Tuesday Open Thread
Lots of news:
- the Rainier Beach PTSA is being honored with one of twelve Champion of Change awards next Friday at the White House. From RBHS PTSA:
We will travel to Washington, DC and stand together as we accept one of the most significant public honors for this community in some time. Recipients of this award will enjoy a guided tour of the East Wing, Policy briefing, lunch, Champion of Change event, photo opportunity and story featured on the White House website.
Yes, yes and yes! Congrats to those wonderful leaders at RBHS, Carline Brown, Rita Green and LaCretiah Claytor. This is how we get it done.
- it looks like Bryant has posted its teacher list at The Source. Check it for your teachers as well.
- from the Columbia Legal Services, the number of homeless students in Washington State has gone up by 19% in 2010-2011. All but nine counties have a greater than 2% population. Almost a third are in rural areas. Over the last four years, most counties have seen student homelessness go up by more than 50%. (And note: charters also underserve this group of students as well as Special Ed and ELL students.)
- From the district, an announcement that tomorrow, August 1st, there is a Green event at Denny/Sealth joining the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council, WA Green Schools, SPS, Seattle Mariners, Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Storm. Volunteers and students will join Superintendent Banda, former Seahawks Forey Duckett and Kerry Carter, Mariners pitchers Lucas Luetge and Steve Delabar, Camille Little and Svetlna Abrosimova from the Storm and former Sounders' defender, Taylor Graham to work on the Joan Allen Memorial Garden.
10 am to noon - work party
10:45-11:45 am - Banda and athletes will be working
noon - Zero waste lunch served
1 pm - event concludes
Thank you to sponsors Skanska, Vulcan, McKinstry, Cedar Grove Composting and Washington Green Schools.
What's on your mind?
- the Rainier Beach PTSA is being honored with one of twelve Champion of Change awards next Friday at the White House. From RBHS PTSA:
We will travel to Washington, DC and stand together as we accept one of the most significant public honors for this community in some time. Recipients of this award will enjoy a guided tour of the East Wing, Policy briefing, lunch, Champion of Change event, photo opportunity and story featured on the White House website.
Yes, yes and yes! Congrats to those wonderful leaders at RBHS, Carline Brown, Rita Green and LaCretiah Claytor. This is how we get it done.
- it looks like Bryant has posted its teacher list at The Source. Check it for your teachers as well.
- from the Columbia Legal Services, the number of homeless students in Washington State has gone up by 19% in 2010-2011. All but nine counties have a greater than 2% population. Almost a third are in rural areas. Over the last four years, most counties have seen student homelessness go up by more than 50%. (And note: charters also underserve this group of students as well as Special Ed and ELL students.)
- From the district, an announcement that tomorrow, August 1st, there is a Green event at Denny/Sealth joining the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council, WA Green Schools, SPS, Seattle Mariners, Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Storm. Volunteers and students will join Superintendent Banda, former Seahawks Forey Duckett and Kerry Carter, Mariners pitchers Lucas Luetge and Steve Delabar, Camille Little and Svetlna Abrosimova from the Storm and former Sounders' defender, Taylor Graham to work on the Joan Allen Memorial Garden.
10 am to noon - work party
10:45-11:45 am - Banda and athletes will be working
noon - Zero waste lunch served
1 pm - event concludes
Thank you to sponsors Skanska, Vulcan, McKinstry, Cedar Grove Composting and Washington Green Schools.
What's on your mind?
Comments
Seems silly to me -- at a minimum, the data says lack of higher math skills permanently cripples future earnings, see, eg, http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/rb/RB_701JBRB.pdf -- but I'm curious what others think?
These ladies follow closely what is happening at RBHS and often testified at SPS Board meetings.
Initially Rita Green was shocked to find out about the poor quality of math instruction offered in the SPS and saw faulting RBHS for 10th grade WASL Math pass rates as unfair given the lack of skills of incoming 9th graders.
For years the District's social promotion was a direct violation of the promotion/non-promotion policy which was ignored. The policy required parental notification and interventions for students who were not acquiring skills. Instead the district chose to "flim flam" the public into thinking skills were being acquired.
The "flim flam" was continued as Susan Enfield & Holly Ferguson et al. and the SPS Board trashed the promotion/non-promotion policy. The rationale was that the policy did not work. (Surprise when a policy is never used because the policy was not wanted then it does not work.) The new policy kept things operating exactly along the lines of the non-functional PC Correct Status-Quo.
