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June 8, 2009
Connecticut District Tosses Algebra Textbooks and Goes Online
By WINNIE HU
WESTPORT, Conn. — Math students in this high-performing school district used to rush through their Algebra I textbooks only to spend the first few months of Algebra II relearning everything they forgot or failed to grasp the first time.
So the district’s frustrated math teachers decided to rewrite the algebra curriculum, limiting it to about half of the 90 concepts typically covered in a high school course in hopes of developing a deeper understanding of key topics. Last year, they began replacing 1,000-plus-page math textbooks with their own custom-designed online curriculum; the lessons are typically written in Westport and then sent to a program in India, called HeyMath!, to jazz up the algorithms and problem sets with animation and sounds.
“In America, we run through chapters like a speeding train,” said John Dodig, the principal of the 1,728-student Staples High School here. “Schools in Singapore and India spend more time on each topic, and their kids do better. We’re boiling down math to the essentials.”
That means Westport students focus only on linear functions in Algebra I, taught in seventh, eighth or ninth grade depending on student ability, and leave quadratics and exponents to Algebra II, eliminating the overlap and repetition typical of most textbooks and curriculum guidelines. Westport has also scaled back exercises like long formal proofs in geometry, revising lessons and homework assignments to teach students to defend their answers to math problems as a matter of routine rather than repeatedly writing them out.
Westport’s curriculum overhaul joins other recent critiques of mile-wide, inch-deep instruction in the long-running math wars within American education. In 2006, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics called for a tighter focus on basic math skills. Two years later, a federal panel appointed by President George W. Bush urged that pre-kindergarten to eighth-grade math curriculums be streamlined after finding that math achievement for American students was at “a mediocre level” compared with that of their peers worldwide.
Westport school officials say their less-is-more approach has already resulted in less review in math classes, higher standardized test scores and more students taking advanced math classes. The percentage of the district’s 10th graders receiving top scores on state exams rose to 86 percent last year from 78 percent in 2006. Advanced Placement calculus and statistics classes enrolled 231 students this year, from 170 in 2006, and a record 44 students will be able to take multivariable calculus this fall, up from four in 2006.
But while Westport’s new approach has attracted interest in the math education world, the vast majority of schools in Connecticut and elsewhere continue to race through dozens of math topics in each grade because of concerns that cutting back could hurt student performance on state assessments and SATs.
Hank Kepner, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, said that most schools choose among prepackaged math curriculums, which have to be expansive enough to meet wide-ranging standards for every state, and that he had not heard of another district trying to write its own.
“I give them kudos for trying it,” he said. “But I’m worried that not many districts will have the amount of support needed to pull off a new curriculum and sustain it.”
Patti Smith, a vice president at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a major national supplier of math textbooks to schools, said she did not believe Westport’s curriculum could maintain the same level of quality and consistency as a published math curriculum. Her company spends two years developing a curriculum using hundreds of math specialists and field-testing in schools.
“With all that is expected of teachers and students today, building a mathematics curriculum that has the depth to meet the needs of all classrooms is a very hard thing to do,” she said, pointing out that for a school district’s teachers, any time they spend “building content is time they are not working with kids.” (The math textbooks Westport is phasing out are by McDougal Littell, now part of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.)
But textbooks are not immune to the streamlining trend: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has written an Algebra I textbook for Florida schools that is about 200 pages shorter than the 1,000-page national version.
Here in Westport, the math curriculum has been compiled from original lessons and assignments as well as material adapted from Web sites, books, training sessions and conferences. Math teachers say their curriculum seeks to balance traditional teacher-directed instruction with student-exploration exercises, and in some cases diverges from Connecticut standards, which, for instance, call for quadratic equations to be taught in Algebra I.
“They’ve sidestepped the math wars because they have a rational curriculum, well-taught, and they get great results, so how can you argue with that?” said Steven Leinwand, principal research analyst at the American Institutes for Research, who helped Westport develop its math curriculum.
Frank Corbo, the head of Staples’ math department, said the district spent about $70,000 to develop the new math curriculum — half to pay two dozen teachers to work on it over the summer, and the other half to pay HeyMath!, whose Web server in Singapore gives students 24-hour, 7-day-a-week access to class lessons, tutorials and homework assignments. He said that the district will soon save at least $25,000 a year on textbooks.
In interviews, several Westport teachers and parents said the slower pace has helped their children focus more deeply on difficult concepts, and students say the shift online has made math easier to understand with cool graphics, animation and real-world context like global warming. “Math for a lot of kids is not fun,” said Lee Saveliff, co-president of the Parent-Teacher Association at Staples. “For kids who are computer literate, this helps them get a connection to the material.”
But the transition has not been without glitches. Some of the new word problems featured children with unpronounceable names like Trygve. Students have forgotten their passwords to log into the math program, and some online lessons had too few practice problems, sending students back to their textbooks.
