Ed Le Doux

However, CCSS is going in the opposite direction, requiring kids get through a form of Algebra II. This was based on a “Workplace Analysis”. Problems in math also reflect bad curricula, poor teaching methods and low expectations.

So what’s going on here?

“He’s right that math is a huge problem. It begs creative solutions.”

No. It begs understanding what’s really going on in education.

“While kind-hearted, perhaps, the teachers’ hue and cry about the kids not being able to do the work only strengthened our resolve to raise expectations and boost kids’ opportunities. All math teachers 6-12 got College-Board training — though surely not enough.”

Is this all you figured out in Providence, even though some, including myself, tried to get you see how K-6 math ideas and curricula cause the problems in the first place? You can’t just raise the bar. You have to improve teaching in K-6. By seventh grade it’s too late.

“…it was a godsend to the smarty-pantses. ”

This is because most all of these kids were getting help at home or with tutors. These kids are not just math brains. My son suffered through Everyday Math for years, but the only way he got to Algebra II in 9th grade is because of our work at home.

This is NOT just an issue of how there are some smarty-pantses and how many are not. It has to do with proper teaching and curricula. This has always been a blind spot for you. Educators swear by curricula like Everyday Math and you can’t separate sincerity from effectiveness. Take a survey of the parents of these “smarty-pants” kids. Ask specifically what they did at home. They didn’t “trust the spiral”. They ensured mastery of basic skills at every step.

“Kids got through the traditional sequence at varying rates, but as a result, many entered high school ready for Geometry.”

This is the traditional process – separate kids starting in 6th or 7th grades. Our school, after years ruining kids with CMP, started using the rigorous version of the Glencoe math series for 7th and 8th grades. The different classes use the same textbooks, but cover different amounts of material.

“Math instruction mainly focuses on the algorithms, formulae and procedures to get to right answers instead of thinking through problems.”

This is completely wrong. My son, apparently one of the smarty-pantses, can think through lots of problems. Why is it that some think that their pet thinking and problem solving curriculum does a better job than the traditional math textbooks? This is a continuing and completely unjustified strawman.

“Programs like Connected Math make some attempt to use real-world problems to teach algebraic abstractions.”

This is incredibly wrong. Teach abstractions? No. Somehow, these curricula, that the most able math students avoid at all cost, are somehow better. Educators hide low expectations behind talk of understanding, critical thinking, and real world problem solving. It’s all vapor. Parents of the best math students know better.

“But my now-grown sons, two of whom became software developers, have been arguing since high school that learning computer software programming is essentially learning algebra, only infinitely more fun, interesting, and useful.”

They are wrong. Programming is not algebra. If you want to talk about alternate paths options for kids in high school after they have taken a rigorous course in algebra, that would be a different discussion. You have to look at opening and closing career doors. K-12 educators love to ignore college requirements for specitic careers. Colleges have heard all of these issues before. College departments spend a lot of time determining math requirements. They see the kids who have to move out of their degree programs because they can’t meet the math requirement. Some might offer alternate classes, like programming, but that sort of trade-off should never be discussed as a possibility in high school, especially for algebra.

“And lo! At the Advanced Math and Science Academy (AMSA) in Marlborough, Massachusetts, every student 6 through 11th grade takes computer science, in conjunction with math and the sciences, where programming skills come in very handy. ”

“in conjunction with”

And, not or.

“Legions of students apply to this charter school,…”

To get away from educators who think that curricula like CMP are good.

“It needed far more tricks, options, and new approaches to lure students into the puzzles of mathematical reasoning.”

“Lure.” That’s right, blame the student. It couldn’t be the K-6 math curricula and teaching that causes the problem.

“And really, in this day and age, shouldn’t all kids start learning computer-science right about 6th grade anyway?”

And really, shouldn’t educators look in the mirror before searching for one more 21st century idea to bail them out? Shouldn’t they look in the mirror before thinking that what all kids need is just a little motivation and engagement?

Survey the parents of the “smarty-pantses”. Educators won’t like what they will find. Find out why the best students do well in math. It isn’t just motivation and engagement and “tricks”.

There is an assumption that problems need to be relevant and “real world” in order for students to grasp the abstract concepts. This is patently not true. Students need to learn problem structures and how to identify the information in it that is used in solving the problem and the information which the problem is asking for. A properly scaffolded set of algebra word problems can effect this type of “wrestling with concepts” that she talks about by causing students to stretch beyond the original worked example.

Also, her statement that math focuses mainly on the algorithms/procedures is getting as old as the wives’ tale that prisoners are given food spiked with saltpeter to diminish their sex drive. Poorly taught math delves only in procedures, but math taught properly focuses on both procedures and concepts and then works on applications. There is no set rule as to whether procedures should come first, or concepts. Sometimes students learn the concept first and then the procedure, sometimes vice versa.

As far as Connected Math, their so-called “real world” problems are very contrived and very confusing. They rely on a “just in time” learning approach in which a problem is presented for which students have little or not training in the prior knowledge, skills or procedures necessary to solve it. In the course of trying to solve the problems (in small groups of course, “facilitated” by the teacher), the program sometimes will present the skills and procedures that should have been learned and mastered beforehand, as part of an “embedded learning” technique. The theory is that because they need the particular tool, the students will learn it better rather than being subjected to the so-called “mind numbing” drills that are needed for mastery and–ultimately–application.

This is akin to throwing a kid in the deep end of a swimming pool and telling him to swim to the other side, while shouting out instructions for how to do the crawl. If somehow the kids makes it, it is doubtful that he will have mastered the crawl and even more doubtful that he’ll ever want to do it again.