For 8th math students the "flim flaming" accelerated with the School Report cards and the "Ready for High School Math" statistic. This value needed to be ridiculously over stated so as to make The District's push for "Algebra as the lowest level course" taught in High School seem reasonable (which it was not).
Here is the Data.
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So what's up at Aki Kurose?
Looks like perhaps there is Admin pressure to give higher grades than warranted.
2010-2011 36.4% pass 8th grade MSP ... but District says 77% ready for high school math in grade 9
2009-2010 34.8% pass 8th grade MSP ... but District says 73% ready for high school math in grade 9.
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Is the plan of the SPS to use inflated grades to deceive parents about their child's level of math achievement?
So what does ready for high school math mean?
Now it is clear why the SPS adopted "Discovering Algebra". Too few students are ready for high school math.
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Lets take a look at low income student 8th grade MSP Math pass rates.
MSP MATH
SY 2009-2010
School MSP :: Low Income Student Math pass rate
Eckstein .....84.1 ...:: 61.1
Whitman ....74.8 ...:: 48.5
Hamilton .... 62.1 .:: 35.6
Denny .........56.9 .:: 46.8
Mercer ........57 ....:: 47.1
Aki K ..........34.8 ..:: 32.4
......ALL Students ...:: Low Income
SY 2010-2011
School MSP Math :: Low Income Student Math pass rate
Eckstein ...80.1 ....:: 54.4
Hamilton ..70.8 ....:: 46.1
Whitman ...66.4 ....:: 38
Denny ......66.8 ....:: 59.9
Mercer .....60.7 ....:: 55.8
Aki Kur ... 36.4 ....:: 36
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Carlina and Rita and LeCretiah are on it; unfortunately Enfield, Central Admin Staff and the Board were not.
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Melissa's and Greg's view on the NY Times Op-Ed is similar to that of Scientific American's Evelyn Lamb with Abandoning Algebra Is Not the Answer
Daniel Willingham as well with Yes, Algebra is necessary
Psychology Today ::
Algebra IS Necessary .. New York Times caught in unfortunate hoax? Say it isn't so!
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What is needed is a thoughtful analysis of why the US is doing such an incredibly poor job of educating k-12 students in mathematics.
Has anyone actually done an in depth investigation of why these HS students are bombing out of math? Something along the lines of root cause analysis re: their deficit in math knowledge and skills.
What don't they know and how did they come to not know it?
And for those kids who are succeeding, what do they know and how did they come to know it?
I expect it would be quite revealing and damning re: our k-8 system of math instruction.
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Increasing HS Math graduation requirements only serves to water down the quality of math classes with even greater social promotion.
The NSF grants for development of math instructional materials have made publishers richer and enriched universities with a stream of grants for producing things like Connected Mathematics Project...... There was and is no accountability for NSF grant recipients other than to spend the money the way the recipient proposed to spend it.
Instead of algebra, is there a math literacy type of class that would teach useful skills for life that are less abstract than regular algebra? I'm thinking basic financial work (interest, home accounting, etc.) and maybe some basic statistics so that people can use the stats presented in news stories effectively. Maybe you need algebra to learn those skills, though.
It does make one think the problem begins in elementary math. Students don't achieve mastery in arithmetic, so middle school math gets weakened. Because of the weak middle school math, algebra becomes an algebra lite, with a generous helping of calculator use.
Unfortunately, your child's math grades won't tell you what your child is missing. Just because they passed an algebra class doesn't mean they have mastered algebra.
Nem
"Just because they passed an algebra class doesn't mean they have mastered algebra."
The data to back that up from SPS results for students that took an Algebra Course and then the OSPI EoC Algebra test in grade 9.
9th grade students who took algebra in 2010-2011 and tested in Spring 2011 for EoC.
Level 4 (exceeds standard) ...... 17.9%
Level 3 (met standard) ............ 30.1%
Basic (met standard) ............... 0.8%
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Level 2 (below standard) ......... 21.4%
Level 1 (well below standard) .. 29.8%
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1726 students in grade 9 who took algebra were tested and 884 did not meet standard (51.2%).
So how many of the 1726 students received a passing grade in Algebra? How many received a C- or better?
It was expected that a level 4 score indicated an "A" or high "B" level of knowledge and
a level 3 score was from mid'B" level down to "C-".
It appears that 30% of those tested (515 students) knew very little algebra at the end a one year class.
Enfield proclaimed that in math things were improving in the SPS .... Anyone still buying the propaganda ( other than Carr and Martin-Morris)?
"Learning at home" obviously is not buying it. So what has the Board done? It hired Mr. Banda and that may prove to be the best move ever.... Keeping Dr. Enfield as Supt. should never have been considered.
