<p>
</p>
<p>You mentioned that your own 8th grader gets good grades in Algebra but does not understand the concepts thoroughly. If you tried to get extra help for her from the school, they would look at you as though horns had sprouted on your head. The system does not seem to recognize that a student who is getting As and Bs might have academic difficulties.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Grading reflects a mix of things – not all of which relate to whether or not the student understands basic concepts.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>kayf–I am unclear what you see as the problem here.</p>
<p>I think I know what kayf is talking about.</p>
<p>Before all professions were open to women, top female students very often chose teaching as a career because it was the most intellectually challenging career open to them.</p>
<p>Now that women have many other choices, very few of the best and the brightest female students choose to become teachers. So teachers tend to come from somewhat lower academic ranks. Some people feel that this has led to a decrease in the quality of teaching – although I’m not sure whether that is true. How well a person teaches may not necessarily be directly related to that person’s academic ability.</p>
<p>Skyhook the problem I see is that the union contracts do not allow math/science to be paid more (I said that in part of my post that you didnt highlight). Now that women can work in other than nursing or teaching (sorry if you are not old to remember when that was the case, but it was, for most people), the schools have lost their captive employees with the ability to teach math classes. We have to change, and figure out a way to get more people with quant ability in teaching. Even at elementary school level. Especially at elementary school level.</p>
<p>My highly ranked school district does a number of things. At the elementary school level, they have math labs run by parent volunteers, with teacher supervision, but parents are doing it. The only parents who volunteer, ime, were those very comfortable with math. Mostly mothers who worked part time. Average SAT math is 650, but what is more remarkable is girls are higher than boys. At the HS, math teachers at their option dont have to have home rooms, dont have to have admin responsibilites.</p>
<p>Marian, I see the problem as hitting harder in math/science.</p>
<p>Yes they would look at me like I was crazy-but I think it’s dangerous to look at a grade and take it at face value. I have seen enough to know grades may not be reflective of true ability-especially with all the extra credit, extra time teachers let kids take, parental assistance on projects, etc.</p>
<p>I actually think the problem is far more related to the curriculum than the abilities of the teachers-especially in the younger grades.</p>
<p>I am just very grateful my son is a natural at this because I would not have been able to help him the way he has helped his sister. I also wouldn’t know that she doesn’t have a solid grasp on what she needs to in order to do well as the level of difficulty increases.</p>
<p>I would hope if my child consistently came home with A’s, they should have an understanding of basic concepts. Its just like a Prep Course my son is in right now. It is at our “home” school- my son does not attend in his home district - he is at a charter school. After the first Prep Class (a practice SAT) - the classes were split into Higher Scorers and Lower Scorers. My son is in the higher scorers class, but he was shocked that the average for the higher scorers was about 1400 - 1500 (all three sections) and these are the kids in the home district that are in top 10% of their class - getting A’s. How do you get 450 on the reading and writing SAT and an “A” in your english class. My son got a 580 in reading and a 690 in writing and has a low “B” in English at his charter school - and that’s probably what his grade should be.</p>
<p>kayf and marian–
Thank you for your responses. Yes, I am old enough to remember well when teaching, nursing and flight attendant were the female careers. And yes, the changes no doubt have resulted in the loss of many top-caliber women from teaching. I think what confused me from your earlier post was you were actually outlining two different concepts (pay differentials for math teachers, and the loss of top women from the teaching profession) and I didn’t catch it.</p>
<p>I am very, very fascinated with your school’s idea to use parent volunteers to run math labs in the elementary schools. I think this idea has great merit and I would be interested in hearing any further information you might have about the practice. I think this could not only help struggling students but provide a venue for gifted math students to receive extra stimulation. Do they ever use the volunteers in this manner?</p>
<p>I would like to see a thread on using volunteers in the public schools to help instruction.</p>
<p>skyhook,</p>
<p>The program our school uses is that for three 45 minutes per week, each class in grades 2-4 gets math labs. The class is broken down to groups of 3 to 4 students, which work on lab projects related to work they were doing in class. My guess is most of the moms doing this had very high math skills (based on occupation/education) and all attended training. I dont know how the teachers assigned groups.</p>
<p>I think it is great for students to work with adults who say math is my friend, I love math. Especially for girls to see women who say this. </p>
<p>Its fortunate our school disctict can get volunteers to do this. Not all can. I think that union contracts MUST be changed to allow schools to deal with inability to get more math in the classrooms.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I understand that but this is in an area that is fairly privileged
