Last week the Washington Post ran a story on the a topic I’ve blogged on before: the uneasiness many parents are feeling about willy-nilly math acceleration in MCPS. You can read the story, “Accelerated Math Adds Up to a Division over Merits,” (yuk, yuk) here.
While parents support rigor and the opportunity for acceleration, many are uneasy that it’s being approached backwards, being carried out by fiat. The word has come down from on high that students who complete algebra before high school are more “successful.” Thus it should be so–regardless of whether there are/exist numbers/percentages of students to meet these targets (20% of 6th graders, 40% of 7th graders, 80% of 8th graders taking algebra in 8th grade). To make it so, the math curriculum is being back-mapped into elementary school, with acceleration starting abruptly in 2nd grade. As the article notes, concern seems to be greatest in the less affluent “red zone” schools.
The result–at least what I’m hearing anecdotally–is kids who are rushed through a compacted curriculum, who are stressed out, and who have decided that they aren’t good at math and in fact hate it. Down the line, there are reports of a watered down algebra and kids with weaknesses who fall apart when they hit Algebra 2 in high school and lack a truly solid footing in math.
Last night I had dinner with a good friend. She told me she had informed the “math content specialist” that her 4th grader (who has been doing combined 5th and 6th grade math this year) was going to repeat the same level math class next year. (Her child was in agreement and parents have ultimate say on placement.) The content specialist said it should be no problem.
A few days later, however, the mom got word that the principal wanted to see her. She went into a meeting with the principal, vice principal and math content specialist. To her surprise, the principal was under the impression that it was the mom who had requested the meeting. She told the principal that no, they were the ones who had requested to meet with her. The principal then asked why she wanted her child to repeat math next year, as the grades on the cumulative unit tests (which he had in front of her/him) were quite good. (It should be noted that the school thinks “mastery” is earning a “C.”)
To the prinical’s astonishment the mom said that in her opinion the scores were essentially meaningless. The tests were given over two days, and her child had confided that she had been told by the teacher which questions were wrong–and which he/she needed to answer correctly the next day in order to get a higher grade. The principal sputtered that the mom had just robbed her/him of any argument against the mom’s decision. The principal was clearly not pleased and as the mom was leaving told the others present to stay behind.
The only question is, was the principal angry that the testing was being manipulated? Angry that she/he didn’t know that the data was being manipulated? Angry that there would now be one less child on the accelerated math track? Angry that a parent had discovered this? Some of this? All of this?
I think this is why parents should sign their kids up for Kumon. While it doesn’t provide insight into abstract aspects of math, it is essential for building a strong math foundation. It is also significantly easier than trying to manipulate within the school system to get your kids the math skills they need. Ideally, the school would be providing high-quality math preparation to every student free of charge, but until the world is a perfect place, there’s Kumon (for those who can afford it).
I can say from personal experience that Kumon has made a huge difference for me in higher-level math classes. When solving a problem, I can make the basic calculations quickly and easily, and instead focus on the more complex and interesting issues.
I think the answer is “E,” all of the above. I don’t see anything wrong, as a teacher, in reviewing a student’s wrong answers *after the test is completed and the grades are recorded,* but what you’re talking about skews the grades radically and amounts to nothing more nor less than grade inflation.
I have a feeling that this principal was wretchedly uncomfortable in having the grade inflation at her/his school exposed in this manner, and though I admittedly have no proof whatsoever about this specific case, I tend to believe that grade inflation begins in the principal’s office, or at least this has been true in my experience.
So…too bad for him/her!
I think that many elementary school teachers have a strong desire to be nurturing and helping kids to learn, which can lead to these situations during tests, without necessarily trying to be manipulative. (Based on our experience with another test.) Maybe teachers swapping classes for tests would help?
How does one delicately point this problem out to the principal?
As a middle school math teacher (9 years) and having to go back and fill in missing gaps because students were rushed through the math standards …. accelerated math is not a good thing for all students.
As we push our children to learn where they are not ready because they have not mastered the skills needed to move on, we are causing our children to hate math.
2 years ago I was allowed to use and intervention program with some lower level 8th graders. It worked well and students learned math objectives they should have learned in the 6th and 7th grade.
The district decided this was a good program (and it is truly a good program) and wanted to use the program the following year. But when they placed students in the intervention program, they placed students who should have been in pre-algebra and algebra. Then they wondered why the program failed. My suggestions of moving students into the programs where they belonged was totally ignored.
