Jay Mathews, as they say, has some “’splaining ” to do. From his column in today’s Washington Post.
Nobody writing about schools has been a bigger supporter of getting more students into eighth-grade algebra than I have been. I wrote a two-part series for the front page six years ago that pointed out how important it is to be able to handle algebra’s abstractions and unknown quantities before starting high school. I have argued that we should rate middle schools by the percentage of students who complete Algebra I by eighth grade.
Now, because of a startling study being released today, I am having second thoughts.
Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, has looked at the worst math students, those scoring in the bottom 10th on the National Assessment of Educational Progress eighth-grade test. He discovered that 28.6 percent of them — let me make that clear: nearly three out of every 10 — were enrolled in first-year algebra, geometry or second-year algebra. Almost all were grossly misplaced, probably because of the push to get kids into algebra sooner.
Read Recalculating the 8th Grade Algebra Push.
“Math 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 some “experts” are catching onto only now.
Oh, geez. Why can people not see that it’s an INDIVIDUAL DECISION? There is no one-size-fits-all solution here, and it’s madness to suppose that there should be. If we could just get away from the bragging rights and the statistics and all that and just teach the kids whatever math EACH kid needs to learn NEXT, we’d be sooooo much better off. Yes, there are certainly kids who have been put at too high a level, but there are also kids who have been massively *de*celerated by the school system. It’s not a question of “Algebra in eighth grade good!” or “Algebra in eighth grade bad!” Algebra is good at whichever age you are when you happen to be ready for it, whether that’s eleven or fifteen or whenever.
We need value-added testing. Man, do we need it.
This doesn’t (completely) defeat the point of putting algebra topics in the math curriculum for all 8th graders (or 7th graders for that matter).
But it does leave you shaking your head, if this is what the students can’t handle while in school, what will they not be able to handle after 10 years in the working world?
What Jay isn’t owning up to is that *he* is part of the problem. His “challenge index”–and his argument that placement in AP classes benefits “everyone” just by virtue of “exposure” –is driving school systems to decree that 80% of 8th graders will complete Algebra 1.
Check out the “Star Trajectory” slide from the MCPS website: http://stage.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/superintendent/info/StarTrajectoryChart.pps
(opens as a single PowerPoint slide).
You’re right, certainly, but he did *kind of* admit to being part of the problem — at least he said he’d been pushing algebra in eighth grade and was now rethinking that stance.
By the way, on rereading my previous comment, it sounds quite ill-tempered. Sorry about that — I was ill-tempered, but not at all at you.
No offense
And you’re right, I do give him points for conceding that he might be wrong. However he might need to take it further, as commentator Dorothy17 points out:
Hi. Just had coffee with Helen and she told me you quoted my comment.
The longer story is that my son’s HS made a sudden change and instead of allowing 10th graders to self-select AP Euro or regular history (50% chose AP Euro) now all 10th graders must take AP Human Geography. So I have been corresponding in email with Jay regarding his Chester Finn article which appears to confirm our experience.
Jay refused to budge. Said that as long as the AP exam is required, teachers *never* water down the curriculum. Would not admit that Human Geography was a “soft” course. Since it is a College Level Course then it must Be Real Hard And Rigorous! Told me flat out that Finn doesn’t know anything, as all he did was go to a focus group. Jay on the other hand, has been studying AP for 20 years all over the country and knows best.
Would be real nice if this Loveless report could open Jay up to more reflective thinking on the Challenge Index, but somehow…. I doubt it.
I think Jay takes any negative comments about the AP drive as elitist, racist, etc. The way the Loveless data got through his knee-jerk reaction is that he points out that the kids who are hurt by this algebra push are likely to be minority kids.
Thanks for visiting, Helen. How cool that you know each other IRL!
Your point about this paradoxically hurting minority kids is well taken. It’s the same as those folks who want to do away with GT screening because it “labels” kids. But with no screening/testing there are a lot of underrepresented kids who, well, remain underrepresented/undetected and are denied services.