In precalculus class the other day, Sarah White taught a dozen juniors and seniors about sine and cosine curves by inviting them to “play around with graphs” in a HeyMath! lesson. As a student touched an on-screen graph, the curves jumped and slid — an exercise that used to take 10 minutes or more on graphing calculators. “Kids would punch in wrong numbers and use the wrong mode,” Ms. White said.
Jahari Dodd, 17, a junior who earns B’s in math, said the online lessons were a welcome change from the dense pages of numbers and equations in his precalculus textbook. “I’m much more of a visual learner,” he said. “If I can’t see it or have some kind of image with it, it’s much harder to grasp.”
Kirk Massie, 15, a sophomore, said that he prepared for his midterm in Algebra II by replaying class lessons at home. “You don’t have to ask questions, you just rewind,” he said. “If you forget or it’s late at night, or you don’t have time to talk to the teacher, it’s right there and it takes a minute to log on.”
But he added that was not yet ready to close his math textbook for good. “It’s just weird not having something on paper that I can just look at,” he said.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Personal/teaching commentary:
In the article it is pointed out that most teachers rush through lessons due to District mandated pacing guides. Having taught in another sate, I find this to be quite true, as we must following the pacing guide daily, which does not allow much time for questions or further, in depth teaching.
Naturally, one of the biggest national suppliers of textbooks is skeptical of this Districts willingness to step outside what is considered the norm, to allow for Online learning instead of textbooks. Also, the article points out others attempts to lessen the content in which the students are required to learn. Seemingly, this District has realized that some of the content found in Algebra repeats itself in Algebra II and do not see the need to spend time needlessly in Algebra . The article also speaks of eliminating proofs in geometry, I fully agree that this is unnecessary at the high school level as this will be taught in college when the students have reached a higher level of learning maturity.
Consequently, this program is both good and bad, as by eliminating a teacher, students are unable to ask questions or see what they might be doing wrong.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
# The New York Times
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March 31, 2010
Jaime Escalante, Inspiration for a Movie, Dies at 79
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Jaime Escalante, the high school teacher whose ability to turn out high-achieving calculus students from a poor Hispanic neighborhood in East Los Angeles inspired the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver,” with Edward James Olmos in the starring role, died Tuesday at his son’s home in Rosedale, Calif. He was 79 and lived in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
The cause was pulmonary arrest brought on by pneumonia, his son Jaime said.
Mr. Escalante, a Bolivian immigrant, used unconventional techniques to explain mathematical problems and to convince his students at James A. Garfield High School, known for its dismal test scores and high drop-out rate, that they could compete with students from wealthier schools. Rock ’n’ roll records played at full blast, remote-controlled toys and magic tricks were all brought into play.
“Calculus need not be made easy,” read one of the motivational signs in Mr. Escalante’s classroom. “It is easy already.”
In 1982, 18 students in the special calculus program that Mr. Escalante had created at Garfield four years earlier took the College Board’s advanced placement test in calculus. Seven of them received a 5, the highest possible score; the rest, a 4.
Officials at the company administering the test suspected cheating and asked 14 students to take the exam again. A dozen did, and their performance validated the original results.
Mr. Olmos’s performance in “Stand and Deliver” earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor and turned Mr. Escalante into an educational hero. The year of the film, Henry Holt published “Escalante: The Best Teacher in America,” by Jay Mathews.
“He was working with a group of students who did not have much in life,” said Erika T. Camacho, who took algebra with Mr. Escalante and now teaches mathematics at Arizona State University. “They were told that they were not good enough and would not amount to much. He told them that with desire and discipline, they could do anything.”
Jaime Alfonso Escalante Gutiérrez was born on Dec. 31, 1930, in La Paz, where his parents were elementary school teachers. He taught physics and mathematics there for several years before political unrest led him to emigrate with his family to the United States in 1963.
In addition to his son Jaime, Mr. Escalante is survived by his wife, Fabiola, another son, Fernando, of Elk Grove, Calif., and six grandchildren.
While attending Pasadena College, where he earned an associate degree in arts in 1969, Mr. Escalante worked as a busboy in a coffee shop and as a cook. He later found work testing computers at the Burroughs Corporation while studying mathematics at California State University in Los Angeles, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1973.
After receiving his teacher’s certificate from Cal State in 1974, he began teaching at Garfield. The events telescoped into a single year in “Stand and Deliver” unfolded over a much longer time. Beginning with five calculus students in 1978, Mr. Escalante developed a program that eventually attracted hundreds of students keen to go on to college. In 1988, 443 students took the College Board’s advanced placement test; 266 passed.
Success, acclaim and the celebrity status that came with “Stand and Deliver” brought strife. Mr. Escalante butted heads with the school’s administration and fellow teachers, some jealous of his fame, others worried that he was creating his own fief. The teacher’s union demanded that his oversubscribed calculus classes be brought down in size.
In 1991, Mr. Escalante left Garfield to teach at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento. Without him, Garfield’s calculus program withered. In 2001 he retired and returned to Bolivia.
