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]

Then there are the number of teachers literally scared by the very smart (thank goodness my kids' school has none of those that I know of... so far, knock on wood). Add in the teachers who are nervous of those with obvious disabilities (even those that impact learning very little)...

And you've also got a number of teachers who aren't up to the job of teaching anything other than the middle kids... some might be great at doing that, but others aren't... and the highs and the lows lose out in that situation anyway.

Frustrating. One of the reasons I'm going for School Library Media now, rather than sticking with Elementary Ed. or trying for a secondary (well, really I just don't really like dealing with HS much... middle's ok, elementary better :-)

I figure I might be able to hook some more kids on reading for fun and to learn something that way both... and maybe it'll pay off in other directions as well eventually. Like my sister who *hated* science in middle and HS... but ended up after she was almost finished her non-science degree going on to take a bunch of science classes and go to med school... as she said she wanted to do in HS. She's doing pretty good so far :-)

I've another sister who *never* liked reading until college... another developmental thing, that just took time... but inspiration to continue is good.