Principals, coaches, district level admin. only care about test scores and not about the students. I do not say this lightly.
Parents stand up and fight for what is right for your children. Do not allow people at administrative level dictate where you student should be placed.
There is no delicate way. Sometimes there is not even a nice way. You have to be strong, assertive and demand what is in the best interest of your child. No one else will, be the parent and advocate.
[...] acceleration” has consistently been one of the top search terms on this blog. My post “Just Say No – to Accelerated Math” has also been among my top-ranking posts. Seems readers/parents know what same [...]
There is no one right path for mathematically talented kids, and schools and parents should be able to work together to get the best match for each individual child.
My son was radically accelerated in math started in second grade. He is one of those kids who was seemingly born understanding how numbers worked. At 4.5 he could talk about infinity and prime numbers; he figured out how to “carry,” was doing multiplication and division at 5 in first grade. You only needed to show him how to do it once, and then he knew it.
The acceleration worked fabulously until last year, when a 12 years old ninth-grader and taking Alg. II, he started having problems. Now I am pretty sure most of the problems were due to a poor teacher fit, but while the school would have been happy to push him up another year, we elected to have him repeat Alg. II with a different teacher. This year he is happy, learning and feeling smart about math once again.
Jodi S.
Thanks very much for addressing this topic. We just moved to Montgomery County from overseas. My daughter is starting 3rd grade and is being given complex 4th grade math homework when what she needs is strengthening of her basic math facts. The problems are way above her knowledge level. She is getting frustrated and thinks she is bad in math. She is going to hate math soon if this keeps up.
As an elementary school teacher with MCPS, I’m finding it extremely difficult to continue working as a teacher. The accelerated math program has gotten more ridiculous with each passing year. The focus is NOT on the child but on the data, which IS indeed skewed. Teachers are encouraged to rephrase, prompt, and retest students over and over until every student receives an O or A. This, of course, is simply glorified cheating! These high scores are not representative of how children perform independently. The majority of primary students are struggling to do basic facts but are being asked to find the mean, median, and mode of a set of data?! Are you kidding me?? This prompt/reteach/retest strategy prevents any students from ever getting poor grades thus giving administration the green light to bump the child another grade or two above grade level the following year. As I teacher, I’ve come to a moral dilemma. As teachers we’re paying a high price when we “cheat” to please administrators and help them keep up outward appearances. We’re doing so at the expense and well-being of our children. I can’t justify myself as a person who loves and cares for children anymore if I’m allowing them to suffer through these math classes while lying to their parents about their “appropriate placement”. My wife and I would never send our daughter to MCPS schools, we want her to enjoy her childhood and develop a love of learning. The last thing we want for her is a curriculum that’s developmentally appropriate for a child 3 years older than she… leading to insecurities and depression so severe that she’s on meds before the age of 10. I’ve seen it a lot in MCPS. Enough is enough. Parents need to SPEAK UP!
I too am an MCPS elementary school teacher and spend everyday talking with my colleagues about these poor students who are not granted the right to build foundational mathematics skills. Parents, who have to juggle jobs, soccer practice, cleaning, cooking, etc. now have to add teaching to their list if they want their child to succeed in the MCPS curriculum. Dr. Weast stated last year that his goal is for students to master “60% of the material” in an accelerated class. 60%?!?!? I percentage point less than that and the child would be failing.
Parents, the rigor of this county is not going away. Please rest assured that your child’s teacher is as frustrated as you are, but often does not have the pull to be sure your child is kept on the right path. We are pressured to push push push and often even when we speak strongly for a student, whom we have worked with for months, our opinions are pushed aside. YOU must advocate for you child. A parent’s voice is really the strongest and you do ultimately have the final say. One of the best parents I ever worked with said to me once “I want my kid to be challenged, but please call me the minute he is in over his head. He is 9 and school needs to stay fun for a really long time.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I, too, am finding it more difficult to continue teaching math. In Texas, students take the TAKS test every year from 3rd grade through 11th.
Last year, a “requirement” was set that an 8th grader must pass the math section before moving into 9th grade. I thought that this is great because I would not have to “accelerate” students with very few math skills through Algebra1 anymore. We had two students that did not pass the minimum set standard last year. Local administration decided that these two students should be placed into Algebra1 in the 9th grade anyway.