To Improve a System requires the intelligent application of relevant data
HERE
The Seattle Times noted on June 15, 2012, that in the Seattle Community College District, about 70% of entering students need remedial math, according to a national standardized placement test.
This is unacceptable. The curriculum needs an overhaul and many of us are counting on Banda to do it.
S parent
Now suppose you find out in college you want to go scientific. If you really love it you can remedial up to level.
Can you quit floggingt the dead horse called Enfield, please.
Be careful of math classes that are promoted as more relevant to students. It may be discovery math which does not lead to proficiency.
S parent
Wow RBHS!!!
happy parent
My son had to change his major in college because he did not have the skills necessary to stay in his chosen field. The students from east coast schools had exposure to much better math.
The more research I have done on discovery math, the more I think it holds too many students back. An excellent book on the topic is Betrayed, by Laurie H. Rogers. She is a Spokane author who writes about the math curriculum challenges in Washington state.
I would also check out the website Where’s the Math?, which goes into the curriculum in more detail.
Both Cliff Mass and Dan Demsey are correct about the shortcomings of discovery math. They are joined by 60 UW faculty members in math and science who expressed concern about the poor mastery of essential math skills seen in incoming freshmen.
It seems quite unfair to expect our students to arrive to age 18 without the correct preparation in math. Just like the whole language fad (which did not teach language skills), the discovery math fad sets up students for failure.
S parent
Math is a lot of muscle memory. That takes years of practice and routine. You build foundations and they become something you don't even think twice about. Then you build more on top of that.
Think, also, about playing piano. You can learn all the notes and values, but to be able to really PLAY music by sight, fluently, takes years of practice. I can play individual notes slowly and one at a time, couldn't play it is meant to be paid.
Mathy mom
Jan
because you shouldn't remember that the steam roller of "Discovery" crap, which hurt thousands of our kids, was pushed by Enfield as if Carla never left!
Grow up Dan! Forget everyone and everything, and then EVERY day will be brand new ... even when it is the Same Old Stuff!
BlindersBeatReality
http://thejosevilson.com/2012/07/30/great-another-non-math-person-complaining-about-algebra/
NY Times More Training Is Needed
What measures of student achievement are fair, accurate, don’t lead to cheating and ensure accountability? Most countries have devised informative and inexpensive ways to measure student achievement. They use paper and pencil tests — largely essay-writing. They don’t need costly technological equipment to hold their schools accountable and prevent cheating.
High-stakes also play a positive role. As researcher Richard Phelps notes “Over 90 percent of over a thousand studies conducted between 1910 and 2010 shows that feedback, consequences (i.e., 'stakes') and frequency in testing all strongly increase academic achievement.”
There is no evidence that the mounds of paperwork imposed by government in the past half century have done much to improve our schools. The paperwork is more likely one cause of their dysfunction and a major source of teacher/administrator cheating.
The major differences between our country and most others are in the academic caliber of their teachers (who get paid to correct these essay tests at the end of the school year) and in the range of curricular choices offered adolescents to stimulate their motivation to complete high school. We do poorly on both counts.
Government can’t make students learn. Government can ensure safe schools, adequately equipped classrooms, good textbooks, library/media centers, music and art rooms, science lab facilities and athletic facilities.
Government can also establish demanding academic and other criteria for the selection of prospective teachers and administrators, for the content of their professional training, and for the hiring/retention of education school faculty. If school administrators and teachers are to be held accountable for student learning, then those who train them should also be held accountable for their performance, based in part on student scores.
We can find out if our teachers and administrators are effective by comparing our students’ performance levels on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, which assesses knowledge of mathematics and science gained from a rigorous curriculum, and the Program for International Student Assessment, which assesses daily life skills and minimal academic content.
Government can also finance and promote curriculum choices for young adolescents. As Massachusetts has shown with its 26 regional technical/career high schools, grade 8 students who choose to attend an occupationally oriented high school tend to stay in school and graduate. Accountability ultimately lies in their employability after high school, which is why most of these schools have long waiting lists.
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Meanwhile the USA's big plan for improvement lies in the ultra expensive Common Core State Standards ... yet another unproven expensive leap of faith.
One CCSS assessment team is headed up by Dr. Joe Wilhoft .. his big accomplishment was our WASL. Its likely we will have a WASL repeat on a giant scale.
Buying a Car compared with buying CCSS.
In the Huffington Post today. Makes me very sad.
FHP
Let's not have that sort of name-calling, please.