41–50 of 55 posts
The categorisation of children's test scores into different racial types I think says a lot about how far America has yet to go in dealing with issues of segregation and unequal opportunities - despite Obama's election as president.
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The first table cites the pass ratios for all low-income students at 37.3%, 28.3%, and 26.4% for 4th, 7th, and 10th grade respectively -- the pass rates for black children are lower than that. So one can accurately infer that non-black low-income children perform better. Granted, this isn't as informative as breaking things down by both race and income. But, as far as I can tell, this is a limitation of the state's r…
Maybe I'm just missing something, but I see no data there about pass ratios for any subject, much less a breakdown by race / income.
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I was disturbed by the "low income" vs. "white" separation. Does the white group also include low income white students? Or, to further their point, did they decide low income whites aren't really white? Nobody should have to "rediscover" the Pythagorean Theorem. I'll go out on a limb and say Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Descartes, etc. just went ahead and read Euclid, and they did pretty well for themselves.
Typically, this sort of pattern means that "low income" includes low income students across all races, that's the only selection criterion for that group. The "white" group will include all white students (including low-income), and the "black" group will include all black students (including high-income). Nothing nefarious.
I hope that the authors did it as you described. Would I be flabbergasted if they pulled some shaky crap? No, probably not, but to quote Mulder's poster, I want to believe.
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I was disturbed by the "low income" vs. "white" separation. Does the white group also include low income white students? Or, to further their point, did they decide low income whites aren't really white? Nobody should have to "rediscover" the Pythagorean Theorem. I'll go out on a limb and say Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Descartes, etc. just went ahead and read Euclid, and they did pretty well for themselves.
Learning to prove mathematical theorems is an important skill in mathematics. If you only learn to use what comes served on a silver platter, where will you learn to handle situations where you haven't had the theorem taught to you in advance? My impression of UC undergraduate students is that "find the correct formula and plug in the numbers" is the only type of math they know how to do, and encouraging that doesn't…
A pity that the article does not include any excerpts from the books or detailed critiques of what's wrong with them. Examining a Discovering Algebra book at http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Algebra-Investigative-Appr... suggests that the book is not so bad (though obviously this only allows previewing a few pages)...however, I'm unsure whether this is even the same book, since the OP doesn't mention the name of the…
A full sample chapter of Discovering Algebra is available from their website: http://www.keypress.com/x5265.xml
Gotta side with the OP on this one, thanks for the link. It's not the math that's at fault so much as the total orientation towards grinding out the answer with a calculator, vs writing it. Oh dear :-/
From the article >>In this approach math is substantially dumbed down for "equity" reasons and students are asked to discover age-old principles on their own. Charlotte Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, wrote the free eBook (pdf) "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
"Dumbing down" and "discovering age-old principles on their own" are not necessarily the same. There is definitely value in learning to do creative work in math and science, beyond just rote memorization and learning to regurgitate what the teacher tells you. It pretty clear that many people with high grades in school are poorly prepared for situations where you actually have to do original work, like grad school. Of…
Going on and on about the beauty of math is all well and good if your brain is wired that way, but when 90% of America's high school grads are stymied by making simple change, you fall back on what works.
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Maybe I'm just missing something, but I see no data there about pass ratios for any subject, much less a breakdown by race / income.
You have to look at the WASL specifically and filter on other criteria from there. For example, a bar chart of 10th grade scores comparing low/non-low incomes: http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/waslTrend.aspx?year=&gr...
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It's the books and the curriculum. Just watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI and cry.
It's funny, I do those "cluster problems" in my head to solve most multiplication and division problems...I presume that I invented the method myself at some point during basic education, as these books are encouraging kids to do. The standard algorithms are great on paper but suck to do in your head for anything very complex (at least for me...) I can see the point though about disadvantaged kids having trouble with…
But what about the lattice method, how is that better than the standard algorithm for humans doing math on paper?
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I looked at that link. I admit that I only read the preface, but when I got to this passage: America’s transition from a sovereign constitutional republic to a socialist democracy would not come about through warfare (bullets and tanks) but through the implementation and installation of the system” in all areas of government—federal, state and local. The brainwashing for acceptance of the “system’s” control would tak…
Why would you admit to only reading the preface? If you don't want to read the book fine with me, but don't pretend like you have some useful input.
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"Dumbing down" and "discovering age-old principles on their own" are not necessarily the same. There is definitely value in learning to do creative work in math and science, beyond just rote memorization and learning to regurgitate what the teacher tells you. It pretty clear that many people with high grades in school are poorly prepared for situations where you actually have to do original work, like grad school. Of…
The problem with rote memorization is that it gets results. You cannot do algebra until you know your times tables by heart, and how did kids learn their times tables in ages past, when men were men and went to the moon without the aid of calculators? Drill, drill, drill. Going on and on about the beauty of math is all well and good if your brain is wired that way, but when 90% of America's high school grads are stym…
And to say that they want to fall back on "what works" sounds a little funny given how dismally American students in general are doing. If people are so afraid to make the mediocre worse, they'll never discover what works better.
Besides, I'm not even sure I agree that you need to be able to multiply numbers before doing algebra.