"Passing Algebra"

[Arthur Hu <ArthurH@TANGIS.COM>]

What is the point of education? To simply be exposed and
have fun, or to be tested and failed if you are not
proficient at it? When you watch a movie, are you tested
to see if you "got it?" Or are you your own judge of
whether or not it was a waste or time and money?

Should it be left up to a student to decide s/he wants to
take the class, and whether or not a A- or a D- constitutes
failure? Or is it up to the state to require that every
student must take it, and must be proficient at a world
class level to fulfull that requirement?



-----Original Message-----
From: Glenn [mailto:glenn@PEEDEEWORLD.NET]
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2000 10:12 AM
To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU
Subject: Re: Intelligence, Genetics and Equality (was "The Paradoxes...)


> argh.
>
> This is the whole idea behind the whole disasterous
> NTCM mathematics "everybody can be a rocket scientist,
> not the chosen few" standards. I wouldn't mind if somebody
> had demonstrated that these ideas actually deliver, but
> they're all being tried and deployed without any evidence
> they deliver anywhere near this kind of results. The only
> results vary from slightly better to nearly everybody from
> an elite private school failing their college remedial
> math placement tests.
>
> You show me a method that actually result is "all
> succeeding", then we can standardize on it. It's
> total madness to standardize on it first, and then see
> if it works or not. That's the punch line of standards
> based education. That's what happens when you require 100%
> proficiency in algebra before you have any freaking idea
> of how to get there.


Hey, I'm on your side, buddy.

All I'm saying is that, in my view from inside schools as both a student and
as a teacher, part of the problem of kids struggling with logic concepts
(which is what algebra is) and writing and all that is the way they are
being taught.

Do I think *everyone* can learn algebra, needs to learn algebra and will be
lifelong losers if they don't learn algebra? Hell, no.

Do I think the standards are stupid and hurtful and would I like to wring
the next of the next standardized test I meet in a dark alley?  Hell, yes.

At the same time, I don't think that high expectations and "standards" (with
the whole testing/ accountability component) are synonymous.  I expect *all*
my students to work at their highest level to become better readers and
writers, listeners and speakers.  I expect *all* my students to engage with
literature that tells the stories and dreams and fears of people very much
like themselves.  I don't go into the classroom *expecting* that some of my
kids will fail-- when they falter, I try to find new ways of approaching the
concept, and if they still can't get it, we move on and maybe I'll try again
in a different context.

But what the tone of some of the responses about algebra seem to be is that
we should be *going into* classroom expecting that some kids will be dumb
and can't learn.  (Yes, that's true of some kids working with some
concepts-- but we shouldn't go into a classroom *thinking ahead of time*
that there will be kids there who will fail.)  That doesn't seem very far
from  the Standardisto idea that tests are normed so that a certain
percentage of kids will fail.  Either way, you're expecting kids will fail--
and I personally have a lot more faith both in the human creature's need to
learn and its desire to succeed.

I'm far from saying everyone succeeds in the same way-- I am saying that
more folks succeed when we teach in a variety of methods, using every
available mode of teaching to help kids learn.

Teresa Glenn

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