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All material is my personal opinion, and not that of any other organization. Copyright 2001. Permission is granted for individual teacher use. All rights reserved. |
By Monte Whaley American public schools have banned the paddling of students, declared war on bullies and put dodge ball on the hit list. Some say another cruel ritual needs to be purged from this country's classrooms - the dumping of algebra and geometry in the laps of stunned and ill-prepared high school students. "It's almost like shell shock,"
said William Schmidt, national Local teachers say that until U.S. students become better acclimated to algebra sooner - maybe as early as kindergarten or first grade - parents should expect to see more of the scores that emerged this week on the Colorado Student Assessment Program. The exam was given to more than 50,000 10th-graders for the first time this spring. The results showed that 14 percent of the high school sophomores met or exceeded state standards. Almost half the test questions involved algebra or geometry. But, officials pointed out, not all Colorado students take either subject before the 10th grade. Some educators across the state have said the CSAP doesn't indicate the true depth of math skills among the state's high-schoolers. Juniors, for instance, did better than expected on the math portion of the ACT college entrance exam. The difference is that the ACT is a multiple choice test, while the CSAP demands many written and thoughtful responses, said William Moloney, Colorado's commissioner of education. He said the CSAP clearly shows Colorado 10th-graders are well behind youths in other countries when it comes to math reasoning. "We now have very good evidence that we simply are not exposing our students to the same curriculum that is routine in other countries," Moloney said. Students in Europe and Asia start beginning classes in algebra by sixth or seventh grade, when most U.S. students are slogging through basic math, Schmidt said. And while students overseas have soaked in two to three years of algebra by the time they reach high school, many American freshmen are suddenly facing algebra for the first time. "It's a recipe for disaster,"
Schmidt said. Many students never The result is national embarrassment.
The Third International The fault partly lies in how schools have taught math, said Jean Klanica, a Cherry Creek High math teacher for 27 years. "We segment our mathematics," said Klanica. "Typically, you start teaching algebra in the ninth grade and geometry in the 10th. That's not how math is taught outside of this country." Colorado schools are taking the hint. They are starting to slip bits and pieces of algebra and geometry into the classrooms of much younger students. Kindergartners, for instance, can be taught algebra with colored blocks, said Roberta Flexer, a retired University of Colorado education professor. "When they place a blue block on the floor and a yellow block and a blue block and a yellow block and then - "What do you think comes next?'" Flexer said. "Pattern is the beginning of algebra." Exposing students earlier to algebra is slowly improving math scores, said Sharon Simpson, who helps elementary school teachers beef up math instruction. "I think we are all working toward getting more opportunities for kids to gain a conceptual understanding of math," Simpson said. "We're moving away from the notion that math is just arithmetic and computation." From the Denver Post, Friday, July
27, 2001. See here
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