change in who I'm seeing. Two *have* ended up with IEPs (in other words they have a learning disability that has been diagnosed and they will receive assistance through that program)... but that's good, too... if they get the help they need to get past what holds them up.

Then again, I've got three *very* stubborn students in one grade level... who I had last year... had this fall... and have again. In part because they refused to even *try* on most of the evaluation test they were given... they don't want to go to the class that they do have, they'd rather be with me and drive me batty. I swear I'm not joking when I tell them that I've had it and they get no more than one warning before being sent to the office if they keep the other from learning and waste my time as well as theirs... but without a grade or anything else to "earn" from their time with me... they've little to no incentive.

Sigh.

*g* On the bright side, I get to throw different ways of looking at hings at them. This month's oddities include integer math with number lines and flipping line segments (hey, it works, and it's a visual they can take with them and re-try on the back of the test or scratch paper to remind them how to play with negatives) and my combining variables lesson... that includes llamas, ducks, badgers, mushrooms and snakes (yes, first two sub in for X and Y... second set of 3 for a different set :-)

Number lines

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Side effect of teaching addition and subtraction on a number line: whoever teaches them two-dimensional or three-dimensional vector arithmetic later (whether it's a math teacher or a physics teacher) can start off by reminding them that they'd done something similar under a different name before, so it looks less OhMyGodTooNewAndConfusing.

Re: Number lines

[cozit.livejournal.com]

*g* That's also why I point out to them that multiplying two unit measures together gives the a square unit measure... or a measure unit squared (to the 2) (gee, that's hard to type w/o superscripts).

Even if they think that's stupid or makes no sense now, in middle school... it might come back at them later on in physics or chem.