I was in shock. Looks like “acceleration” is in the works again. I am tired of having to take instruction time away from the ‘good’ math students in trade for pulling up (accelerating) the weak students.
The students get three chances in 8th grade to pass that test: In March, April and again in May. I get students in 9th grade that have never passed any of the grade level tests. This year, I have one senior that I don’t think will graduate because I couldn’t accelerate him fast enough. He had never passed any of the 3rd-11th grade math tests.
A sample of the 11th grade math test is:
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/resources/release/taks/2003/gr11taksmath.pdf
It seems simple enough but it is not for those that struggle with math. They even make special education students take this and pass it. Only 3% of the total student population (the ‘lowest’ of the special education) are exempt from it.
I happen to think that less than 97% of ALL students should be expected to pass the test. I am interested in what others that are reading this may think.
I am both an MCPS educator and a parent of 2 MCPS students in accerated math classes. I read the article referenced in the initial post and had some pretty strong reactions at the time, and coming upon this post now am definitely compelled to respond. My perspective is this–when there is a student who is absolutely ready for acceleration, as my 5th grader is, and 1/2 the students in her accelerated class are not ready for 6th and 7th grade math concepts (for goodness sake, they did not attain complete mastery of 4th grade math last year!), then my child gets the short end of the stick, while the teacher spends all of his/her time keeping the struggling student going. I don’t begrudge these students the teacher’s time, but why should my child be bored in math, being retaught the same concept when she is ready to progress on? Why can’t students were taught at the level they are ready to learn at– not pushed too far ahead, and not kept behind? I do feel it is all for the sake of school wide statistics and not for the betterment of the students.
Beth, I agree with you 100%. As a teacher, I am told to give the “above level” students extra. However, the time is just not there to concentrate on that. Teachers are looked at as a failure if there are ANY students that don’t “pass” so any extra time aside from the teaching to the regular level must be spent on trying to get the low level students to succeed even if it is really impossible to do so.
It makes no sense. Standards dictate increasing difficulty at all grades. Gee, in most states, ALL students are expected to have an understanding of advanced algebra (the course called “Algebra2″). Sure, theoretically it sounds good (no child left behind and all that) but practically it is nonsense.
I feel bad for what your daughter being bored in math. My suggestion is that you take a look at the text she is using in class and then assign her the advanced problems in it (that probably were ever assigned in class). This might catch the teacher’s eye when she brings them in to be graded. If the teacher doesn’t have time to grade them (for me, I would certainly LOVE to take the time to grade advanced papers that a child does outside of assigned work), then, if you can’t grade them, I am truly sorry. Maybe you can find some Internet sites that have the same type of problems and probably the answers would be there and you can grade that work…
What my son’s previous (private) school did was to give all kids a math placement test at the beginning of the year (grades 1-6), then place kids in the appropriate math class based on their test results. all grades had math at the same time, and all teachers taught math at that time, so that they could have more math class levels than grades (basically 1-8, with the possibility of a grade 2.5 or 3.5 class if there was a big cluster of kids).
Some kids ended up doing the same grade level 2 years in a row, others ended up jumping ahead 2 years. It worked pretty well. When the initial placement turned out to be wrong (usually detected about a month into the school year), they fixed it.
His new school does placement tests also, but just for students initially entering the school, or for students who claim to be in the wrong level.
Matching the instruction to the student level is the only way to do reasonable math instruction. Cheating on student evaluations defeats the purpose entirely.
[...] of embarrassing news stories featuring teachers not toeing the party line and a growing chorus of parent complaints, they have to do something to create the pretense of stakeholder involvement. Hence the Work [...]
Yes I am another supporter of Kumon. I grew up in Singapore (of ‘Singapore Math’, yes!) and I thoroughly enjoyed math. So did my 2 stepkids who received up to grade 12 and grade 10 level education in Singapore, respectively. I’m now living in Canada and my kid is in grade 3. I find the math curriculum here innovative enough in terms of concepts but lacking in practice.
Without adequate practice one cannot master a math concept, but before the kids have mastered a concept, they are moved on to the next concept that builds upon the preceding one. It is a house of cards that precariously teeters on collapse. Think Malcolm Gladwell and the 10,000hr rule. Think all the soccer moms who have ever sent their kids to soccer/baseball/hockey practices hours each week. Why do people think mastering math is going to take less practice and drill?
YY.