Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Math wars end in sight?


It’s a pleasure to welcome the prospect of not just a ceasefire but a peace treaty in some of the major pedagogical hostilities in our time: the math wars. A report from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics could satisfy both the faction that insists on competence in basic arithmetical operations and the faction that insists that understanding is essential and is gained by making the students ‘‘discover’’ important concepts.

The council is not making much of the fact that one of its reports in 1989 stressing the importance of discovery was widely — and perhaps badly — adopted, leading many parents to complain that weeks of graph-paper manipulation ending in the Pythagorean Theorem was ridiculous when their high school kids couldn’t calculate a simple tip in a restaurant or calculate a discount at a hardware store checkout.

The new report, Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics, is a major retreat.It concludes that mastery of basic concepts and operations is best achieved through focusing on those basics.(Funny how long that took to sink in.)

A common and true criticism of analysts who compare American teaching to that of nations whose students always lead the international competitions — nations such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea — is that mathematics in American schools is ‘‘a mile wide and an inch deep.’’ Usually dozens of topics, varying greatly from state to state, are touched on in each grade, leading to much forgetting over the summer and not much mastery of anything.

The council now has chosen three ‘‘focal points’’ for each grade, and shows teachers how each set builds on those that came before and prepares for those to come.For example, in sixth grade students would learn how to multiply and divide fractions and decimals, how ratios and rates are connected to multiplication and division, and what an equation is and how to write a simple one.

Nothing is said about teaching methods, which is probably wise.After all, there are dozens of ways to illustrate ratios.If teachers take the new insights to heart, their students could very well understand math better and yet be more skilled in arithmetic, too.Who knows, maybe fewer remedial classes would be needed in college — and waiters and waitresses might get adequate tips.

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SCHOOL REFORM ON THE MOVE AT LAST?

A fine line exists between stability and stagnation. In education policy, we have been content to sail well past that line. For too long our answer to education challenges has been "just spend more money." In 1960, average public school spending per pupil was $375 (around $2300 in inflation adjusted dollars). Today, Arizona spends over $8,000. Spending per pupil has more than tripled since the first baby-boomers attended schools. How many baby-boomers think today's schools are three times better?

Author Andrew Coulson notes that the last great innovation to transform American classroom instruction was the invention of the chalkboard in 1801. Consider this in comparison to the computer industry. Today, you'd be hard pressed to find a PC that is not more powerful and less expensive than the model its manufacturer offered just two years ago. But the school system continues to plod along, always spending more but often producing less.

Fortunately, this status-quo will not endure. Nationwide, nearly a fourth of K-12 students won't attend their neighborhood public schools this fall, choosing instead from an array of public and private options, including magnet, charter, private and home schooling. But for many, especially for low-income children, these options remain far too scarce. The momentum to innovate must accelerate.

In the past, a lack of data enabled stagnation. Armchair observations of real-estate agents were often the most sophisticated opinions regarding the quality of local schools. Today, online services like www.greatschools.net provide a mountain of comparative testing and parental review data in a few short clicks. New technologies and practices, such as self-paced computer-based instruction and data-based merit pay for instructors, hold enormous promise which has only begun to be explored. That said, disadvantaged children in KIPP Academy schools, among others, have achieved phenomenal academic results not with new technologies, but rather with old-fashioned "time on task" hard work and extended school days.

In short, we now have the primordial soup of a market for schools. The biggest winners will be those suffering most under the status-quo. A market system will embrace and replicate reforms which produce results, and discard those that fail. The current top-down, political system cannot perform this function. Where bureaucrats and politicians have failed, a market of parents pursuing the best interests of their children will succeed.

We cannot feel satisfied with a system that watches helplessly as a third of students drop out before graduation each year. We can do much better. ... We have nothing to lose and everything to gain from the coming education renaissance.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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