Michelle Pruitt, who blogs at Columbia Parents for Real Math, claims that “myths about math education are still alive and well in Missouri.” She’s convinced—and she provides time-series data supporting her convictions—that students’ readiness for algebra has declined in Columbia (MO, US) Public Schools (CPS).
Continue reading ‘Maththatworks’
Archive for the 'Parents' Category
Good news for those who discovered too late that Zig Engelmann was publishing a history of his time in education. The chapters were available only briefly (2 weeks each) but Zig’s making the entire product available again briefly.
If you missed downloading any of the earlier chapters of “The Outrage of
Project Follow Through,” Zig is re posting ALL chapters on Monday, March 12
about 8am pacific and will leave them up until Monday, March 19, around 8am
pacific.Bryan
Bryan Wickman,
Executive Director
Association for Direct Instruction
Save the dates. Get it while it’s free. Go to zigsite.com.
Sphere: Related ContentThe folks over at Where’s the Math are still raising a ruckus—andconsciouness— about the need for effective instruction in arithmetic and mathematics. Having not visited for a couple of weeks, I flitted over there today and found that WtM people have another video (Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences recites a devastating litany of problems with the education in-coming university students receive and calls for reform), new endorsements by professional mathematicians, and lots of other content.
Continue reading ‘More math’
The US Office of Special Education Programs publishes a Web site that brings together some of the products that have been developed under its auspices. They call it the Tool Kit on Teaching and Assessing Students With Disabilities. There are materials covering a wide variety of topics. Some products are expressly aimed at parents, but others are appropriate for professionals.
The Department has developed a Tool Kit on Teaching and Assessing Students with Disabilities (Tool Kit), which offers a compilation of current information that will move states forward in improving results for all students with disabilities. The Tool Kit will be added to over time to include more information designed to support states’ efforts and to communicate the results of research on teaching, learning, and assessments.
The Tool Kit brings together the most current and accurate information, including research briefs and resources designed to improve instruction, assessment, and accountability for students with disabilities in a format that is easy to access and to understand. The Tool Kit will assist state personnel, schools, and families in their efforts to ensure that all students with disabilities receive a quality education.
Link to the OSEP Tool Kit.
Sphere: Related ContentWriting in the Washington (DC, US) Times, Paul Greenberg commented about Arkansas’ new governor, Mike Beebe, who objected to schools sending reports to parents about their children’s body mass index. In his column, entitled “Self-Esteem to the Extreme,” Mr. Greenberg used Mr. Beebe’s expression of concern about harming children’s self-esteem as the launching pad for deriding the idea of promoting self-esteem.
Remember self-esteem? It was one of the sillier — and more dangerous — fads in educational circles, which keep going round and round. The theory was that promoting kids’ self-esteem would convince them they were great. And it just might. But that’s no guarantee they are great.
Continue reading ‘Self-esteem’
Sphere: Related ContentFrom connecting some dots on David Klein’s efforts and Instructivist, I came upon another valuable video from the folks at Where’s the Math. They hosted a “Community Math Forum” 26 October 2006 in which Professor Klein and Professor James Milgram (Stanford University) examine education in arithmetic and mathematics. There is a streaming video of the presentations that is maintained on TVW, Washington (US) state’s public affairs network.
(Careful observers will see one of Teach Effectively’s highly admired people, Marcy Stein, in the background right at the beginning of the video.)
Sphere: Related ContentOver on YouTube there is a video illustrating some of the problems with widely adopted curricula for arithmetic. The video “Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth” is presented by M. J. McDermott, who is a TV meterologist in Seattle (WA; US), and it skewers Everyday Mathematics and Investigations in Number, Data, and Space®.
The focus of the video, which is promoted by a Washington-based group named “Where’s the Math” and is aimed at informing parents, focuses on the teaching of algorithms (strategies of systems for solving problems) in arithmetic. Teaching problemsome algorithms is only one of the problems in faulty arithmetic (and other) curricula; other problems include inadequate demonstrations of the algorigthms, insufficient practice of them, weak choices of the examples used in teaching, and etc. Beyond the problems with algorithms, there are similar problems with teaching fundamental concepts, promoting numbersence, and on and on.
So, check the video. If you want, visit Where’s the Math’s Web site.
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