... WHEW! That was close !!!
Posted on 12/01/2012 2:31:36 PM PST by thecodont
California students who fail algebra and repeat the course are pretty much doomed to fail again, a vicious cycle that wastes limited resources and precious learning time, according to a report released Friday.
Just over a third of students in the 24 school districts studied had to repeat Algebra I either in ninth or 10th grade, yet even after a second year of study, relatively few were proficient in the subject.
Of those who took the class in eighth grade and repeated it as freshmen, just 1 in 5 scored at a proficient level on standardized tests. And of those who repeated as sophomores, 9 percent were proficient.
"These results provide powerful evidence that school systems are struggling to successfully teach, or reteach, mathematics to students who are not already performing well in math by the time they reach middle school," said Neal Finkelstein, the lead researcher on the study, which was commissioned by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning at WestEd. ...
All told, half of all students in the study repeated algebra, geometry or Algebra II.
Yet many students retake the same course taught the same way, sometimes by the same teacher, according to the authors.
[...]
Researchers found that the majority of students who were proficient in Algebra I at the end of eighth grade followed an accelerated math track of geometry in ninth grade and Algebra II in 10th grade.
And those students made up the vast majority - 75 percent - of all those in their class who would ever become proficient in algebra by high school graduation.
Not a single student who earned below a grade of D in seventh-grade math went on to take calculus in high school, according to researchers.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I feel a song coming on.
That would be because the reason they failed is because they were not well grounded in basic math skills.
Unless that was corrected then you are wasting your time to put them through it again.
One of my friends children was having problems with dividing fractions. I told him to "invert, cancel and multiply". He had no idea what that was so I showed him. He was shocked at how simple it was and how the answer was right every time.
The nest week he told me the teacher had told him that he could not do that, when I asked why he said that she didn't know how to do it either and so he was not to do it.
IMHO if you can't divide fractions you can't do algebra.
I’m Game... I’ll give it a shot.
How about the excerpt I posted? According to your account, you should be able to picture it readily. It is after all very simple, but I have to think of the algebraic form in order to follow it initially, as do most people who go nosing into Book II, I suppose.
Math can be used to model climate change.
Look, I’m not criticizing higher mathmatics or algebra. It’s fine for those who are interested in it and/or use it in their careers.
But I still fail to see why we try to shove everyone into the same box in education.
... WHEW! That was close !!!
Fair enough. Congrats on your successes!
I wouldn't want to quibble with that, but what is usually said is that so and so or such and such MAKES math, or science, fun. This drives me crazy. The current fad is to load up the exposition with slang and cute talk. Cf. the JPL MSL page. They have a blog page for Curiosity, where Curiosity herself blogs in the first person. They also explain its construction using human metaphor, without deviation: Its legs, its eyes, its brain ...
And if I may go ahead and quibble, is fun really the point? Puzzles and such are fun, I guess, so you can have mathematical fun, but this is just by the way. You yourself spoke of the beauty. I never really feel that way about it though, to be honest. It's certainly gratifying. It's an "itch" really. Newton was asked how he was able to arrive at his celebrated results and he replied, "By thinking on them constantly."
I agree heartily.
There’s one additional angle here: Too many public school teachers are “scared” of math.
My wife went to a teaching program about eight years ago for two years - since she already had her BS, she needed only the teaching method and state-mandated classes to get her cert.
Well, she dropped the whole idea of teaching. She was horrified by how blatantly *stupid* most teaching candidates are. They’re terrified of math. When my wife tried to help these women learn math, she got not shortage of attitude blown back on her.
She came away from the whole experience thinking (with justification) that public school teachers are a) incompetent and b) are proud of it.
Because employers should be able to assume that a high school graduate has a minimal level of competence in basic skills that are required by employers. It used to be that employers could give skills tests to prospective employees.
Then the lawsuits started when it turned out that most minority graduates couldn’t pass the skills tests.
This is how we got so far down the road of “everyone should go to college” crap. The fact that some bozo has a BA has become a substitute for a competence test.
We just escaped from San Mateo CO California and their schools. My eldest son’s third grade teacher taught multiplication by showing the class a video and then having them break into groups to “work out the best answer”. This after the distract spent millions to install “whiteboards” and video projectors in every classroom for the newly adopted enVision math program.
Sorry, friend, but I’m going to have to disagree with you. Basic algebra is necessary to correctly set up formulas in an Excel spreadsheet for a business owner tracking employee performance. As an author, (granted I’m a scifi author) I had to use algebra to check the facts in my book. Algebra is even necessary for archaeologists, as my mother found out when she had to have her high school freshman daughter set up her electrolysis equipment.
Thanks for the picture for your book
Dover has good math texts at a low price.
This one by Dummit and Foote has many good reviews
but is pretty expensive (about $80).
Those who fail Algebra, always have a bright future as earth scientists studying Global Warming and Evolution.
Yep - I could never remember the multiplication tables so i opted to do a combination of multiplications/additions - 9X7 became 3X7 (21) and 21X3 = 63
Interesting—and not surprising.
Unfortunately, your approach is too close to how basic math is now being taught: here’s a problem, break into groups and come up with ways you could solve the problem (preferably using estimation).
That all, except for the group bit, would be fine if the students had already been taught how to solve such problems, but they’re supposed to be coming up with approaches on their own. Needlessly confusing and time wasting for average and below-average students especially. They first need to be taught the tools and when and how to use them. That is elementary algebra.
I enjoyed and did well in Algebra but failed geometry (I wasn’t motivated to memorize all those theorems). Algebra was fun and can be applied in everyday life. I’ve never had any need for geometry or trig for that matter....
Been there, done that, back in early seventies.
Grade 8, first semester. I managed an B, mostly because class was a bunch of dummies and we had not got far into the book.
There were 4 separate classes at that time so “They” decide to put all A,B students in one class away from the dummies.
I got a third quarter D, sat there ignoring everything in the fourth for a F and failed algebra.
My best buddy stayed with the dummies and got a C but passed Algebra.
So we go to high school and they would not give me credit for the first half where I got a B and I had to retake algebra where my buddy was done with math.
So no credits and I retake Algebra getting an A for the first semester and what do “they” do.
Yep they put all us A students in one class. I cried and whined but wound up barely passing.
Long story short I retook it in college and did real well but needed some after class help from a great student/teacher
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