One of the other editorial board members raised a point about
the horrible news that only 0.62 percent, approximately three in
500, of the Gilroy High School graduates who go to Gavilan College
manage to score into college level math.
One of the other editorial board members raised a point about the horrible news that only 0.62 percent, approximately three in 500, of the Gilroy High School graduates who go to Gavilan College manage to score into college level math.
This editorial board member says that the statistic does not mean that the high-achieving graduates are doing that poorly. High-achieving graduates are more likely to go straight to four-year colleges rather than to Gavilan. We have no data about that group. Perhaps they are going straight into calculus with no trouble at all.
It would be lovely if GHS would survey all the graduates of, say, the last five years who matriculated at four-year schools to find out whether they managed to place into calculus … maybe even if they managed to graduate in four years. I am not holding my breath.
My only datum is anecdotal rather than statistical. Our family is good friends with one of the families who have produced a recent valedictorian. That particular student borrowed our calculus books, including my Saxon, in the summer before she entered her big name four-year university, because she needed to study seriously. GHS had not adequately prepared the valedictorian to place into college math.
Absent other data, I think the evidence indicates that top to bottom, valedictorians to worker bees, GHS’s graduates are not prepared to place into, let alone succeed, in college math.
It is no comfort at all that Morgan Hill is doing almost as badly or that San Benito is doing worse. California as a whole is failing to mathematically educate our students.
For a complete history of the Math Wars of the last 25 years, let me refer you to www.mathematicallycorrect.com.
Briefly: New Math was developed in the 1960s. Arithmetic was re-named math. Children were taught the associative and commutative principles in addition to that old boring drill. Parents still remembered how to borrow and carry, so they taught their kids during homework. Parents rebelled and forced a return to the basics.
In the 1980s New New Math, also disdainfully called fuzzy math, was introduced. Its premise is that children should learn higher order conceptual skills collaboratively by exploration and invention rather than being taught that old boring drill.
The problem with New New Math is twofold. First, it takes an Archimedes, a Euclid, or a Newton to invent new algorithms. Most of us, myself included, are not up to the task.
Secondly, an 8-year-old child is cognitively ready to collect and memorize vast chunks of data with the greatest of ease. In the old days, it would have been baseball cards. Now it is more apt to be every move in a three-hour video game.
That child is perfectly ready to memorize his addition and multiplication facts. He will even have fun with his math drill if his teacher allows some friendly competition.
But he is not cognitively ready for logical operations such as algebra. He will be when he turns 12 or so. But if he has not memorized his times tables before he begins algebra he will be hamstrung at every step of solving for x.
This point is worth restating again and again and again, because GUSD has yet to learn it. As recently as February 2005, we were using the Noyce Foundation and the MARS test assessments to implement more New New Math in GUSD elementary schools.
I admit that there is more to fixing our math problem than adopting Saxon. Parents need to make sure their kids do their homework. Kids need to study diligently. Teachers need to take advantage of every minute of class time. Administrators need to provide discipline so that teachers can concentrate on teaching.
But the school district needs to adopt math curricula that will teach math. They need to beware of buzzwords such as “collaboration” and “higher-order thinking skills.” They need to get over this disdain of boring rote memorization.
The only alternative to boring rote memorization is cute fuzzy feel-good shortcuts. Of the GHS graduates who go to Gavilan, 99.38 percent will tell you short cuts get you lost in the mathematical woods.
Cynthia Anne Walker is a
homeschooling mother of three and former engineer. She is a published independent author. Her column is published in
The Dispatch every Friday.
