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California needs real math education, not gimmicks

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Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#21

Post by HWR_14 »

bushbaba wrote: post #12

California k-12 public education has become a joke. Even the top rated schools are succeeding from students going to after school tutoring and not from the education in the public institution. It’s appalling how California cares more about homelessness, undocumented immigrants, and Medicare over education. Education is the single biggest factor to driving social mobility of the poor to middle class, and middle class…

> Education is the single biggest factor to driving social mobility of the poor to middle class, and middle class to wealthy

Is it? Any evidence that supports the idea that the quality of K-12 education matters at all?

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#22

Post by HWR_14 »

ecshafer wrote: post #7
avs733 wrote: post #5

As someone with a PhD in education, anytime someone uses the phrase “real education” as an attack on new approaches to teaching and learning, it’s a gigantic red flag that their argument is unserious.

The "advice" coming from these professors of education to state governments should be what is giving you a giant red flag. Reducing quality of education by lowering standards, and lying about the data, shows that it is not driven by science. My opinion on this: the "education" establishment in the US is driven by people looking for consulting fees, as shown by someone in this post linking to Dr Boaler's absurd consul…

Aren't those absurd consulting fees determined by taking a small fee and dividing it by a very small number of nominal hours worked?

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#23

Post by extr »

aeonik wrote: post #10

The Author may have good points, but there is still a lot of value in teaching basic statistics, and I don't understand why Algebra is required to understand basic stats. Even just learning the basic descriptive statistics and getting people fluent in reading charts can be very valuable. The fact that they may not understand the deeper nuances is fine in my opinion. Also... I work with a lot of data analysts and data…

> why Algebra is required to understand basic stats

I don't understand how you can say this. Literally every statistical concept is defined via formula, and to manipulate formulas correctly (or even really understand the concept) you need basic algebra.

Going even further than that, if you have the most basic "business scenario word problem", like cells in excel that describe how many widgets are made per hour, how many are defective, the price of each one...etc. The skill that lets you combine them in a sensical way to figure out your profit or loss is literally algebra. It's used by everyone everywhere all the time. Algebra is a core skill we can't be skipping.

IMO if you don't teach stats, people are okay, they have an intuition about fractions and can reason from there. But not teaching basic algebra and putting them in the modern economy is like not teaching someone to read and putting them in a car on the road.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#24

Post by jeffbee »

I feel like the facts are a little thin. It is not really true that "For decades, American math curriculum has followed a standard sequence: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, algebra II, precalculus and trigonometry, and calculus." That may have been the local condition in some places. The high school in my city does not have and has never had any named math course except calculus and statistics. Everything else is just "math". Common core math does not follow the given progression, either. 8th grade common core math has elements of algebra, geometry, and statistics and probability.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#25

Post by goolulusaurs »

In my younger years, particularly during my schooling, I held a deep resentment towards the educational system. It felt overtly clear to me, as a student, that schools failed to effectively foster learning and growth. However, my perspective has evolved over time. I've come to understand that the issues I observed are not unique to the school system but rather characteristic of large institutions as a whole.

The pervasive failure of these institutions to meet their stated objectives isn't an isolated phenomenon. It's symptomatic of a larger, systemic problem – the widespread presence of perverse and misaligned incentives at all levels within large organizations.

Unless we find a way to counteract this, attempts at reform will merely catalyze further expansion and complexity. The uncomfortable truth is, once an organization surpasses a certain size, it seems to take on a 'life of its own', gradually sacrificing its original mission to prioritize self-preservation and expansion. Who has ever seen an organization like this voluntarily reform itself? I certainly haven't.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#26

Post by jordigh »

wiseleo wrote: post #4

Data Science is a form of statistics. Algebra II is a pre-requisite for statistics. How is replacing a pre-requisite with a more advanced class is a good idea?

How is data science not just statistics, rebranded?

When I studied statistics in university we studied clustering, regression, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, visualisations, charting, general linear models... how is this different from data science?

Is it just because we have more computing power, so we rebranded it? Instead of doing frequentist analyses because those are easy to do with smaller computers, now we do more Bayesian stats, on bigger computers, and therefore call it data science?

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#27

Post by AvocadoPanic »

sidlls wrote: post #14
avs733 wrote: post #5

As someone with a PhD in education, anytime someone uses the phrase “real education” as an attack on new approaches to teaching and learning, it’s a gigantic red flag that their argument is unserious.

I've been absolutely enraged at the approach to mathematics instruction my children (who have just finished 2nd and 5th grade) have had to-date. It is an absolutely mind-bogglingly inflexible system that seems designed to frustrate anyone gifted enough genetically or fortunate enough environmentally (e.g. parental/mentor instruction) to be beyond the concepts taught at a given level.

Did yours read any assigned novels in school in the 4th grade? Ours didn't, they don't do that anymore.

Not much writing either, because so much is online.

My wife is homeschooling next year.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#28

Post by jschveibinz »

HWR_14 wrote: post #21
bushbaba wrote: post #12

California k-12 public education has become a joke. Even the top rated schools are succeeding from students going to after school tutoring and not from the education in the public institution. It’s appalling how California cares more about homelessness, undocumented immigrants, and Medicare over education. Education is the single biggest factor to driving social mobility of the poor to middle class, and middle class…

> Education is the single biggest factor to driving social mobility of the poor to middle class, and middle class to wealthy Is it? Any evidence that supports the idea that the quality of K-12 education matters at all?

Good question, and it probably depends on what you read. Here is one report that suggests there is a correlation, but I would continue to gather data:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/thirteen-economic-facts-a...

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#29

Post by jeffbee »

bushbaba wrote: post #12

California k-12 public education has become a joke. Even the top rated schools are succeeding from students going to after school tutoring and not from the education in the public institution. It’s appalling how California cares more about homelessness, undocumented immigrants, and Medicare over education. Education is the single biggest factor to driving social mobility of the poor to middle class, and middle class…

What gives you the impression that California prioritizes homelessness, immigrants, and medicare over education? The state spent $136 billion on k-12 education last year, making it far and away the largest spending program. Anti-homelessness programs typically get 1% that much, although recent years have been slightly more as the housing crisis worsens.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#30

Post by MikeTheRocker »

goolulusaurs wrote: post #25

In my younger years, particularly during my schooling, I held a deep resentment towards the educational system. It felt overtly clear to me, as a student, that schools failed to effectively foster learning and growth. However, my perspective has evolved over time. I've come to understand that the issues I observed are not unique to the school system but rather characteristic of large institutions as a whole. The perv…

Quality comments like this are what keep me coming back to HN.

I certainly agree. I’m not sure exactly how, but it’s clear there needs to be some sort of incentive for institutions to actually achieve their purpose, but as soon as a metric is measured, it gets exploited and over optimized.

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