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A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

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Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#21

Post by sremani »

venomsnake wrote: post #18
rayiner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between "good schools" and "bad schools" is much more about the kids that go there than anything about the school itself. You're seeing this starkly in D.C. where gentrification in certain neighborhoods is shifting the student demographics from 90% low-income to 20% low-income over just 4-5 years. Test scores are shooting up, but it's not like they fired all the teachers and hired new staff at twice th…

Aren't schools financed by local property taxes in US. And the rich parents pay more in taxes and there is more resources in the system. Also well off parents could help school in other ways.

That is general rule of thumb, but there are variations in this law at state and local level. In Texas, there is Robin Hood, basically a portion of a rich neighborhood taxes are used to subsidize poor ISDs.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#22

Post by jerf »

dzdt wrote: post #2

TLDR : American public schools suck but there is an increasing number of extracurricular math programs that help talented kids learn advanced problem solving skills. Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks, and there are marginal efforts to reach out to poorer students. But the real story right now is, if you have kids in public school, their math educatio…

"Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks,"

It's really important not to let 201x social concerns get in the way of this stuff. The good stuff always starts out with the rich. Always. It is virtually structurally impossible for it to happen any other way. (Not quite, but very much the exception rather than the rule.) Rather than complaining that only the rich have the thing it is far more important to work out how to get it improved and shared more widely; complaining about the rich having the thing doesn't help that and in the modern political environment runs the risk of strangling the improvement in the crib. It is always easier to bring "equality" by cutting off the top than bring up the bottom, and you have to be very wary of that, because people will propose that in various subtle ways if you fall for the "class inequality" memeset too hard.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#23

Post by jerf »

dineshp2 wrote: post #8

The fundamental problem of education in public schools and its ineffectiveness is not being addressed. It's great that many of these extracurricular clubs and institutes exist to impart advanced education to interested students. But it does not solve the underlying problem.

It's a step in solving the underlying problem, since at this point only someone studiously incapable of learning from history can think that the school system is going to produce a superior math curriculum on its own. I'd say "it had its chance", but that's hardly true... it has had its several dozen chances.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#24

Post by j2kun »

rayiner wrote: post #7
dzdt wrote: post #2

TLDR : American public schools suck but there is an increasing number of extracurricular math programs that help talented kids learn advanced problem solving skills. Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks, and there are marginal efforts to reach out to poorer students. But the real story right now is, if you have kids in public school, their math educatio…

The difference between "good schools" and "bad schools" is much more about the kids that go there than anything about the school itself. You're seeing this starkly in D.C. where gentrification in certain neighborhoods is shifting the student demographics from 90% low-income to 20% low-income over just 4-5 years. Test scores are shooting up, but it's not like they fired all the teachers and hired new staff at twice th…

This is a huge problem, yes, and probably far more important than what I'm about to say. But even in the best public schools, in places which lack economic and social problems, math education is still egregiously behind the types of learning and teaching described in the article.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#25

Post by Ntrails »

j2kun wrote: post #5

I am continually surprised by how many emails I get from teenage students thanking me for writing my math blog. On top of that, I try to occasionally make it out to high schools to give guest lectures. I posted an example experience from one of these online [1] and I am usually looking for other opportunities to do this sort of thing. I think that if every math graduate student who is a reasonably good teacher took a…

The sad thing is that the cool stuff isn't even always complex. It's little things, like going through how the quadratic formula is derived instead of just telling someone to learn it by rote. Explaining differentiation with a bit of the logic behind it instead of just teaching rules.

But at the same time - I know I'd have/did enjoy that stuff but maybe 60% of my classes would have played up if a whole lesson was spent deriving and exploring concepts without rote learning.

Being a maths teacher has to be pretty rough, especially given the number of students who are openly hostile to it as a subject.

As an aside, I often think about my Religious Studies teacher who'd disparage topics like Maths as being irrelevant after school. We'd never use them she said. RS was vital to life success, Maths a pointless exercise. It still winds me up to remember.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#26

Post by LeifCarrotson »

lintiness wrote: post #9

"The No Child Left Behind Act, which shaped education for nearly 15 years, further contributed to the neglect of these programs. Ignoring kids who may have had aptitude or interest in accelerated learning, it demanded that states turn their attention to getting struggling learners to perform adequately..." teaching to population averages will prove disastrous to our long-term growth. thank goodness we have private in…

It's not necessarily wrong to teach to population averages.