Mr. Escalante always impressed on his students the importance of “ganas” — desire. “I’ll make a deal with you,” he once told his class. “I’ll teach you math, and that’s your language. You’re going to go to college and sit in the first row, not in the back, because you’re going to know more than anybody.”
Personal/teaching comments:
This article points out how an immigrant from Bolivia was able to come to the United States and become one of the most prolific math teachers in history.
I have shown the move "Stand and Deliver" to my math students to show how just because you may be disadvantaged, does not mean you are not capable of achieving your dreams. All students were impressed of Mr. Escalante's passion in motivating his students to learn and to have desire. Also, the students enjoyed his "unconventional" methods of teaching, like dressing as a chef to teach fractions.
Mr. Esaclante taught where most students were thought of as worthless, lacked desire, and were likely to die in gang activities or in prison. Many of my students were able to see the desire of the teacher not only to teach math, but to teach his student self-worth and desire to achieve.
Mr. Escalante also taught teachers a lesson in how to motivate their students, I incorporate much of his teaching methods in my classroom and have found the same results: students who were previously unmotivated, begin to desire to learn. Thank you Mr. Escalante, may you rest in peace.
Reprints
March 31, 2010
Jaime Escalante, Inspiration for a Movie, Dies at 79
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Jaime Escalante, the high school teacher whose ability to turn out high-achieving calculus students from a poor Hispanic neighborhood in East Los Angeles inspired the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver,” with Edward James Olmos in the starring role, died Tuesday at his son’s home in Rosedale, Calif. He was 79 and lived in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
The cause was pulmonary arrest brought on by pneumonia, his son Jaime said.
Mr. Escalante, a Bolivian immigrant, used unconventional techniques to explain mathematical problems and to convince his students at James A. Garfield High School, known for its dismal test scores and high drop-out rate, that they could compete with students from wealthier schools. Rock ’n’ roll records played at full blast, remote-controlled toys and magic tricks were all brought into play.
“Calculus need not be made easy,” read one of the motivational signs in Mr. Escalante’s classroom. “It is easy already.”
In 1982, 18 students in the special calculus program that Mr. Escalante had created at Garfield four years earlier took the College Board’s advanced placement test in calculus. Seven of them received a 5, the highest possible score; the rest, a 4.
Officials at the company administering the test suspected cheating and asked 14 students to take the exam again. A dozen did, and their performance validated the original results.
Mr. Olmos’s performance in “Stand and Deliver” earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor and turned Mr. Escalante into an educational hero. The year of the film, Henry Holt published “Escalante: The Best Teacher in America,” by Jay Mathews.
“He was working with a group of students who did not have much in life,” said Erika T. Camacho, who took algebra with Mr. Escalante and now teaches mathematics at Arizona State University. “They were told that they were not good enough and would not amount to much. He told them that with desire and discipline, they could do anything.”
Jaime Alfonso Escalante Gutiérrez was born on Dec. 31, 1930, in La Paz, where his parents were elementary school teachers. He taught physics and mathematics there for several years before political unrest led him to emigrate with his family to the United States in 1963.
In addition to his son Jaime, Mr. Escalante is survived by his wife, Fabiola, another son, Fernando, of Elk Grove, Calif., and six grandchildren.
While attending Pasadena College, where he earned an associate degree in arts in 1969, Mr. Escalante worked as a busboy in a coffee shop and as a cook. He later found work testing computers at the Burroughs Corporation while studying mathematics at California State University in Los Angeles, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1973.
After receiving his teacher’s certificate from Cal State in 1974, he began teaching at Garfield. The events telescoped into a single year in “Stand and Deliver” unfolded over a much longer time. Beginning with five calculus students in 1978, Mr. Escalante developed a program that eventually attracted hundreds of students keen to go on to college. In 1988, 443 students took the College Board’s advanced placement test; 266 passed.
Success, acclaim and the celebrity status that came with “Stand and Deliver” brought strife. Mr. Escalante butted heads with the school’s administration and fellow teachers, some jealous of his fame, others worried that he was creating his own fief. The teacher’s union demanded that his oversubscribed calculus classes be brought down in size.
In 1991, Mr. Escalante left Garfield to teach at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento. Without him, Garfield’s calculus program withered. In 2001 he retired and returned to Bolivia.
Mr. Escalante always impressed on his students the importance of “ganas” — desire. “I’ll make a deal with you,” he once told his class. “I’ll teach you math, and that’s your language. You’re going to go to college and sit in the first row, not in the back, because you’re going to know more than anybody.”
Personal/teaching comments:
This article points out how an immigrant from Bolivia was able to come to the United States and become one of the most prolific math teachers in history.
I have shown the move "Stand and Deliver" to my math students to show how just because you may be disadvantaged, does not mean you are not capable of achieving your dreams. All students were impressed of Mr. Escalante's passion in motivating his students to learn and to have desire. Also, the students enjoyed his "unconventional" methods of teaching, like dressing as a chef to teach fractions.
Mr. Esaclante taught where most students were thought of as worthless, lacked desire, and were likely to die in gang activities or in prison. Many of my students were able to see the desire of the teacher not only to teach math, but to teach his student self-worth and desire to achieve.
