It will prove to be a huge failure that in a few years will be replaced by yet another round of curriculum changes.
I know what the “professional” educators say about the math changes. The Georgia Department of Education spin machine is working overtime to make the changes sound like the state is being “progressive” and “innovative.”
In the recent news release about the state’s abysmal SAT scores, DOE officials said such low scores were the reason behind the new math standards.
“I know the state’s new mathematics curriculum and the graduation rule requirements will better prepare students for the SAT,” opined state school superintendent Kathy Cox.
As the kids themselves would say, “Whatever.”
The state’s math changes began several years ago in the elementary grades. At the time, both of my kids were in elementary school and I was horrified at what I saw. Rather than drilling in the math basics and calculating for younger students, the new curriculum focused more on theory and concepts. In educrat speak, that was designed to develop “higher order thinking skills.”
This is being done by avoiding the basics. Instead, kids are taught several ways to multiply and they get to choose the one that best suits them. And kids are encouraged to help teach each other through playing games and such. (Side Note: This is just another example of how elementary schools have changed over the years to encourage “group interaction.” Many elementary grades have abandoned individual desks in favor of group tables around which students gather and “help” each other. That’s the theory; the reality is that kids facing each other around a table creates mass chaos in classrooms as they pick and prod each other. Having students facing the teacher in desks as my generation did was apparently deemed by some lollipop educator as being too draconian.)
This “new-new math” left a lot of kids and their parents befuddled. The textbooks were nonsense. The game-playing wasted valuable class time. But over time, teachers “adapted” the new curriculum by unofficially bringing back some of the “old” way of teaching.
These curriculum changes were later added to the middle schools in Georgia, but were strongly resisted by teachers who had been trying to fill in the deficits created by the new elementary school curriculum. Again, teachers adapted by filling in the gaps on their own.
Now the curriculum is debuting this fall in high schools. Rather than having the traditional Algebra, Geometry, Calculus type classes, all of those “concepts” are “woven” together into a four year curriculum of Math 1, 2, 3, and 4.
The result of all of this is that math for the math-gifted students is being dumbed down while math for the average and below average student is too difficult.
In elementary schools, many kids don’t have the mental maturity yet to understand math taught as “concepts.” Most young kids’ brains simply aren’t developed enough to make the leap from calculating to vague theory.
In the higher grades, some students are able to understand theoretical concepts of math, but many still need the rote and drill of actually doing calculations.
Supporters of the new math curriculums argue that the state needs a more rigorous math program for students to be able to compete in today’s high-tech world.
But the reality is, for many students the new math standards will prove to be too vague and elusive. Teaching concepts rather than application will simply go over the heads of many students who don’t have the innate ability to do the work.
For those who can do the work, the blending of content in high schools will, in effect, pull down the rigor of high school math instruction.
In the end, I suspect many teachers, with the unspoken tacit approval of administrators, will simply bypass the new-new math standards and teach much of the “old” content as they’ve done in the past. The course labels may be different, but in the classrooms the content actually taught will revert back to how math has been taught for the last 50 years.
In four years, when the new-new math curriculum has been in place for an entire school class, we’ll see just how it works. If SAT and other standardized tests don’t rise dramatically, then the new curriculum will be deemed a failure and the education bureaucracy will be back at square one.
We’ve been down this road of high promises of education changes many times before. Open classrooms, whole language, Reading First... all failures.
Now “new-new” math. The education bureaucracy never learns.
Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson Herald. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
Thank goodness teachers teach around all this nonsense.
I do agree that curriculum standards need to be more rigorous and that our students and teachers need to be held to higher standards.
But I suppose, if you are looking for justification, then yes, math is changed a little so even "the slowest" children can understand it. It is our job as educators to teach the children in front of us no matter the background (socio-economical, race, ethnicity, religious, legal status, etc.) they come from. (We can argue on another day and time about those that do not do that!)
But honestly, if your child was one that had a hard time, wouldn't you want curriculum presented different ways so your student had a better way of understanding it.
Teachers, that are good teachers, do not demand that students learn only through approaches such as lattice math. They ask that students learn multiple ways of learning how to solve a problem and use the approach and method that works best for them.
This methodology is supports higher order thinking skills that allows students to be able to apply skills to real world concepts.
In other words, teachers are trying to go away from teaching to the test and finally do what we set out to do in the first place and that is to teach.
While I agree that lattice math may not be the best route for everyone. There are students out there that benefit from it and can do it faster than traditional methods. I do agree that curriculum standards need to be more rigorous and that our students and teachers need to be held to higher standards.
But I suppose, if you are looking for justification, then yes, math is changed a little so even "the slowest" children can understand it. It is our job as educators to teach the children in front of us no matter the background (socio-economical, race, ethnicity, religious, legal status, etc.) they come from. (We can argue on another day and time about those that do not do that!)
But honestly, if your child was one that had a hard time, wouldn't you want curriculum presented different ways so your student had a better way of understanding it.
Teachers, that are good teachers, do not demand that students learn only through approaches such as lattice math. They ask that students learn multiple ways of learning how to solve a problem and use the approach and method that works best for them.
This methodology is supports higher order thinking skills that allows students to be able to apply skills to real world concepts.
In other words, teachers are trying to go away from teaching to the test and finally do what we set out to do in the first place and that is to teach.