VDOE and the New “Math Path” — Healthy Skepticism and Professionalism Would Be Appreciated
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21 responses to “VDOE and the New “Math Path” — Healthy Skepticism and Professionalism Would Be Appreciated”
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Frankly I can see an exodus of Asian students and Asian families either to private schools who don’t do this, or Canada. It will cause a bigger brain drain because kids who go into engineering and the like will get slammed not knowing concepts they need to be introduced to. It will hurt our medical areas because calc, p chem, etc. are how they distinguish themselves in medical school. Lets talk Jeff Lab: good luck on recruiting Americans, they won’t have the knowledge to work there.
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I think I just made VDOE an offer they can’t refuse. We’ll see.
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Oooh, there’s a horse joke in there somewhere, one end or the other.
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What concepts will kids who want to go into “engineering and the like” not be introduced to?
As far as medical school is concerned, it is doubtful if high school math courses will affect that. For example, college majors in humanities and social science have an equivalent or rate of acceptance into medical school than physical science majors and a higher rate than majors in biological sciences. https://louisville.edu/humanities/undergraduate/files/NHAHumanitiesDataSheet.pdf
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If you have to wait until Jr year to get ahead, you lose time, in addition to not being introduced to concepts early on. Um, most biology majors are going for medicine, so if you have 100 bio majors going for it and only 3 get accepted, its 3%. If you have 10 poly science majors going for it, 1 gets accepted, that’s 10%. How many can actually get into medicine and finish? More humanities or more science based groups?
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If DOE were following the NCTM approach as Jim Sherlock is suggesting it is doing, it would not even have calculus in the curriculum. I don’t know what you mean by waiting until the junior year to get ahead. It seems that the VDOE provides significant opportunity for all students to be introduced to basic concepts and to develop a sound base by 10th grade and then opportunity to move ahead for those who want to.
My point about medical school was just that it does not take math whizzes to get into and succeed in medical school. As you point out, a lot of biology majors, who are not necessarily whizzes at p. chem, go to medical school.
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It would mean that folks like me, who took an extra year of math my freshman to sophomore summer high school year, would not get that opportunity. It means that when I took a second course the same way, I couldn’t do it. So I couldn’t get ahead. Math is not equitable. If these kids don’t have basic reading concepts down, they can’t do geometry. If they can’t get basic 5th grade and lower math down, they won’t get algebra. People who want to get ahead won’t be allowed to do that, that is my whole point and some need to move beyond basics, some can, which this system doesn’t allow for. Look at the description: if all they were doing is changing the name, it makes no sense to change the name. What they are infusing in there is “equity” which is not equitable for those who want to and have the capacity to move on.
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Dick, the thrust of my message to the VDOE is be careful what you do. I am sure you agree with that. Why not just say so. It is not your job to defend what I know you think to be a reckless approach.
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My comment was directed at VNicholls’ assertion.
I agree that VDOE should not be reckless. I am not convinced that it is being reckless. As Jim pointed out in his original post on this topic, the new approach is being piloted in Martinsville. By the way, I disagree with your assertion that the VDOE model is the Catalyzing Change model, which is not really a model, but a general statement of principles. The model curriculum recommended by that group is laid out in a separate document and is less aggressive than the VDOE model.
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I went with what the VMPI website claims: “VMPI has its origin in a groundbreaking 2018 study from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM): Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics – Initiating Critical Conversations.”
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Physics is included in the “Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems” section of the MCAT.
As I recall, math was part and parcel of physics.
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Captain there is a education group I heard about on WMAL that is challenging this. I can’t remember the name of them though. They seem to be mounting a serious counter offensive.
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stoplcpscrt – Loudoun County group. No left turn in education (Va group). Some of us run a section for the group in their area.
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No it is not Loudoun group it seemed to have a more national outreach. Edudefense or something like that. The lady who runs it and was interviewed came across very well.
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I named 2 groups, are you referring to No Left Turn? There was also Vicky Manning from the VB School Board. 2 different folks. One purpose.
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1970 — If farmer John can grow 8 bushels of wheat on one acre…
2020 — If Bill’s best programmer can write and debug 25 lines of code in a hour…
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I heard that Senator Chap Petersen has written the DoE (or should it be DoI – Department of Idiots) and asked a number of probing questions, which probably cannot be answered completely or truthfully.
What’s the next most outrageous, next to the harm done to students, is the fact that all of this stems from the fact that our filthy racist Governor won’t man up, admit he posed in blackface as an almost MD, and make personal amends, instead of manipulating his authority as Governor to appear woke. Northam is so bad he makes Trump seem decent.
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Once upon a time I was a Virginia public high school student who decided to take calculus. Nobody made me take calculus. I just wanted to take calculus so I did. I could have graduated without taking calculus. Lots of kids graduated without taking calculus.
Why is the option of taking calculus a problem?
Contrary to the almost frightening rhetoric in some of these comments calculus is very useful in the real world.
Like the hubbub around Thomas Jefferson this is not about the “average kid”. It’s about the top couple of percent of kids intellectually speaking. You certainly don’t need to go to TJ to get a job in STEM. However, leaders like Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google) tend to accomplish a lot. Shouldn’t there be a place in the public education system for truly exceptional intellects? Shouldn’t we want to develop the best and brightest?
Dumbing down America’s public schools is about as bad an idea as imaginable.
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Gets rid of Asian Americans that way.
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It needs to be pointed out that the “Asians” in TJ and Loudoun are not low-income. Only 2% of low-income Asians get into TJ.
When we talk about the “best and brightest” – does that mean that kids in low-income families are shit out of luck – no matter their color or ethnicity?
So the “best and brightest” of the high income?
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TJ and other similar magnet schools ARE – not about average kids – but the US average kids are relatively ignorant about even basic math – the kind of math many good jobs require – while kids in 25 other countries know that math and do better economically because of it.
It’s NOT “dumbing down” math to make changes that will improve math education to MOST kids and that narrative is disreputable and wrong.
Why does helping one group have to be a narrative about taking away from another group when it’s really not?
The high-income, above-average kids are not disadvantaged – they will get the things they want and making changes to improve math education for other kids is not a threat to them – except in the minds of those who want to make it a partisan thing – and you KNOW it is when they are demonizing individuals in VDOE by call them out bv name, by claiming motives that you really have no idea about, and , in general conspiracy theories about the Governor and all of VDOE aligned as “leftists”.
You want to talk about drivel? yep.
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