Mr. Escalante also taught teachers a lesson in how to motivate their students, I incorporate much of his teaching methods in my classroom and have found the same results: students who were previously unmotivated, begin to desire to learn. Thank you Mr. Escalante, may you rest in peace.
# The New York Times
Reprints
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June 24, 2010
At City College, a Battle Over Remedial Classes for English and Math
By CAROL POGASH
At City College of San Francisco, one of the country’s largest public universities, thousands of struggling students pour into remedial English and math classes — and then the vast majority disappear, never to receive a college degree.
When Steve Ngo, a 33-year-old college trustee, learned that many minority students, among others, faced two-and-a-half years, or five semesters, of remedial English classes and a year and a half of math at the two-year college, he was shocked into action. His campaign for a one-year sequence of remedial courses ignited a campus furor, with students and a few trustees on one side and faculty members, irate about the intrusion of trustees on academic turf, on the other.
Mr. Ngo’s less-than-collegial campaign was expected to prevail. On Thursday night, Don Q. Griffin, the college’s chancellor, was to present a proposal for a shortened remedial curriculum, designed to get students into college-level courses more quickly.
While the battle — which Hal Huntsman, the former president of the Academic Senate, likened to a civil war — was about trustees’ dictating policies to professors, everyone agreed that the achievement gap, with blacks and Latinos on one side and whites and most Asians on the other, needed fixing.
Some 90 percent of new C.C.S.F. students who take the placement test are unprepared for introductory English 1A; 70 percent are not ready for basic math. There are more remedial math and English classes at the school than college-level classes, the chancellor said. As with community colleges around the country, C.C.S.F., which has 100,000 students, has adopted a role well outside its mission of boosting students into four-year colleges.
Some freshmen do not know that “one-half and .5 represent the same number,” said Dennis Piontkowski, chairman of the mathematics department. “We don’t want to keep students in math classes forever, but you can’t just snap your fingers and bring them up to college level.”
Students are leaving high school with a diploma, but “most are testing at middle-school reading comprehension” and many at elementary-school level, said James Sauvé, an English department instructor in charge of revising the remediation classes.
The college’s 2009 equity report showed that just 4 percent of black students and 7 percent of Hispanic students who began English remedial classes at the bottom rung eventually completed English 1A. The rest are lost, either failing to enroll, failing a class or dropping out. The number for white students — 12 percent — is not much better.
“If you put people in remediation and they don’t succeed, what’s the point?” said Steven Spurling, the assistant director of institutional research, who crunched the numbers. “If you elongate the educational process, people will eventually drop out.”
Nationally, City College of San Francisco’s two-and-a-half year remedial English sequence is one of the longer routes, said Thomas Bailey, director of Community College Research Center at Columbia University Teachers College.
Katie Hern, a Chabot College English instructor who researches remediation, said: “Placement becomes destiny. Students who take Chabot’s more intensive one-semester English remediation course pass college-level English at twice the rate of those who took the college’s two-semester course.”
For faculty members “who devoted their lives to helping students learn,” Ms. Hern said, “it’s hard to accept that providing more courses can be harmful.”
Beth Cataldo, a basic-skills coordinator at C.C.S.F., said that to blame the length of the remedial classes for student dropout, was “a little naïve.”
“It’s a community issue,” Ms. Cataldo said. “We have a whole underclass of the undereducated who tend to be African American and Latinos.
“Here we are in the most progressive city in the nation, and nobody’s talking about it.”
Lerone Matthis, a business major, took six semesters of remedial math before he could take college-level math classes. With two children and a job, Mr. Matthis, who once was homeless, said he was “one of the more motivated students.”
“I’ve had great teachers in English and a few in math,” he said.
Not every course was helpful, though.
Mr. Matthis pointed to one essay and reading class that, he said, “was nothing but global warming,” adding, “I didn’t become a better writer from that class.”
He said that extending the sequence of remedial classes was “a runaround,” and that he had a lot of friends who “just gave up.”
On top of these practical issues, the college’s 2009 equity report found that larger percentages of black, Filipino, Latino, Pacific Islander and Southeast Asian students wanted four-year degrees than did their Asian and white counterparts. Yet, according to the report, those same groups — except for Southeast Asians — transfer to four-year schools at significantly lower rates than Asians and whites. The graduation or transfer rate for blacks is 24 percent; for Latinos it is 23 percent. For white non-Hispanics, it is 31 percent.
Those statistics, and the students’ concerns, galvanized Mr. Ngo, a trustee who is a Vietnamese-American lawyer who is not easily intimidated “The board has a role in saying the system has to change,” he said. “Why else are we here?”
With two other young board members — Chris Jackson, 27, who is black, and Joshua Nielsen, 25, the former president of the student body, Mr. Ngo organized “equity hearings,” forums for students to voice their concerns about the achievement gap.
Mr. Ngo then produced a draft resolution that directed the English and math departments to offer a sequence of pre-college English and math classes “in a length no longer than two semesters.”