and it’s hard to understand why middle-class parents (that don’t
work two jobs to survive) aren’t putting some pressure on their kids
and providing parental support for really basic things.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Looks like grade inflation. What grades are supposed to mean:</p>
<p>A = excellent
B = good
C = passing (well enough to go to the next level that depends on it)
D = barely passing (will have trouble at the next level that depends on it)
F = failed to learn enough material to pass (even at the D level)</p>
<p>Mathematics is a language, and like any other language must be practiced regularly to maintain proficiency. </p>
<p>Many kids lose math skills over the summer, because they don’t do anything that requires mathematical proficiency. This is a bigger problem in the US than in other countries because our schools typically take a longer summer break.</p>
<p>Also, many kids (especially ones that know they are heading to community college) don’t take math all 4 years of HS. Most HSs only requires two years of math for graduation, and the majority of 4-year college admissions only require 3 years. And then there are the returning students, who probably haven’t thought about math for years. Think about the foreign language class that you (probably) took in HS – how well did you retain that ability once you graduated? </p>
<p>It is no surprise that kids arrive at college with atrophied math skills!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Grade inflation is part of it but not all of it.</p>
<p>I went to high school and college long before grade inflation. Yet I managed to get an A in what is now called precalculus despite issues with understanding some of the material and Bs in two calculus courses despite massive incomprehension. This was in the 1970s. Sometimes, you can scrape by for a while before your problem becomes evident in your grades.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there is definitely some grade inflation out there. At my daughter’s university, she and everyone else in her year who qualified for Phi Beta Kappa as juniors (the top 3% of the College of Arts and Sciences) had GPAs above 4.0 (an A+ is 4.3, which is what makes this possible). Thirty-something years before, at the same university, I qualified for Phi Beta Kappa as a junior with a GPA just below 3.9. GPAs above 4.0 were the stuff of legend. I never personally knew anyone who had one.</p>
<p>I also remember that in junior high, they gave awards to those students who had managed to make the high honor roll (which required either 5 As or 4 As and 1 B) all three years. Only two people in a class of 300 qualified. That is unthinkable now.</p>
<p>Recently saw a fascinating TED talk by Salmon Khan on math learning.</p>
<p>[Salman</a> Khan: Let’s use video to reinvent education | Video on TED.com](<a href=“http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html]Salman”>http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html)</p>
<p>One of his points is that even when a kid doesn’t get a particular concept, the class moves on anyway and then sets him/her up for further problems later when that concept is required for the next step up. Simple as that may be, I hadn’t thought of math education in that particular way. Highly recommend watching the talk.</p>
<p>i love sal!!</p>
<p>Wow, thanks ihs76. I had never heard of Salman Khan or TED.com. Great resources !</p>
<p>^^ Yes, watching the TED talks is almost enough to restore my faith in humanity. Almost…</p>
<p>People keep telling me that the first math course I took at my CC was remedial, which confuses me because it was for college credit at the CC and was even counted as an elective credit at umich. It just didn’t satisfy the general education math requirement at umich, I had to take another class up to accomplish that.</p>
<p>I can say with absolute certainty it is more expensive to take college math over and over again without passing than it is to take a remedial class that isn’t for credit. A friend of mine with dyscalculia used up her entire financial aid eligibility blowing her general education math requirement over and over and over and over again. I got away with only having to take algebra twice to pass it (once without LD diagnosis, second time with it), and then I was able to pass my stats class with a B and be done.</p>
<p>Had to take an algebra test on a job application to be a receptionist the other day, including long division with odd numbers. Got them all right and was shocked. When I was taking high school algebra I had teachers who stopped giving me exams because it “was a waste of paper,” and teachers who kept passing me even though I was failing because they figured I was smart and would catch up. I was diagnosed with dyscalculia in elementary but the school told my parents it didn’t mean anything and wouldn’t accommodate, and it was forgotten about until I was retested as an adult. It’s a dismal world out there for those who don’t have a natural math ability. I was really given no chance to be successful until I took college algebra with my LD diagnosis. My parents were annoyed and thought it was a waste of time since it wouldn’t meet my math requirement-- especially when I failed and wanted to take it again, but that one class probably made the difference between whether or not I ever finished a college degree.</p>
<p>As it turns out I am actually really pretty good at math, but math CLASSES are exceptionally challenging for me (real world application of math facts taught in classes are not challenging at all) and realistically I will probably always need to have a basic four-function calculator around to keep up at a normal pace. In the grand scheme of things that’s not so bad, it would have been a shame to have never finished college because I stalled out in elementary statistics.</p>