A mixed report card
People are a-twitter this week (the old-fashioned kind) about a New York Times story that shows Oregon as the only state in which grade school kids' math scores are still heading in the wrong direction, even though the Covid shutdown is long over.
But just for kicks, I asked the Times 'bot how some of the school districts around Portland are doing, and they seem to be holding steady or slightly improving.
So I guess all the damage has been done in the redder parts of the state.
Pretty interesting data. I'd be interested in readers' explanation for the dichotomy.
My first thought is that Portland is fudging their numbers to make them look "less worse" than they really are. Lack of childcare resources, mental health services, internet, transportation, and other basic services in rural areas no doubt put a large strain on families which can affect access to education. Not exclusive to rural Oregon, but Dept of Ed says 250/1 ratio of counselors to students is the minimum for success. Oregon as a whole sits at a 400+/1 ratio.
ReplyDeleteBack in the mid-2000s I led a Math rebellion in the Beaverton School District. The department head wanted to replace high school traditional math with Implied Math. No more trigonometry, pre-algebra, algebra, pre-calculus, or calculus. No AP Math either.
ReplyDeleteIt hasn't gotten any better. Even lowering the standards resulted in poorer scores.
As a data point, I contacted one of the department heads in the engineering school at Oregon State. The most oversubscribed class was remedial math for freshmen students. They were not at all ready for the math required for engineering studies. Those 4-year students turned into 5 and 6 year students to get their 4 year BS degree.
It's even worse today, as the math programs are still dumbed down to get better grades. That didn't work at all.
The next generation of young adults will have a tough time if they lack basic math skills. A calculator can't do everything.
What is implied math? I've never heard of it and, apparently, neither has Google.
Delete2+3 no longer 5- don't question the new jive.
DeleteImplied math is where there is no wrong answer and you get a medal for participating in the quiz.
DeleteI can't find anything anywhere about any school district in Oregon or elsewhere teaching "implied math." Do you have any kind of proof? A link to a school board meeting where this was discussed? Minutes? A syllabus? Anything at all? I don't believe this is a thing. Did you maybe confuse applied and implied?
DeleteThe results for the Vancouver School District are almost as bad as they are for Parkrose. This despite the fact that the VSD is now collecting almost double the property taxes that it did eight years ago. And the VSD's math's scores have flat-lined -- they aren't recovering from the lows they reached during the Covid years. Throwing significant amounts of additional money at public school districts seems to accelerate their decline.
ReplyDeleteEnglish, social studies, civics, geography, music, art, history, chemistry, physics, you name it…I’m not sure if ANY teaching and learning is going on in the schools at all!
ReplyDeleteMy gut is to say of course test scores go up when the kids who historically do terrible on standardized testing drop out and don't take a test.
ReplyDeleteThe only math test worth knowing is how much are we spending on each kid and what are the results? Seems like we are in a race with Baltimore to be the most expensive school district graduating near idiots (not the kids fault). Take a look at class materials and see it is largely state propaganda intended to create a generation of fearful, helpless children- a great market for Big Pharma.
ReplyDelete“Implied math” equals “alternative facts”
ReplyDelete