Faculty members were outraged. One called Mr. Ngo a fascist. The trustee was accused of violating the education code and of “imperiling” the college’s accreditation, an accusation that the chancellor said he was not aware of. Mr. Ngo received e-mail that attacked his “top-down attempt at micro managing,” and that said he had polarized the campus, setting off “a firestorm of faculty anger.”
At a special Academic Senate meeting in March to address the issue, Mr. Nielsen, the student trustee, tried to speak in support of a shorter remedial program before his microphone was cut off and security was called. Resentful professors criticized Mr. Ngo’s resolution, countering with one of their own, which resolved to work collegially to close the achievement gap and specifying that in academic matters, faculty members “have primacy.”
Mr. Ngo does not agree with that point of view. “They think it’s their college,” he said later. “They don’t think they have to be accountable to the public.”
Still, he withdrew his draft and apologized to the faculty, although he said he had no real regrets for what he had done.
In the spring, Chancellor Griffin “told the bunch of sides to cut it out,” said Mr. Sauvé, the English professor.
In a college-wide memo that tried to smooth the situation, the chancellor said there would be major changes in English and math remediation course sequences. He told the math and English departments to come up with solutions for spring 2011.
At Thursday night’s trustees’ meeting, the chancellor was expected to make public the math and English department plans for shortened, more intensive sequences of remediation classes to begin next spring. The English department was expected to continue its two-and-a-half year track while giving students a choice of a new intensive one-and-a-half year program. The math department was expected to keep its current track of a year and a half of remediation, while also offering more condensed classes to allow students to complete the cycle in a year.
Mr. Ngo said that if he had not drafted his resolution, there would be no new offerings in the spring.
“I would have been patted on the head and told to move along,” he said. “And when my term ended, nothing would have changed.”
cpogash@baycitizen.com
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Personal/teaching commentary:
This article points out the unfortunate trend of a transitioning high school senior to college freshman is unable to qualify for college level course in math due to gaps in the math content knowledge. The current statistics show that 70% of freshman must take a year-and a -half of remedial math before entering college algebra. In my class, I point this out to students when they ask the inevitable question, "what do we need this for?" All student need to be informed of what they are doing, why they are doing it, and the consequence for not learning what a teacher is attempting to teach.
The article specifically points out that the education gaps seem to be more prevalent among black or Latino students. Again, I feel that this is due to the students not being afforded the opportunity to make a connection between the math in the textbook and their personal lives.
Also, due to a national movement to teach- to- the- test, many students are failing to master what is being taught. Time does not exist for a lot of real-life teaching programs.
Being from California, I saw how many Latinos were unable to meet the learning requirements due to frequent migration from city to city.
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June 24, 2010
At City College, a Battle Over Remedial Classes for English and Math
By CAROL POGASH
At City College of San Francisco, one of the country’s largest public universities, thousands of struggling students pour into remedial English and math classes — and then the vast majority disappear, never to receive a college degree.
When Steve Ngo, a 33-year-old college trustee, learned that many minority students, among others, faced two-and-a-half years, or five semesters, of remedial English classes and a year and a half of math at the two-year college, he was shocked into action. His campaign for a one-year sequence of remedial courses ignited a campus furor, with students and a few trustees on one side and faculty members, irate about the intrusion of trustees on academic turf, on the other.
Mr. Ngo’s less-than-collegial campaign was expected to prevail. On Thursday night, Don Q. Griffin, the college’s chancellor, was to present a proposal for a shortened remedial curriculum, designed to get students into college-level courses more quickly.
While the battle — which Hal Huntsman, the former president of the Academic Senate, likened to a civil war — was about trustees’ dictating policies to professors, everyone agreed that the achievement gap, with blacks and Latinos on one side and whites and most Asians on the other, needed fixing.
Some 90 percent of new C.C.S.F. students who take the placement test are unprepared for introductory English 1A; 70 percent are not ready for basic math. There are more remedial math and English classes at the school than college-level classes, the chancellor said. As with community colleges around the country, C.C.S.F., which has 100,000 students, has adopted a role well outside its mission of boosting students into four-year colleges.
Some freshmen do not know that “one-half and .5 represent the same number,” said Dennis Piontkowski, chairman of the mathematics department. “We don’t want to keep students in math classes forever, but you can’t just snap your fingers and bring them up to college level.”
Students are leaving high school with a diploma, but “most are testing at middle-school reading comprehension” and many at elementary-school level, said James Sauvé, an English department instructor in charge of revising the remediation classes.
The college’s 2009 equity report showed that just 4 percent of black students and 7 percent of Hispanic students who began English remedial classes at the bottom rung eventually completed English 1A. The rest are lost, either failing to enroll, failing a class or dropping out. The number for white students — 12 percent — is not much better.
“If you put people in remediation and they don’t succeed, what’s the point?” said Steven Spurling, the assistant director of institutional research, who crunched the numbers. “If you elongate the educational process, people will eventually drop out.”
