Monday, December 21, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Common Standards: The Time Is Now
Common Standards: The Time Is Now
by Bob Rothman - senior fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Researchers Offer Dueling Views on Tracking
As the anti reformists continue their rhetoric that detracking is evil and hurts gifted children (the only one the anti-reformists ever write about), several dueling reports have been released about tracking. Of course, each report draws different conclusions. See here for both and send the one to your colleagues that supports your opinion like the anti-reformists do. I, however, choose to give both sides of the research.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
High School Exit Exam
One of my senior math majors at Rowan has compiled links to all 5o states high school exit exams in mathematics. It is interesting to see the requirements and content of the different exams in all 50 states. You can access the links here.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Asian Nations
What is that high-performing Asian nations get right, when it comes to math teaching? A pair of researchers have explored that question in a new study, which examines the standards of Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea by creating a "composite" of their expectations in that subject.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Dont Let Washington Become NJ
Guest Columnist: Speaking math to the lay public By Bill Marsh
A well intentioned, partially informed and very political group of Washington citizens has convinced our Legislature to implement a 19th century mathematics curriculum in our schools. Since they believe that the half-century of work in mathematics education that started when Sputnik went up in 1957 was almost entirely misguided, they undervalue the ideas and research of the people who, in my lifetime, have worked hardest to better our children's learning of mathematics. Conversely, they tout the opinions of some of the louder research mathematicians who share their traditional views.
I am a mathematician with different views. I favor many progressive and reform ideas in mathematics education. But I am well aware that, as in other difficult areas of research and scholarship, mistakes are made, and ideas and opinions have to be abandoned or changed -- including some I once held.
Statements by practicing mathematicians should of course be taken seriously in mathematics education. Any reasonable person who has learned from mathematicians that there are an infinite number of primes would reject out of hand a fourth-grade curriculum built on a finite number of primes. The Washington State Board of Education would be justified in rejecting any curriculum that introduces real numbers in second grade, given that the mathematician it hired to review our state's standards has told them: "The point is that fractions are an essential intermediary step between whole number and real numbers." And since a renowned mathematician on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel recently convened by President Bush tells us that "...one must know what fractions are and how to add fractions before a decimal can be defined," surely no one should consider a curriculum that introduces decimals before fractions.
These two prominent mathematicians are honest, hard working scholars speaking the truth as they see it as a public service. Unfortunately, they often make statements about or in mathematics education and public policy in a manner that suggests these statements are mathematically certain. The two statements just quoted sound as if they are statements in mathematics. But they are not certain. In fact, they are not true.
There is a "naming trick" based on iterated halving with which second graders can understand and use real numbers, which they can call "measuring numbers," as "good names for dots on number lines." A six-year-old, who may or may not know what a tenth is, explains the trick in six minutes at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d90wWqYBMOQ
The idea behind this trick can be extended to decimals in third and fourth grades, before students have to face the horrors of fractions.
Mathematicians, it seems to me, have a special responsibility to be careful in how they speak to the lay public. Everybody knows that even the best knowledge in other fields is subject to revision, but that mathematics is different. I was told in high school chemistry 50 years ago that inert elements did not form compounds. Then along came xenon difluoride. I'm sure that our two mathematicians would agree that statements in mathematics education, including their own, have to be viewed and held more tentatively than those in chemistry.
------------------------
Bill Marsh lives in Port Angeles. He taught in several secondary schools and colleges. He testified last year before K-12 education committees in the Legislature.
A well intentioned, partially informed and very political group of Washington citizens has convinced our Legislature to implement a 19th century mathematics curriculum in our schools. Since they believe that the half-century of work in mathematics education that started when Sputnik went up in 1957 was almost entirely misguided, they undervalue the ideas and research of the people who, in my lifetime, have worked hardest to better our children's learning of mathematics. Conversely, they tout the opinions of some of the louder research mathematicians who share their traditional views.
I am a mathematician with different views. I favor many progressive and reform ideas in mathematics education. But I am well aware that, as in other difficult areas of research and scholarship, mistakes are made, and ideas and opinions have to be abandoned or changed -- including some I once held.
Statements by practicing mathematicians should of course be taken seriously in mathematics education. Any reasonable person who has learned from mathematicians that there are an infinite number of primes would reject out of hand a fourth-grade curriculum built on a finite number of primes. The Washington State Board of Education would be justified in rejecting any curriculum that introduces real numbers in second grade, given that the mathematician it hired to review our state's standards has told them: "The point is that fractions are an essential intermediary step between whole number and real numbers." And since a renowned mathematician on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel recently convened by President Bush tells us that "...one must know what fractions are and how to add fractions before a decimal can be defined," surely no one should consider a curriculum that introduces decimals before fractions.
These two prominent mathematicians are honest, hard working scholars speaking the truth as they see it as a public service. Unfortunately, they often make statements about or in mathematics education and public policy in a manner that suggests these statements are mathematically certain. The two statements just quoted sound as if they are statements in mathematics. But they are not certain. In fact, they are not true.
There is a "naming trick" based on iterated halving with which second graders can understand and use real numbers, which they can call "measuring numbers," as "good names for dots on number lines." A six-year-old, who may or may not know what a tenth is, explains the trick in six minutes at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d90wWqYBMOQ
The idea behind this trick can be extended to decimals in third and fourth grades, before students have to face the horrors of fractions.
Mathematicians, it seems to me, have a special responsibility to be careful in how they speak to the lay public. Everybody knows that even the best knowledge in other fields is subject to revision, but that mathematics is different. I was told in high school chemistry 50 years ago that inert elements did not form compounds. Then along came xenon difluoride. I'm sure that our two mathematicians would agree that statements in mathematics education, including their own, have to be viewed and held more tentatively than those in chemistry.
------------------------
Bill Marsh lives in Port Angeles. He taught in several secondary schools and colleges. He testified last year before K-12 education committees in the Legislature.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
NJ to apply for federal stimulus money afterall
The Corzine administration reversed course Monday and said it would apply in January for the first round of competition for federal stimulus money that could bring more than $200 million to New Jersey’s public schools.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Feedback on Common Core Released
Summary of Public Feedback on the Draft College- and Career- Readiness Standards
for English-Language Arts and Mathematics has released. Click here.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Education Week: PTA Launches Campaign Backing Common Standards
Education Week: PTA Launches Campaign Backing Common Standards
and NJ is one of the states involved.
Note the anti-reformists comments at the end.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Business leaders in control - please no
Why Business Leaders Should Not Be in the Driver's Seat
Yet now, we live in an age when it is the custom to bash the public schools, not to thank them for helping to build our nation. It has become commonplace for the president, the secretary of education, and the leaders of the business community to lament the terrible state of our schools and to demand radical, one might even say revolutionary, changes. We live in an age of data, and the data (they say) are awful. They look at NAEP test scores, international test scores, graduation rates, and anything else that is measurable, and they demand solutions, now.
Note that they never speak of the state of learning, nor even the state of education, because those words connote many intangibles that cannot be measured and converted into data. The politicians and business leaders do not speak about whether young people read in their spare time, whether their reading consists of good literature and non-fiction, whether they know how to write an engaging essay or a well-constructed research paper, whether they can engage in an informed discussion of history, whether they are knowledgeable about our governmental system, whether they perform volunteer service in their community, whether they leave high school prepared to serve on a jury and vote thoughtfully.
No, instead what we now hear from our business leaders is that the schools must be redesigned to function like business. They conveniently overlook the fact that business practices and the ruthless pursuit of a competitive edge nearly destroyed our national economy a year ago.
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