It sounds like you're suggesting that education effort/money should be distributed with an emphasis on high-aptitude students instead of low-aptitude students for long-term growth goals. This makes some sense, it seems likely that empowering high-aptitude students with better education will generate leaders, entrepreneurs, inventors, 10x engineers, and "growth".

But if you don't spend the extra money and effort to teach the low-aptitude students, they will not have a usable education, producing a "low aptitude class", likely condemned to poverty, unemployment, and suffering.

Growth is great, but suffering is not. Maybe the bureaucracy swings too far towards preventing suffering at the expense of future growth, but it's not a black-and-white wrong.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#27

Post by mc32 »

rayiner wrote: post #7
dzdt wrote: post #2

TLDR : American public schools suck but there is an increasing number of extracurricular math programs that help talented kids learn advanced problem solving skills. Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks, and there are marginal efforts to reach out to poorer students. But the real story right now is, if you have kids in public school, their math educatio…

The difference between "good schools" and "bad schools" is much more about the kids that go there than anything about the school itself. You're seeing this starkly in D.C. where gentrification in certain neighborhoods is shifting the student demographics from 90% low-income to 20% low-income over just 4-5 years. Test scores are shooting up, but it's not like they fired all the teachers and hired new staff at twice th…

Exactly this, as schools in SF have begun to experience re-gentrification, back from empty nesters and influx of poor immigrants, the new gentrification has anecdotally resulted in improving schools at the elementary school level, and as they grow (and if their patents remain in the city) middle and high would likely improve too.

One of the stark differences between improving and flagging schools is parent involvement and support, in addition to a culture of education and learning.

It's what I saw growing up, kids from blue collar families saw school as a reluctant obligation through which they had to pass. Kids whose patents were professionals took a different view of education and saw it as a station on the path to a richer [both meanings] life.

So, it's more than money or wages, it's a way of thinking, how the parents think of school, how the kids think of school, attitude towards academic achievement (over sports, for example), etc.

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#28

Post by shmageggy »

The example problem they give is pretty neat, but they don't mention the (IMO) interesting part of it. After sketching out the answer, I was suprised that the height you gain is independent of the size of the underlying circle. That certainly suprised me, as my intuition was that the height you would gain would shrink as the underlying circle grew -- after all, you'd be adding a constant length to an ever growing value. But the answer only depends on the amount of length you add, so the problem has the same answer whether it's the earth, the sun, or a proton. Neat!

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#29

Post by cschneid »

jerf wrote: post #22
dzdt wrote: post #2

TLDR : American public schools suck but there is an increasing number of extracurricular math programs that help talented kids learn advanced problem solving skills. Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks, and there are marginal efforts to reach out to poorer students. But the real story right now is, if you have kids in public school, their math educatio…

"Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks," It's really important not to let 201x social concerns get in the way of this stuff. The good stuff always starts out with the rich. Always. It is virtually structurally impossible for it to happen any other way. (Not quite , but very much the exception rather than the rule.) Rather than complaining that only the r…

It's easy to want to simply to steal from the rich, as you point out.

But that's not our current style of failure, it's "hey poor district, you're not up to snuff compared to the rich district. We're going to fire all the teachers, gut your union, and generally make your life hell. That's sure to make you do better".

Re: A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math

#30

Post by rayiner »

venomsnake wrote: post #18
rayiner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between "good schools" and "bad schools" is much more about the kids that go there than anything about the school itself. You're seeing this starkly in D.C. where gentrification in certain neighborhoods is shifting the student demographics from 90% low-income to 20% low-income over just 4-5 years. Test scores are shooting up, but it's not like they fired all the teachers and hired new staff at twice th…

Aren't schools financed by local property taxes in US. And the rich parents pay more in taxes and there is more resources in the system. Also well off parents could help school in other ways.

Accounting for local, state, and federal spending, most states spend more money per student in their poorest districts than in their most affluent ones: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-2.... In California, the poorest school districts receive almost 14% more money than the richest ones.
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