Nationally, City College of San Francisco’s two-and-a-half year remedial English sequence is one of the longer routes, said Thomas Bailey, director of Community College Research Center at Columbia University Teachers College.
Katie Hern, a Chabot College English instructor who researches remediation, said: “Placement becomes destiny. Students who take Chabot’s more intensive one-semester English remediation course pass college-level English at twice the rate of those who took the college’s two-semester course.”
For faculty members “who devoted their lives to helping students learn,” Ms. Hern said, “it’s hard to accept that providing more courses can be harmful.”
Beth Cataldo, a basic-skills coordinator at C.C.S.F., said that to blame the length of the remedial classes for student dropout, was “a little naïve.”
“It’s a community issue,” Ms. Cataldo said. “We have a whole underclass of the undereducated who tend to be African American and Latinos.
“Here we are in the most progressive city in the nation, and nobody’s talking about it.”
Lerone Matthis, a business major, took six semesters of remedial math before he could take college-level math classes. With two children and a job, Mr. Matthis, who once was homeless, said he was “one of the more motivated students.”
“I’ve had great teachers in English and a few in math,” he said.
Not every course was helpful, though.
Mr. Matthis pointed to one essay and reading class that, he said, “was nothing but global warming,” adding, “I didn’t become a better writer from that class.”
He said that extending the sequence of remedial classes was “a runaround,” and that he had a lot of friends who “just gave up.”
On top of these practical issues, the college’s 2009 equity report found that larger percentages of black, Filipino, Latino, Pacific Islander and Southeast Asian students wanted four-year degrees than did their Asian and white counterparts. Yet, according to the report, those same groups — except for Southeast Asians — transfer to four-year schools at significantly lower rates than Asians and whites. The graduation or transfer rate for blacks is 24 percent; for Latinos it is 23 percent. For white non-Hispanics, it is 31 percent.
Those statistics, and the students’ concerns, galvanized Mr. Ngo, a trustee who is a Vietnamese-American lawyer who is not easily intimidated “The board has a role in saying the system has to change,” he said. “Why else are we here?”
With two other young board members — Chris Jackson, 27, who is black, and Joshua Nielsen, 25, the former president of the student body, Mr. Ngo organized “equity hearings,” forums for students to voice their concerns about the achievement gap.
Mr. Ngo then produced a draft resolution that directed the English and math departments to offer a sequence of pre-college English and math classes “in a length no longer than two semesters.”
Faculty members were outraged. One called Mr. Ngo a fascist. The trustee was accused of violating the education code and of “imperiling” the college’s accreditation, an accusation that the chancellor said he was not aware of. Mr. Ngo received e-mail that attacked his “top-down attempt at micro managing,” and that said he had polarized the campus, setting off “a firestorm of faculty anger.”
At a special Academic Senate meeting in March to address the issue, Mr. Nielsen, the student trustee, tried to speak in support of a shorter remedial program before his microphone was cut off and security was called. Resentful professors criticized Mr. Ngo’s resolution, countering with one of their own, which resolved to work collegially to close the achievement gap and specifying that in academic matters, faculty members “have primacy.”
Mr. Ngo does not agree with that point of view. “They think it’s their college,” he said later. “They don’t think they have to be accountable to the public.”
Still, he withdrew his draft and apologized to the faculty, although he said he had no real regrets for what he had done.
In the spring, Chancellor Griffin “told the bunch of sides to cut it out,” said Mr. Sauvé, the English professor.
In a college-wide memo that tried to smooth the situation, the chancellor said there would be major changes in English and math remediation course sequences. He told the math and English departments to come up with solutions for spring 2011.
At Thursday night’s trustees’ meeting, the chancellor was expected to make public the math and English department plans for shortened, more intensive sequences of remediation classes to begin next spring. The English department was expected to continue its two-and-a-half year track while giving students a choice of a new intensive one-and-a-half year program. The math department was expected to keep its current track of a year and a half of remediation, while also offering more condensed classes to allow students to complete the cycle in a year.
Mr. Ngo said that if he had not drafted his resolution, there would be no new offerings in the spring.
“I would have been patted on the head and told to move along,” he said. “And when my term ended, nothing would have changed.”
cpogash@baycitizen.com
More in U.S. (1 of 25 articles)
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Personal/teaching commentary:
This article points out the unfortunate trend of a transitioning high school senior to college freshman is unable to qualify for college level course in math due to gaps in the math content knowledge. The current statistics show that 70% of freshman must take a year-and a -half of remedial math before entering college algebra. In my class, I point this out to students when they ask the inevitable question, "what do we need this for?" All student need to be informed of what they are doing, why they are doing it, and the consequence for not learning what a teacher is attempting to teach.
The article specifically points out that the education gaps seem to be more prevalent among black or Latino students. Again, I feel that this is due to the students not being afforded the opportunity to make a connection between the math in the textbook and their personal lives.
Also, due to a national movement to teach- to- the- test, many students are failing to master what is being taught. Time does not exist for a lot of real-life teaching programs.