There’s also the issue of individual variability in cognitive readiness for algebra. It’s not just a matter of making sure kids master basic arithmetic before moving on to an algebra course. Their brains have to be mature enough to handle the abstract thinking required. The child could be perfectly bright but if he/she doesn’t yet have the cognitive capability, the material just isn’t going to make sense.
I ran into this issue with calculus my senior year in high school. I’d always done well in math and scored a 700 on the SAT-M my junior year. But no matter how much effort I put into trying to learn calculus, I simply didn’t get it. I tried getting help from my teacher, several tutors, a bunch of different study guides, but it was all in vain. My teacher gave me a C the first semester out of pity because he could see I was working my tail off & he didn’t want to jeopardize my college admissons chances by failing me. I then dropped the class 2nd semester.
My freshman year at college, I enrolled in a calculus class that happened to use the same textbook as my high school one. But this time around, the subject finally “clicked” for me. I went on to get an A in that one and an A- in the subsequent course (which covered material I hadn’t ever seen before). The material wasn’t any easier- I was simply not ready for it at age 17 but was at 18. I’m convinced that the difference was cognitive maturity.
I skimmed through the whole report, and thought it was pretty interesting that the folks who *wrote* the report thought that the “whaddya get if you increase 90 by 10%” problem was REALLY HARD for eighth graders — harder than the other problem they quoted, which IIRC was about rounding numbers, which seemed to me to be slightly trickier. The other thing I saw was that it was the kids themselves who were supplying the information on which class they were taking, and while the guys doing the study recognized that fact as problematic, they didn’t see why kids should be any worse at identifying which class they’re in than in past years. Thing is, I’m not so sure — there HAS been an upheaval in what math classes are called lately. Does a kid taking something called “Pre-Integrated” really know that s/he isn’t in algebra yet, for instance?
I have certainly heard of a number of schools meeting the “algebra in eighth grade” requirement by teaching HALF the algebra one curriculum in eighth grade (meaning, of course, that they then teach LESS algebra in ninth grade than they used to, and more slowly … tell me again why this is called acceleration?
).
Well, kudos to Matthews for at least having the integrity to admit that he was wrong and point that out himself. Believe me, I’m seeing this on the AP end of things. I teach AP English, and due to the push from the College Board to get more students taking AP, at least a third of my students are simply not prepared or qualified to take the course — and what’s worse, many of them don’t have the drive or the study skills to do it, which would definitely make up for much of the lack of preparedness. In short, the problem is worse than algebra and goes beyond it.
Helen, I’d like to comment on your comment here: “Jay refused to budge. Said that as long as the AP exam is required, teachers *never* water down the curriculum. ”
Um. How do I be diplomatic?
Jay’s full of it.
The fact of the matter is that when a third of your class simply fails to comprehend the fundamental concepts of the course, you have little other choice but to water down the curriculum. Currently, I am about three to four weeks behind in my classes because I am still trying to get some of those students to understand what is meant by “the author’s point.”
No, I’m not kidding.
It was Dorothy who said that, but yes. I was much impressed by this post about AP English and unprepared students (and this coming from a teacher who *did* have success in terms of pass rates). http://boyforwords.blogspot.com/2007/07/fruits-of-our-labor.html
[...] The More Child , a marvelous blog on giftedness and education, quotes Dorothy, a commenter on Mathews’ articles in the Washington Post on the issue of pushing kids into AP courses and increasing AP enrollment in general. Dorothy stated, …I have been corresponding in email with Jay …Jay refused to budge. Said that as long as the AP exam is required, teachers *never* water down the curriculum. …Since it is a College Level Course then it must Be Real Hard And Rigorous! Told me flat out that Finn doesn’t know anything, as all he did was go to a focus group. Jay on the other hand, has been studying AP for 20 years all over the country and knows best. [...]
SwitchedonMom, I responded at length to this excellent post of yours in my blog this week, if you’re interested. Thanks for provoking my thoughts!
http://adsoofmelk.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/algebra-and-ap-no-not-for-everyone/