<p>I would totally agree with this anecdotally. In middle school I would just completely skip word problems on tests because I had NO idea how to attack the problems at all. I had no problem solving skills. Luckily though, there was only one word problem on each 20 question test so I could still get As without actually having any real math skills. I knew I had a lot of holes so I enrolled myself in Saturday Math School run by two Chinese immigrants who are both PhDs from Yale. </p>
<p>In this program, every single student is self-paced. You are given a diagnostic test and where your first hole is, is where you begin the program. They give you about 20 pages of homework per week (you can do more if you want) that consists of basic lessons regarding computation of the individual skills. Each unit consists of about 200 pages of homework with sporadic pages repeated to reinforce old skills. Some pages near the end of the unit discuss word problems. </p>
<p>When you go to the school on Saturdays, you first take a quick 5 minute test on your homework and then you spend two hours working on applying the computational skills you mastered onto word problems. First you do about 30 questions of problems that are specific to what you just learned. Then you work on Math Olympiad problems that are cumulative. Everything that you get wrong you must retake until you can earn 100%. Tutors walk around to assist students who need it. </p>
<p>I worked on this program for 3 years and went from being a weak math student with standardized test scores around the 50%ile and a 7th grade 380 SAT to a student in the state championship in math league with a 730 Math SAT. </p>
<p>I wish this program could be put in place in all schools. It makes sure there are NO holes in learning. If you get a 50% on your fractions test you don’t just move on and say “oh well, failed that one.” </p>
<p>In addition, it emphasizes both repetition and higher level thinking. Many schools only implement one of these strategies and not both. Coupled together though, learning is just incredible.</p>
<p>[From UCD Alum82: Right now star testing is done in April. School gets out in June.
After spending the first 8 months of the year drilling for the test, whatever the kids learn the last two months is not reflected back on the teacher or the school. Some teachers check out at this point. This could be easily fixed by moving the star testing out 'til the end of May.</p>
<p>AP tests are done a month before school is out. Sometimes AP teachers add one more project after AP testing for the final grade. Others just let the kids ride out the year by watching movies."]</p>
<p>This is exactly what is happening in my kids’ school. However, our school gets out end of May so there is absolutely nothing happening for an entire month, after STAR and AP tests. I agree about moving the AP and STAR tests further out. Figure out a way, also, to get them scored by the end of the school year, rather than by late July.</p>
<p>It is just frustrating as a parent to see so many wasted days, and so much attention given to the STAR and AP tests. I feel that real teaching and learning has been shoved to the wayside in all the rush to high scores for both the student and the school.</p>
<p>Problems we have encountered in Math curriculum:
Spiral math- not enough in depth work on any given skill or topic, and then little or no application to the real world (ie word problems), not enough drilling and practicing [Hello Kumon!]
Corrections: teachers often do not do the corrections but let the kids do it in class, so teachers do not know how individual students are doing, whether they are reaching everyone, etc. Also, teachers who do hand back corrected work do not require students to re-do the problems and hand them back in as proof that the kids are reading and working with the corrections.
Collaborative work: individual kids get lost in this approach, so teacher has no idea how each one is doing</p>
<p>I heartily agree that mathematical reasoning and word problems have been de-emphasized to GREAT detriment. Logic problems are also not used enough- another important part of math reasoning.</p>
<p>A word problem involves:
-real world knowledge
-understanding what the question is: what are the knowns, what are the unknowns, how do they relate, and what does the problem ask us to find out? What do we need to solve for the answer this question?
-translating words into equations that solve for these questions. This requires a knowledge of which types of equations apply to which situations.
-figure out what the operands are (dependent and independent variables, knows and unknowns, solutions, etc. )
