I am not very familiar with California community colleges, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. But using the math classes at Santa Barbara Community College as a guide (http://www.sbcc.edu/mathematics/courses/), Math 107 is the algebra requirement being discussed in the article. And it seems as if this class is a prerequisite for classes like Elementary Statistics, and Mathematics for Liberal Arts Majors, and Mathematical Concepts for Elementary School Teachers, for example. To put this class in perspective, you need to take 2 additional classes before you even begin the regular Calculus sequence.
From the article, “College-level algebra is probably the greatest barrier for students — particularly first-generation students, students of color — obtaining a credential” and “…there are more relevant, just as rigorous, math pathways that we feel students should have the ability to take”
I am sympathetic to disadvantaging first-generation students of color. However, I don’t understand why the colleges are not able to be successful in teaching this type of fundamental skill effectively. Maybe they need a better approach or a recitation or better tutoring support. I get it that their job does not depend on their knowledge of radians, but it isn’t super advanced. My high school rising sophomore took Algebra II last year.
To me it sounds like the education establishment has decided that the best way to handle a subject where the students actually need to learn something is to just remove the subject.
Have there been studies exploring the career success or lack thereof for students who did not successfully complete Algebra 2 but did well in other subjects? I squeaked by with a D- because I was tutored every day by one of the math teachers at my high school. I still did ok on the math section of the SAT (top 15%, iirc). I graduated college with honors and got my Master’s (which included a statistics class) without breaking a sweat. I’ve had a long, fairly successful career as a librarian. Many, although by no means all, of the arguments in support of requiring Algebra 2 seem to boil down to “anyone who can’t do immediate level algebra just isn’t very smart.” Many also have made the point that the way it’s taught, as well as the way elementary math is taught, make it difficult for some students to be successful later on. I was a B student in math until 7th or 8th grade, which is probably about the time prealgebra started creeping into the curriculum. Is Common Core addressing the problem? Having seen the way questions are phrased on the standardized tests, my answer would be “probably not.” The amount of irrelevant information I seen in the word problems is mind boggling. Until we get past the point of “we don’t know to teach this to you but you have to learn it anyway” requring it is going to be a hard sell for me. Fortunately, both our kids have successfully completed Algebra 2 (and beyond).
Algebra 2 is a required subject for graduation by most HS.
The problem with community colleges is students did not graduate from HS or graduated but failed the basic requirements.
In the real world, applying math to real life situations often means having to determine which information is relevant to the problem to be solved.
I struggled with French in high school until a gap year in France. After that, not only was I reasonably fluent in French, I also had no trouble picking up German.
My younger son’s final B in Latin in high school was a gift from the teacher. He got a C of some sort taking Arabic his first year in college. He spent several weeks in Jordan the summer after freshman year and got a B sophomore year, though he was so worried about his grades he considered changing to another major where he wouldn’t be required to take four years of a FL. (He majored in IR at Tufts.) He did an immersion program in Jordan junior year and from then on had A’s in Arabic. I don’t believe there are truly many people who can’t learn a FL, but I do think there are a lot of people who have to learn how to learn a FL. We don’t do a good job in our schools teaching them, and we don’t encourage students to get real life practice speaking them. I could easily get an immersion experience in Spanish by walking half a mile from my house.
As to math - I think knowing algebra is part of being educated. Most of the algebra two type problems in real life can probably be done without algebra, but I think part of college is educating your brain. It’s not that you NEED Shakespeare, it’s that your life is richer knowing his work, recognizing when others are quoting it etc.
@MYOS1634 The students at the four year colleges taking “math for citizenship” have already had Algebra 2 in high school.
And depending on who you ask, they’ll say you need calculus to learn statistics.
It’s complicated. Really, really complicated. Not an easy problem to solve. In this case, it seems like they just want to give up. Not sure I agree with that as an educational philosophy.
While calculus is needed for more advanced statistics courses, most colleges offer non-calculus-based introductory statistics courses. However, those colleges which offer both non-calculus-based introductory statistics courses and intermediate algebra commonly make intermediate algebra a prerequisite (though some may offer a limited version as a pre-statistics course for those who will only take non-calculus-based introductory statistics afterward).
The same in the ROC(Taiwan).
One older HS alum who emigrated from there in 5th grade found despite being placed in the most gifted classes in math that he didn’t learn anything new(in other words, he coasted on what he learned from K-5 at a regular public school in a working-class area) until second semester freshman year of HS at our STEM-centered public magnet.
