What is just as interesting is the number of comments to the Globe article reporting on the story—450 so far.  The majority of comments call for a return to fundamentals.  SQE is not surprised.

I like this comment - a joke

“Statistics Canada is hiring mathematicians.
Three recent graduates are invited for an interview: one has a degree in pure mathematics, another one in applied math, and the third one obtained his B.Sc. in statistics.
All three are asked the same question: “What is one third plus two thirds?”
The pure mathematician: “It’s one.”
The applied mathematician takes out his pocket calculator, punches in the numbers, and replies: “It’s 0.999999999.”
The statistician: “What do you want it to be?”

II suspect the article came out, to boost the new material being provided to the schools on financial literacy. Last week, I read an article that the financial banks and investment firms are all eager to put their stamp of approval on it. No doubt, it will be more of the same, using the same lousy math methods, for a subject area that is mainly composed of percentages, ratios, fractions and other areas, that is considered arithmetic. Good luck on it, because in the comments of the Globe area, there is quite a few teachers teaching at the college and university levels, complaining about the poor arithmetic skills. One commented, he has to teach percentages to university students. So, I stand corrected, that the educrats are now waiting to address the low levels of basic math, until the student becomes a paying customer in obtaining an education.

Saxon math seems to be having better results than what is currently in school today.

I like their placement tests, the ones that you provided a link to on this site, because I think they do a good job at clarifying middle-low skill proficiency standards for a grade.

That being said, there are two things I do not like about Saxon math: it is a spiral curriculum and it seems to be aimed at the middle-middle or middle-middle student. If we have to have the spiral then Saxon math is one of the better programs.
Personally I think the spiral in math and science is totally wrong.

Is it a spiral curriculum? I have all the texts and it is described as incremental.  It may seem “spiral” but it is actually presenting lots of practice and mastery.

It does have a lot of practice and mastery.

But a concept is presented once, then it goes to another concept then after a while it returns back to the original concept and there’s more work on that.
To be more specific. For example when I learned linear equations in school I have learned them once and for all. We spent I don’t know 3-4-5 months on them in grade 6 and then we never returned to them. Same thing with perimeter or area or angles.

Perhaps that’s not the accepted meaning of spiral. For me spiral is whenever you teach just a little bit of a concept, then something else, then again a bit more, then something else, ..
I’ve seen repetitions of the same concept in the Saxon math book at - I think I looked a grade 6 book.

So I don’t know .. what’s the difference between spiral and incemental?

Yes, I’m curious too—what is the difference between spiral and incemental curricula?

Math curricula are normally categorized as either “spiral” or “mastery”, as seen here http://www.candlestarservices.com/articles/spiralmastery.pdf

But Saxon is described as “incremental”, meaning “a very short spiral”. About halfway down http://www.homeschoolmath.net/curriculum_reviews/ under “elementary” is a list of the various math teaching resources and notes for them.

How Saxon works is: first a new topic is introduced and taught in its simplest form. The student is given 20 problems that practise the new concept, along with other recently-learned concepts. The problems frequently combine the new concept with previously-learned concepts.

Sometime in the next few lessons, the same topic is addressed but at a slightly deeper or broader level. In between, the new concept is practised and integrated with other recent (and not-so-recent) learning. The process continues until the new topic has been taught and practised very thoroughly. All the time, other concepts are being folded into the problems, such that the students are constantly practising them.

So Saxon is a sort of spiral mastery approach = incremental.

So how does SQE square this latest news? More fun with math or political spin ahead of an election?

http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2011/03/08/17534181.html

re: the much touted and so-called “improved” Ontario graduation rates, here’s one response from blogger off another blog who’s supports Dalton McG. but isn’t buying the smoke screen numbers

“E says:
March 8, 2011 at 3:11 pm

I’d like to know whether competency has tanked. I’m a McG supporter all the way, but education is only place where I think that the Ontario Grits have really lost it. I have graded MANY papers in the last couple of years, and many of the student seem barely literate…

So many questions: How are Ontario’s students doing on standardized tests? Have post-secondary admissions standards remained at the same level since 2003? If universities and colleges in Ontario are supposed to grow by 20,000 students, are they going to have to lower admissions standards to reach those numbers?

I actually continued on to a graduate degree BECAUSE I felt that my undergraduate degree was worthless. I went to school with these idiots and I now grade their papers. Huge numbers would fail if they were held to a decent standard, but there is so much pressure to pass students in order to maximize profit and produce ever more university graduates that our educational standards are suffering.

Great news, but how many of them can read that great paper?”

Leaving aside how well the current curriculum gets taught and learned, another big problem is that the Ontario math curriculum has very low requirements in middle school.
At the end of grade 8 an Ontario student is at least 1.5 years most likely 2 years behind what I learned in school 30 years ago.
In addition the approach avoids abstraction at all costs.
Distributivity, commutativity, exponents, solving linear equations ... everything is taught be a few - simple - examples.
More complex examples are inexistent, general rules are not presented, standardized mathematical notations such as N, Z, set notations are not taught. Proofs are not taught and not required.

Math becomes some sort of gigantic guessing game.How can you “teach” math without requiring proofs?
If a student somehow guesses the right result, it’s fine.