Subscribe to our Blog
Through a glass darkly
In a comment to yesterday’s blog, fromEurope drew our attention to a very interesting discussion over at Kitchen Table Math. The topic is the widespread dominance of “fuzzy math” even in charter and private schools. This is unfortunately all too true and, of course, the phenomenon extends to subject areas other than math.
Sadly, charter schools and private schools are being dragged down by the same handicaps as conventional public schools. Most of their teachers have been trained at the same woefully-inadequate faculties of education. They draw from the same pool of dreadful textbooks and other teaching materials. They are constrained by many of the same cloying provincial or state policies and regulations. And, inevitably, they are influenced by the same erroneous philosophy and a culture of low expectations.
Worst of all, charter and private schools have little incentive to do much better than conventional public schools, since the conventional schools practically hand deliver students to them. Private and charter schools are in competition with a very weak competitor, and all they have to do is offer a service that is just a little bit better than lousy. And, for the most part, that is what they do offer.
This post can go in yesterday’s topic, as well as in today’s topic. Today, I ran into SEDL pushing a few things regarding math, and encouraging parent involvement.
Organizations, more or less run by educators in boards, or state-run, play the role of ensuring that curriculum of major text book publishers are being used. SEDL is all for Everyday Mathematics.
“Researchers at SEDL and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are conducting a study of Imagine It!, an Open Court Reading program, and Everyday Mathematics to determine the impact of the programs on teacher practices and student academic achievement.”
http://research.sedl.org/ocr-em/
Nice reward package, if schools sign up to be part of the study.
“Why should schools participate?
•Each participating school will receive FREE Imagine It! or Everyday Mathematics materials approximating $3,200 per classroom.
•Participating schools will also receive FREE training and support for the duration of the study!
•Participating schools are taking action that may increase their overall performance on state-mandated reading and math assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
•Participating schools will be integral to a national study with the potential to shape reading and math research and education policy.”
For more of the same fuzzy math no doubt, and one can look forward to new excuses why children are not achieving in math.
On the site there is links to Everyday Mathematics.
Below is the home page.
http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/educators/computation/
A series of videos, and check out the addition. I do not need to have a PHD in math, to figure it out that this is no method to teach place value. Talk about putting a relatively simple concept, and make it as confusing and complicated to understand for students and parents alike to grasp and sort the illogical approaches that are used in place value, and expect students to perform in testing.
And now SEDL is involve with families and communities, and being insiders have now become a place to go to, for information on parental involvement.
http://www.sedl.org/expertise/family_community.html
One of the recommendations is to give parent explicit directions on how to help their children at home. It it tied in with Everyday Mathematics, to ensure that parents learn the new fuzzy math. I can only imagine the wars being played out in homes, and parents reaching for the phone to dial a tutor, feeling that their abilities in addressing basic arithmetic are lacking.
Just one more area, that charter or public schools are weighted down by handicaps, as well as parents are.