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An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

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Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#91

Post by solenoidalslide »

logicalmonster wrote: post #35
lr4444lr wrote: post #3

Efforts like this are well meaning, but only treat symptoms. The major impetus for watered down curricula is the very rational fear that large swaths of the student population will fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor. Schools are not prepared to hold back massive numbers of kids, drop out proclivity for students held back rises, and teachers will be poorly evaluated by virtue of their students…

> How we got to this point is perhaps a lot more complicated and politically fraught, but it has to be dealt with. How many folks are really willing to do that? The problem is that actually discussing the perceived root causes of this issue will get you shunned out of polite society.

Are you referring to all of the recent laws banning discussion of these topics labeled CRT?

Those are the only topics I am seeing being outright banned from being discussed or taught.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#92

Post by eggsmediumrare »

n4r9 wrote: post #86
spicymaki wrote: post #75

The tension here is that educational achievement is a proxy measurement for IQ and in capitalist societies IQ is directly correlated with income. The cultural ideal here in the US is that hard work, effort, and grit is what is necessary for success. It is supposed to be purely egalitarian; you get what you give. However whether you are born with a high IQ is purely random, and even worse IQ is heritable. This is crea…

> whether you are born with a high IQ is purely random, and even worse IQ is heritable This sounds contradictory to me. Moreover, how does IQ differ in this respect from "capacity and willingness to do hard work"?

Who you are born as is random, but who will have children with higher IQ is not. Work ethic is less nature and more nurture than IQ, or at least feels that way intuitively.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#93

Post by fortran77 »

chadash wrote: post #38
texaslonghorn5 wrote: post #13

Ultimately the solution is better STEM foundation at the very very early ages. Universal pre school would probably be very useful. Empirically [edit: n = 1 or 2], it seems that drilling basic arithmetic and then multiplication tables early in pre K and earlier elementary will give students a better intuitive math foundation to do algebra very well. That would enable everyone to go into more advanced classes at the sa…

Pre-K (4 year olds) seems a bit young for teaching multiplication tables.

If you can memorize the alphabet, you can memorize the multiplication table to 12x12.

And you'll start seeing beauty in patters and sequences of numbers. The sooner the better.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#94

Post by vkou »

nafix wrote: post #61
cortesoft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the gist of the argument is that when you split students into 'normal' and 'advanced' classes at a young age, the students who are not put into the advanced classes will believe they are just naturally not good at math and will give up on trying to get better because they will think they just "don't have a math brain". Here is a short blurb about the idea: > The framework would not forbid districts from acc…

Sounds like more woke nonsense. Sounds nice and easy to a layman from a super high level but not practical or put through any kind of rigorous rational thought.

> Sounds like more woke nonsense

You are right that this is a lot of nonsense. Specifically, 'you aren't good at math/math is hard' is the nonsense meme that gets hammered into student heads so frequently during school that most of them actually start to believe it.

It's not some kind of novel woke nonsense, though, it's how math instruction on this continent has been happening over the past X decades.

The wokies are pushing back on this nonsense.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#95

Post by wardedVibe »

texaslonghorn5 wrote: post #13

Ultimately the solution is better STEM foundation at the very very early ages. Universal pre school would probably be very useful. Empirically [edit: n = 1 or 2], it seems that drilling basic arithmetic and then multiplication tables early in pre K and earlier elementary will give students a better intuitive math foundation to do algebra very well. That would enable everyone to go into more advanced classes at the sa…

As a math PhD with dyscalcula, I'm very skeptical. I was nearly held back as a child because of poor arithmetic performance, and really only started to be above average when we started on algebra. Poor arithmetic isn't that uncommon among the mathematicians I know.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#96

Post by wonnage »

frostburg wrote: post #5
lr4444lr wrote: post #3

Efforts like this are well meaning, but only treat symptoms. The major impetus for watered down curricula is the very rational fear that large swaths of the student population will fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor. Schools are not prepared to hold back massive numbers of kids, drop out proclivity for students held back rises, and teachers will be poorly evaluated by virtue of their students…

They're avoiding dire outcomes for themselves while damaging society, however. A merely performative education is truly something awful.

I think the cause/effect is reversed. Society is damaged because parents cannot raise kids properly for a variety of reasons. You have kids who don't come to school, entire classrooms where 80% of the time is spent managing behavior, kids who receive zero parental support at home because the single parent is working two jobs, etc.

That problem is hard to fix, whereas the curriculum is soft and malleable. You also have an entire industry of education PHDs who have never taught class for any appreciable amount of time who have a neoliberal fetish for minor policy tweaks as the path to heaven.

Teachers have the same problems as police, random societal functions have fallen to them by default because there's no alternative. They're surrogate parents, social workers, mental health counselors, etc. and there's barely any time to do any teaching afterwards.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#97

Post by texaslonghorn5 »

heymijo wrote: post #88
BitwiseFool wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"drilling basic arithmetic and then multiplication tables" I get the sense that such rote methods are no longer encouraged and a lot of the "new math" in Common Core is aimed at approximation and reckoning so that students won't rely on memorization.

> Empirically, it seems that drilling basic arithmetic and then multiplication tables early in pre K and earlier elementary will give students a better intuitive math foundation to do algebra very well. This aspect of the Common Core was about recognizing deficits in conceptual understanding resulting from rote methods of drilling arithmetic. The empirical evidence is the opposite of OP's assertion, but the end point…

Makes sense, the drilling that works for one student probably doesn't generalize all. Thanks for your perspective!

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#99

Post by wbsss4412 »

klodolph wrote: post #78

I don't live in CA and this isn't my circus, but I have some things to say about math education. From the statement: > We write to emphasize that for students to be prepared for STEM and other quantitative majors in 4-year colleges, [...], learning the Algebra II curriculum [...] in high school is essential. Problems with math are one of the most common reasons why students encounter difficulties in STEM education an…

Considering the fact that the vast majority of students aren't going to go onto 4 year STEM degrees, it doesn’t make sense to track all students towards that goal.

I feel as though there is too much focus on giving everyone more or less the same type of mathematical education in high school. This is probably due to limited resources (ie teacher availability and class sizes), but ideally there would be room for a more varied approach wherein students don’t need to have every year build on the next if the aren’t STEM tracked. Too many students fall behind and never are able to recover. Math class just becomes dead time, and those that do make it to college end up retaking the same subjects over again.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#100

Post by ecshafer »

2sk21 wrote: post #49
jl6 wrote: post #43

Which states are doing it right?

In New Jersey and Massachusetts at least, there is absolutely no move to water down the math curriculum in any way. On the contrary, the schools here compete on how many AP courses are offered.

New Jersey also has an excellent practices of magnet schools at the county level. So that even if you are in a poorer school district you can go study and apply for a magnet school at the county that is better and more focused on high academic schools. These schools focus on basically college level education for their area in health care, biochem, technology, arts, etc. with many AP courses. The normal public schools are also good in NJ with a solid baseline, but the magnet schools open up access to what would otherwise be private specialized schools to all income levels.
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