Being from California, I saw how many Latinos were unable to meet the learning requirements due to frequent migration from city to city.
Web address:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/
100618170920.htm
Children With Home Computers Likely to Have Lower Test Scores, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (June 19, 2010) — Around the country and throughout the world, politicians and education activists have sought to eliminate the "digital divide" by guaranteeing universal access to home computers, and in some cases to high-speed Internet service.
However, according to a new study by scholars at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, these efforts would actually widen the achievement gap in math and reading scores. Students in grades five through eight, particularly those from disadvantaged families, tend to post lower scores once these technologies arrive in their home.
Professors Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd analyzed responses to computer-use questions included on North Carolina's mandated End-of-Grade tests (EOGs). Students reported how frequently they use a home computer for schoolwork, watch TV or read for pleasure. The study covers 2000 to 2005, a period when home computers and high-speed Internet access expanded dramatically. By 2005, broadband access was available in almost every zip code in North Carolina, Vigdor said.
The study had several advantages over previous research that suggested similar results, Vigdor said. The sample size was large -- numbering more than 150,000 individual students. The data allowed researchers to compare the same children's reading and math scores before and after they acquired a home computer, and to compare those scores to those of peers who had a home computer by fifth grade and to test scores of students who never acquire a home computer. The negative effects on reading and math scores were "modest but significant," they found.
"We cut off the study in 2005, so we weren't getting into the Facebook and Twitter generation," Vigdor said. "The technology was much more primitive than that. IM (instant messaging) software was popular then, and it's been one thing after the other since then. Adults may think of computer technology as a productivity tool first and foremost, but the average kid doesn't share that perception." Kids in the middle grades are mostly using computers to socialize and play games, Vigdor added, with clear gender divisions between those activities.
Vigdor and Ladd concluded that home computers are put to more productive use in households where parental monitoring is more effective. In disadvantaged households, parents are less likely to monitor children's computer use and guide children in using computers for educational purposes.
The research suggests that programs to expand home computer access would lead to even wider gaps between test scores of advantaged and disadvantaged students, Vigdor said. Several states have pursued programs to distribute computers to students. For example, Maine funded laptops for every sixth-grader, and Michigan approved a program but then did not fund it.
"Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement" was published online by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The research was funded in part by the William T. Grant Foundation.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Duke University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
APA
MLA
Duke University (2010, June 19). Children with home computers likely to have lower test scores, study finds. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 11, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/06/100618170920.htm
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Personal/teaching commentary:
This article points out how much technology has influenced students' lives. The significance of presenting this article to students would be to point out how many adults naturally assume that by using technology, a student will be using it as a learning tool.
However, the article brought to light how most teens use the technology as a socialization tool to contact their friends. The article points out that the lower scores are due to the time spent on the computer not being used for research or to seek assistance.
Since the article eliminated current trends in teen computer use such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the use of texting, I would like a current study to discover how greater the technology use/learning gap has become.
In math class, I often hear," I didn't understand how to do this," when it is time to turn in homework. But after asking the student if they have a computer with Internet access, most say "yes."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/
100618170920.htm
Children With Home Computers Likely to Have Lower Test Scores, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (June 19, 2010) — Around the country and throughout the world, politicians and education activists have sought to eliminate the "digital divide" by guaranteeing universal access to home computers, and in some cases to high-speed Internet service.
However, according to a new study by scholars at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, these efforts would actually widen the achievement gap in math and reading scores. Students in grades five through eight, particularly those from disadvantaged families, tend to post lower scores once these technologies arrive in their home.
Professors Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd analyzed responses to computer-use questions included on North Carolina's mandated End-of-Grade tests (EOGs). Students reported how frequently they use a home computer for schoolwork, watch TV or read for pleasure. The study covers 2000 to 2005, a period when home computers and high-speed Internet access expanded dramatically. By 2005, broadband access was available in almost every zip code in North Carolina, Vigdor said.
The study had several advantages over previous research that suggested similar results, Vigdor said. The sample size was large -- numbering more than 150,000 individual students. The data allowed researchers to compare the same children's reading and math scores before and after they acquired a home computer, and to compare those scores to those of peers who had a home computer by fifth grade and to test scores of students who never acquire a home computer. The negative effects on reading and math scores were "modest but significant," they found.
"We cut off the study in 2005, so we weren't getting into the Facebook and Twitter generation," Vigdor said. "The technology was much more primitive than that. IM (instant messaging) software was popular then, and it's been one thing after the other since then. Adults may think of computer technology as a productivity tool first and foremost, but the average kid doesn't share that perception." Kids in the middle grades are mostly using computers to socialize and play games, Vigdor added, with clear gender divisions between those activities.
Vigdor and Ladd concluded that home computers are put to more productive use in households where parental monitoring is more effective. In disadvantaged households, parents are less likely to monitor children's computer use and guide children in using computers for educational purposes.
The research suggests that programs to expand home computer access would lead to even wider gaps between test scores of advantaged and disadvantaged students, Vigdor said. Several states have pursued programs to distribute computers to students. For example, Maine funded laptops for every sixth-grader, and Michigan approved a program but then did not fund it.
"Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement" was published online by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The research was funded in part by the William T. Grant Foundation.
Email or share this story:
| More
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Duke University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
APA
MLA
Duke University (2010, June 19). Children with home computers likely to have lower test scores, study finds. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 11, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/06/100618170920.htm
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Personal/teaching commentary:
This article points out how much technology has influenced students' lives. The significance of presenting this article to students would be to point out how many adults naturally assume that by using technology, a student will be using it as a learning tool.
However, the article brought to light how most teens use the technology as a socialization tool to contact their friends. The article points out that the lower scores are due to the time spent on the computer not being used for research or to seek assistance.
Since the article eliminated current trends in teen computer use such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the use of texting, I would like a current study to discover how greater the technology use/learning gap has become.
In math class, I often hear," I didn't understand how to do this," when it is time to turn in homework. But after asking the student if they have a computer with Internet access, most say "yes."
WREG
Students get a taste of life in Civil War military encampments
By Associated Press
9:29 AM CDT, July 11, 2010
WASHINGTON, Miss. (AP) — With the 150th anniversary of the start of rhe Civil War coming in 2011, students from Louisiana and Mississippi got a three-day drill on what camp life was like for the average soldier.
The annual Civil War Adventure Camp, held recentlly at historic Jefferson College near Natchez, brought together 8-12-year-old boys and girls for interaction with history buffs and others.
The creation of H. Clark Burkett, a historian with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the camp didn't focus on the political and social issues that spawned the war or have continued since it ended in 1865.
But it did give the students a sense of the rigors of daily life for Union and Confederate troops who fought in the conflict.
personal/teacher commentary:
In the article it states how the students are given the opportunity to live as a Confederate or Union soldier lived during one of the most horrific times of American history. During the three day event, students interact with history buffs and other persons that truley enjoy this period of history. I feel this allows for students get to see first-hand how education can be fun and in some instances, just for the sake of knowing information. It is not often where one gets the pleasure of seeing learning in action as we tend to stick with text only learning style.
I found the fact that the camp did not focus on politics or social issues quite refreshing, as sometimes these "facts" tend to lean more toward opinion. By just allowing for students to experience what the soldiers endured , they will get more of a personal experience.
Students get a taste of life in Civil War military encampments
By Associated Press
9:29 AM CDT, July 11, 2010
WASHINGTON, Miss. (AP) — With the 150th anniversary of the start of rhe Civil War coming in 2011, students from Louisiana and Mississippi got a three-day drill on what camp life was like for the average soldier.
The annual Civil War Adventure Camp, held recentlly at historic Jefferson College near Natchez, brought together 8-12-year-old boys and girls for interaction with history buffs and others.
The creation of H. Clark Burkett, a historian with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the camp didn't focus on the political and social issues that spawned the war or have continued since it ended in 1865.
But it did give the students a sense of the rigors of daily life for Union and Confederate troops who fought in the conflict.
personal/teacher commentary:
In the article it states how the students are given the opportunity to live as a Confederate or Union soldier lived during one of the most horrific times of American history. During the three day event, students interact with history buffs and other persons that truley enjoy this period of history. I feel this allows for students get to see first-hand how education can be fun and in some instances, just for the sake of knowing information. It is not often where one gets the pleasure of seeing learning in action as we tend to stick with text only learning style.
I found the fact that the camp did not focus on politics or social issues quite refreshing, as sometimes these "facts" tend to lean more toward opinion. By just allowing for students to experience what the soldiers endured , they will get more of a personal experience.
Article one
July 10, 2010
Writing contest winners go to D.C.
THE
“Jackson-Madison County Schools students Peyton Tharpe, an eighth-grader from
The Do the Write Thing Challenge is an initiative of the National Campaign to Stop Violence, a nonprofit organization composed of business, community and government leaders who work to reduce youth violence, according to a new release.
An estimated 600,000 students have participated in the challenge over the years, and more than 250,000 of them have written about the causes of and solutions for youth violence and made a personal commitment not to engage in violence, the release says.
Tharpe and Verser were selected to go to
During national recognition week, students will meet with the secretary of the Department of Education, the
Students also will visit the office of U.S. Rep. John Tanner,
Also traveling to
Personal/teaching commentary:
By using a local newspaper such as The Jackson Sun, as a point of reference, students will be able to associate a local event to one that could impact their lives.
Further, the National Campaign to Stop Violence Initiative could have a great impact for our students who may be tempted to react to a situation violently or, in the extreme case, may be drawn in to a gang.
Unfortunately, we as educators will introduce a topic which is not demographically nor regionally connected to our students. For example, we introduce a story on the life of a ten growing up in Orange County California. While this is certainly fascinating information for the students who have never been to
The article is of local students within our District who won a writing contest and got to make a trip to our Capital and meet with leaders of our Nation. This sends a strong message that our students are able to compete for the same contest and to make an interesting trip to meet the people who seem like just names in a social studies text.
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