Discouraging Students from Taking Math

Coryoth writes "Following on from a previous story about UK schools encouraging students to drop mathematics, an article in The Age accuses Australian schools of much the same. The claim is that Australian schools are actively discouraging students from taking upper level math courses to boost their academic results on school league tables. How widespread is this phenomenon? Are schools taking similar measures in the US and Canada?"

Comments

I taught 8th grade science

[EMB Numbers]

I taught 8th grade science, and we were always encouraging students to take as much math as possible.

Unfortunately, students make short sighted decisions in 8th grade that determine whether they are on the calculus track or not. You must start on the path that leads to calculus in 8th grade or it is unlikely you can catch up by 12th grade.

We held an annual pep-rally for 7th graders encouraging them to enroll in math and science courses in 8th grade. If they don't, they are closing doors for future opportunity. Without calculus in high school, it is difficult to be accepted directly into technical/science degree programs in universities. At a minimum, some remedial college math is likely to be required. If you think you might want to be an engineer, scientist, doctor, mathematician, actuarial, astronaut, architect, etc. you should take the most advanced math offered by your school.

In fact, with few exceptions, if you want a high paying job that doesn't require graduate school, you are well served to take advanced math in high school.

Re:Math?

[dosius]

In the US it's "math". In the UK (and also Australia, at least) it's "maths". Like elevator/lift or color/colour, prolly.

-uso.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[phulegart]

"NCLB does not divert resources away from teaching. It influences what is taught."
--Wrong.

"In either case, however, the solution is to make sure the tests are measuring the right things. There are a lot of people who feel the tests aren't doing that - so let's fix the tests."

Let me give you some real world perspective. In 2005 I worked for an after-school tutoring company, in Las Vegas. We would tutor high school kids in basic math and English, so that they could pass the state proficiency tests. This was not to boost a school's ratings. This was because just about half of the high school students in Las Vegas were flunking the math portion of those standardized tests. Were the tests too difficult? No. These students could not do math involving fractions. These students could not do math involving decimals. Some of these students could not do math involving division. These were 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. There was no predominant racial bias to the spread of students. I know that these students could not do these things, because I had to tutor them 2 to 3 times a week for between one to two hours a session. I would tutor up to 5 students per session, and it was a full time (40 hour work week) job.

Do you know what No Child Left Behind means? It means that regardless of whether or not the student can do the work they get promoted to the next grade with their classmates. It also means that at graduation time, if they cannot pass the standardized tests, they are out of school without a diploma. If you find that you cannot believe this, then educate yourself. I was one of the people that had to take a 12th grader who obviously would have been held back much earlier because he did not know algebra, geometry, trigonometry, or even basic fractions, and teach him all of these things so he could actually graduate with a diploma.

The tests don't need to be fixed. The students need to stay in those classes until they learn the information that the tests are testing for.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[hazem]

NCLB does not divert resources away from teaching

Having worked in a school district when NCLB was instituted, I can tell you that it does, indeed, divert resources from teaching.

NCLB requires use of standard tests, which cost a lot of money to administer. In Oregon, those tests are done by computer, and the systems required upgrades to the computer systems and computers. In fact, several schools in the district created computer labs that were only to be used for testing and not for instruction. In addition, new administrative staff have to be hired to handle the workload of ensuring compliance.

In a rural school district with limited resources, the money for all this testing and equipment has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is usually the budget for optional programs, laying off teachers, skimping on resources such as needed new textbooks, and building enhancements.

This is why many school districts claim the NCLB requirements are an unfunded mandate. They have been required by the federal government do to these things yet were not given funds to do it.

On top of that, the testing regime takes about a week of class time out of the year.

So basically NCLB is a big win for companies who sell and administer standard tests. Everyone else pretty much gets screwed. Schools have less money, students get less education, and the country gets dumber.

If you really want to help the US education system, do the following:
* ban sodas and candy and fastfood
* expand the free lunch program to every kid and include breakfast - hungry kids can't learn - and there are too many of them
* go to year-round schooling with longer non-summer seasonal breaks
* make physical education mandatory at every grade level - they need breaks and exercise
* allow merit-based pay/bonuses for teachers who do a good job (using a variety of metrics)
* lower class sizes - a teacher can't manage 38 kids AND teach them
* lower the administrative burden on schools so they can hire more teachers and fewer administrators

Re:It'll all work out

[mcmonkey]

Evidently, they've already cut out critical thinking considering that high school grades are only a small part of what universities look at when considering a student, at least in the US. Standardized tests such as the SAT play a far more important role. Get a 1600 on the SAT and it doesn't matter what your grades were, you have your pick of the colleges.

Actually, high school grades are a better predictor for college grades than SAT scores. And most colleges know this. SATs are only a big deal for folks selling SAT prep courses and TV shows that can't come up with anything more original than another 'JR's worried about his SATs' episode.

Someone with a perfect SAT score (which would actually be 2400 now adays, not 1600) and bad grades is likely a smart, lazy high school student who will become a smart, lazy college student. Been there, done that, have t-shirts from several fine institutions of higher learning.