**NOW we have a number sentence/equation translated from a verbal sentence (in the word problem).
-understanding of how to solve the math equations (easiest part for many now- emphasis of math programs now)
-accuracy in arithmetic calculations {hello calculators}
-understanding how the solution(s) to the math equations relate to question(s) being asked in the word problem, so as to answer the actual question(s) asked once the math operations are performed and equation(s) is/are solved.</p>
<p>This is tough stuff, so it needs to be taught well and done often, and worked in all the possible variations. Many real world situations; solve for different unknowns in same type of problems…</p>
<p>Ad this is what math is really for, for the average person!!!</p>
<p>The mandatory minimum instructional days for the California school system is 194. </p>
<p>DS attends a private HS which has the 2nd least number of “in school days” of any HS in the US. Including finals, the year consists of 160 instructional days. The school day is from 8:15 a.m. to 2:30 p.m M-T with a noon dismissal on Fridays. Since the AP curriculum is based on a 180 day year…DS and his buddies must start their AP studies during the summer. Summer preparatory reading is also required for selected other courses. These graduates go on to attend the highly selective colleges and universities oft discusses on CC.</p>
<p>DS and DD attended a private middle school which accepted a number of transfers from the public school system. A consistent comment from both students and parents of the transferees was the difficulty in adjusting to the speed at which students were required to move between classes and subjects on a daily basis. They were allotted 5 minutes to physically move from classroom A to classroom B and…BE READY TO START the next subject. There was no wasting of classroom time. Since the school was not required to participate in STAR testing, they did not ‘teach to the test’. Ironically, the administration did administer standardized testing and student scores were above the regional averages. It’s important to know, this particular school did not have an academic entrance requirement - it was religious based and accepted a not insignificant number of challenged kids.</p>
<p>I spent a portion of my life in the business world collecting and interpreting data to determine the effectiveness of corporate training programs. We knew that the ‘butts in seats’ metric was useless. Evaluating instructional effectiveness by counting the number of hours/days spent by an employee in training was not indicative of success. </p>
<p>What does all this have to do with the subject at hand…the reduction (or even increase) in ‘butts in seats’ days has little, if anything, to do with educational outcomes.</p>
<p>^My school has SO MUCH summer work for APs it’s ridiculous. 1/5th of the AP Bio book had to be done over the summer. We lose a LOT of our vacation that way. That said, we have a long summer, end of May til first week of September. </p>
<p>As for the spiraling curriculum, that was the other thing my Saturday School rejected entirely. Instead of doing, for example, Algebra I and then Algebra II, it taught you systems of equations and then taught you as complexly as possible given the information you had already learned. There was none of the “briefly introduce you to the concept and revisit it in a year” stuff going on which I fully embrace.</p>
<p>Why don’t you start with googling SAT math averages over time, no you probably won’t understand that because you don’t get what happens when the number of test takers is increased to include those that were formerly never tested and those that formerly had no access to college.</p>
<p>If you seriously don’t think the top 7th and 8 th graders can handle the basic math you posted you have your head in the sand. I know you are stuck on the turn of the century (when what about 1000 took the SAT?) but the college going population has changed.</p>
<p>Maybe you can keep comparing our modern kids to those of the 30’s (back when they taught “real math”) when about 10,000 kids took the SAT. 1960’s–800,00 kids took the SAT.Flash forward to 2010 and you’ll notice that now approximately 1.6 million kids are taking the SAT’s. So when were those golden years when students did so amazing in math?</p>
<p>In 2009 97,296 students scored above a 700 on math and 392,000 scored above a 600. Looks like we have the turn of the century kids and the kids from the 30’s beat hands down! Maybe you could find out when that golden era was and let us all in on it!</p>
<p>bluebayou…I stand corrected… (note to self, don’t do research before coffee)…the standard number of days in the California School year is 180. That being said, my point still stands…it’s not how long you sit and keep the seat warm…it’s what you do while you are in it that counts.</p>
<p>You are being incredibly inflammatory. I feel pretty confident that Xiggi has a lot more experience with the SAT and SAT data than you do. Are you aware of Xiggi’s experience?</p>
<p>Mtnmomma, may I suggest you should adopt a different tone, and then perhaps use the search functions of this forum to realize I might not need to google the SAT math averages to understand the historical changes in standardized tests. </p>
<p>Obviously, the sarcasm of my last post was lost. I will try to be clearer in the future.</p>
<p>I saw that there is a Xiggi method on how to study for the SAT–it looks good. Silverturtle however, seems to have stolen that show on CC. Is Xiggi an SAT question writer? Does Xiggi do research for college board? Please explain.</p>
<p>Yes it was because it was obvious the attitude in your next post was what was implied.</p>
<p>
TBS, I will do my research and see what else you have to say besides just implying that today’s youth don’t understand math like they did in the good old days.</p>
<p>Sounds great–except that more spending on public education does not lead to a higher quality education. The system is totally broken, and throwing money at it is not going to fix it.</p>
<p>My four CA public-school kids have had three different high school calendars. Two were on September through June calendars, one was on a year-round calendar due to overcrowding (actually three of them had one year of year-round, but one had it for three years) and for my youngest kid, this year his school switched to an early-start calendar that began mid-August and will end the first year of June.</p>
<p>Year-round was awful. It was 163 longer days of instruction versus 180 (not 194 which is what someone suggested) and, believe me, those 17 days made a difference. Of course, the impact of two long breaks versus one, factored in, but teachers were in a constant state of frenzy to get through the material and kids had to cover multiple chapters on their own for AP exams because the teachers didn’t have time to cover all the material. </p>
<p>September through June was problematic for the reason cited by many here. After AP exams and standardized testing, not a whole lot happened in some classes. There was wasted time. </p>
<p>I think I like the new calendar. The first semester ended before winter break which was nice. Now as we are into a marathon month that started with standardized testing the last week of April and afternoon AP review sessions that went until 6:00 followed by two weeks of AP exams, I am so pleased that there are only two weeks of instruction between the end of AP exams and final exams. There will be some housekeeping business and just enough time for teachers to squeeze in a few assignments that they want to accomplish, but not enough time that it’s wasted. And it’s been really great to be able to say to my son that after this week, the academic year is really pretty much over for him. His grades are secure, he can relax, but virtually all the time was well-used.</p>