My parents and older relatives never failed to remind us when some of us were struggling with math in middle/HS that the stuff we were struggling with(including calculus) was stuff they were expected to be proficient in by the end of middle school and that anyone who failed calc by the end of 8th/9th grade was determined to not be fit to take the entrance exams for college-prep high schools and placed on various vocational tracks which didn’t have high math requirements(some technical vocational tracks were also out), sent to apprenticeships, or even started working at whatever jobs would accept someone with a middle-school diploma.
Heard similar accounts from HS classmates and colleagues who emigrated from the former Soviet Union/Eastern European countries.
Saying that ‘students of color’ (in general) have a harder time with algebra is racist. I can imagine some minority student reading that and feeling like a second class student who has to have his/her educational requirements dummied down. Whether or not algebra is required should not be based on which group passes or not.
I should also add that if one lacks some reasonable proficiency in algebra…one will struggle even with basic statistics unless it’s watered down to meaninglessness.
This was illustrated when an older college classmate struggled heavily in our college’s basic stats course. He was happy to pass with a C after struggling with it to the point of near failure during the semester.
His main issue when I examined his work…a very poor foundation in algebra despite attending a respectable/elite boarding school and graduating in the top 15-20%.
“I am sympathetic to disadvantaging first-generation students of color. However, I don’t understand why the colleges are not able to be successful in teaching this type of fundamental skill effectively.”
Because the kids come into college not competent with fractions. The colleges are doing the best they can to compensate for the years of poverty, upheaval, and neglect these students have experienced. If a 17-year-old with the motivation to go to college isn’t ready for Algebra II, a lot of adults have failed that child.
Re: “students of color”
Note that “students of color” (meaning other than white students who are not Latino/Hispanic) make up about 73% of high school graduates and 82% of high school dropouts in California (for the high school cohort of 2015-2016; note that about 10% of that cohort is dropouts), so that it may be redundant to specifically focus on such students who make up that great majority of those in California.
Also, I wouldn’t want anyone aspiring to be a K-12 teacher to be lacking in HS level basic algebra including algebra 2 as that could lead to issues considering many will be expected to teach math classes due to the shortage of math/STEM teachers in many K-12 districts.
I had the dubious pleasure of tutoring a friend’s ex who was taking 9th grade level algebra to fulfill her math requirement as an elementary ed major at a 4 year directional public college in the NE. She had already failed that course twice and was well on her way to failing it a third time before my friend got me to provide tutoring which was problematic due to her being socially promoted in K-12 despite having such a poor math foundation she wasn’t able to pass basic algebra or higher math courses at her HS and not taking the tutoring seriously as she felt it was a “waste of her time”. She passed on the third try by the skin of her teeth.
While she did graduate with her degree, she never got her certification to teach elementary ed…thank goodness.
Incidentally, she’s not a URM nor was she from a lower-income background.
In California, a high school math teacher is expected to earn a bachelor’s degree in math and a teaching credential. This is similar to other subjects, where high school teachers are expected to earn bachelor’s degrees in the subjects that they want to teach and teaching credentials.
Elementary school teachers may not normally need that advanced math, but still should know enough math in order to be able to teach elementary school level math to typical K-6 students, and be able to recognize and handle the students with above-typical math skills.
Unfortunately, while many other state/school districts have the same rules on the books, the shortage of math/STEM teachers is such that in practice, they don’t always observe those rules in practice.
One example of this was an underserved inner-city school district which was televised some years back which showed a TFA teacher who was an English lit major from an elite LAC being pressed into service as a HS math teacher because there was such a shortage in that area.
She didn’t have a second major in math or a related subject and even she felt it was odd she was placed as a math teacher.
Believe it or not, it’s possible to be an English lit major and to be competent to teach math to 9th or 10th graders.
As someone with a numbers based learning disability and as an attorney who was a Magna cum laude graduate of a top 10 law school and has succeeded in a practice involving complicated employment, commercial and constitutional issues I can say that despite the dire wanings of some, anything other than the simplest math NEVER has come up in my 30 years of practice. Never.
I am beyond grateful everyday that I grew up in an era when my inability to get to high school level algebra mattered almost not at all. Today I couldn’t have gotten into most colleges based on my inability to go beyond very basic math, which really is a travesty and would have been a waste of my intellectual abilities.
“The colleges are doing the best they can to compensate for the years of poverty, upheaval, and neglect these students have experienced. If a 17-year-old with the motivation to go to college isn’t ready for Algebra II, a lot of adults have failed that child.”
This is the issue that needs to be addressed. The education system is a spectacular failure for the bottom 1/2 of the population. We know how to significantly improve it, but neither political party is willing to put the kids first.
People want to improve the economy and this is the only real way to do it, but no one is talking about it.