kitchen table math, the sequel

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I had no idea.

I was reading through the Manhattan GMAT tutorial on "Fast Math" thinking, "Wouldn't it be even faster to do that on a calculator?" when it came to me: it sounds like they don't allow calculators on the GMAT.

Sure enough.

Mrs. Bluebird teaches middle school science in the southern US. I believe she has both general ed students and some in special ed. I really enjoy her blog, as she is funny, practical, and honest about the challenges. I've condensed this post ( .... indicates edited text) and I've also added emphasis

So what do you do, as a teacher, in middle school if your students are lacking essential skills that they should have mastered in previous grades? Here's her take.

My Calculator Rant, or My Kids Can't Do Math Without One

Next week we take our Very Big Deal Government Mandated Tests. Oh yipee....

We're pretty confident they have a fairly good grasp (as far as seventh graders with the puberty brain freeze can grasp) of most of the basic science concepts.

However, the math is going to kill us.

Part of our new standards this year include Newton's Laws of Motion and simple machines, and fun little things like acceleration, velocity, work, force and all that wonderful little physical science stuff which I find really cool. However, there's a lot of math and calculations involved, such as figuring out that work equals force times distance, and power is work divided by time, and momentum is mass times velocity. ...

We're talking simple math here - multiplying and dividing. That's it. However, we began to notice on our quizzes, our tests, and our Benchmarks that our kids can't do math without a calculator. They can punch in numbers and solve math problems until the cows come home, but ask them to do math with a pencil and paper (and their brain) and they go into shut down mode. Heck, they're not even sure how to set up a math problem without a calculator. They would read a question, say, Power = work/time, and they'd write it out and then MULTIPLY IT. Not just a handful of kids, but huge numbers of kids. Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Hummingbird and I were shocked...and promptly ran to our math teachers.

"Do you mean to tell me," I asked Mr. Math, "that without a calculator, these kids can't do math?"

"Pretty much," he said. "Welcome to my world. They don't know their multiplication tables by heart, and they depend on a calculator for everything. They may have learned their multiplication tables in fourth grade, but then they stuck a calculator in their hands and they promptly forgot everything. And we're encouraged to have them use calculators."

Oh good gracious. They don't even remember that a line between two numbers means to divide.....

So, we have the kids learn their multiplication tables, and then give them a calculator. How stupid is that?

About as stupid as the State Department of Education's Decree that No Calculators Will be Allowed on Any Test Except for Math. Period.

We tried, when this first became apparent to us earlier in the year, to see if we could get the Special Ed kids that have "use of calculator" written into their IEP's permission to use calculators. Not only was the answer NO, it was a Big Fat NO.

I have kids who, quite honestly, cannot tell you how many times 3 goes into 24, who need calculators as a life skill because 2 times 6 is a challenge. These kids will be forced, along with all my other kids, to do math problems on the Very Big Deal Government Mandated Science Test, without a calculator. Even though they use calculators every freaking day in math class. And this year, about 20% of that test will be math. (I do have a few good special ed parents who are annoyed at this and asked me what to do - I suggested that as parents the state may listen to them a bit more than they listen to us teachers. Perhaps if they complained loud and long, we'd see a change.)

When we did our datachat for our last Benchmark, the kids did really well. Except for the standards that were math-based. They, bluntly, sucked. Badly. Why? They lack the basic math skills to do basic problems. And it's not just my kids, but apparently it's an issue across the entire district. And I'd guess, across the state, and most likely the country.

So, when Mrs. Eagle and I went and judged the science fair at the local elementary school a few months ago, and we found out that they'd spent some grant money buying calculators for their 2nd and 3rd graders, we pretty much told them to send them back and get a refund. They were appalled when we told them the issues that we were having with the lack of basic math skills. Again, if you don't use a skill, like doing math with a pencil, paper and your brain, you aren't going to be good at it.

Which is why our team remediation class has been doing multiplication practice, just like they did in fourth grade, several times a week (and grading those is frightening, they're so awful.) Hopefully, this practice will help a few of them.

However, I'm still incensed, that my kids are going to be, in a way, penalized because they don't have the ability to do math without a calculator. And at the same time, we stick a calculator in their hands and encourage them to use it. It makes no sense to me that they can use one for the math part of the test, but not the science part which also has math.

The politics of testing just irritates the bloody hell out of me.

So there you have it. What are teachers in the higher grades to do, if the students in their prior education have been handicapped in this way?

How much of this has to do with that asinine Everyday Math? I'm fighting every week with the teachers to keep a calculator out of my kid's hands until she can do arithmetic on her own, something she's eminently capable of doing someday (she's six, for crying out loud). Yes, including long division (not that it's part of the curriculum -- why think for yourself when you can use the outboard brain?) and maybe some introductory algebra. These teachers, who'd stare like deer in headlights if asked to calculate the future value of anything and come out with a number, give me this endless stream of talking-point baloney from the Everyday Math "how to reassure parents who are scared because it's not like the math they remember" book. They don't understand why I'm so stuck on the idea that my daughter should be able to do her own adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying. AAARGH.

Amy from Iowa

You can vote to "Recommend" your favorite comments on the story. Amy got my vote.

Speaking of Everyday Math, remember this?

Jenny left a link to this story:

When the Bamberger family opened a haberdashery 65 years ago, they insisted their staff use mental arithmetic to price up customers' purchases.

Despite the arrival of calculators, that attitude has remained unchanged over the intervening years.

But now the family finds itself facing an unexpected maths problem - most youngsters it would like to employ are incapable of working out sums in their heads.

Colin Bamberger, 82, whose parents founded the Remnant Shop in 1944, said that less than one in ten applicants are now able to solve basic maths problems without turning to a calculator or till.

In the past, around eight in ten made the grade.

Mr Bamberger, who stills runs one of the family's two stores, yesterday blamed the decline on falling education standards and over-reliance on the pocket calculator.

He said: 'Most of the youngsters who come to us for jobs are unemployable because they are not numerate.

'It is a sorry situation and a poor reflection on the academic qualities of young people these days. I think it shows modern teaching methods are sadly lacking.

'It is all very well using calculators but if you have not got some idea what the answer is, how do you know if you have pushed the right button? It's so easy to make a mistake.

'It was much easier finding staff a few years ago when everyone coped with working out simple maths in their heads.

Around eight out of ten people who came to us for work were capable of doing it in the 1950s and 1960s - but now it is less than one in ten.

'You ask them how much they would charge for nine metres of material at £9.90 a metre and they fiddle about for ages.'

He said that mental arithmetic was essential in his shops because, if customers queried the final bill, staff could scribble their calculations on a piece of paper to show them how they arrived at the sum.

[snip]

Robert said that even if applicants were 'massive at marketing, super at sales or even Alan Sugar's next apprentice - if they can't add up quickly in their head we won't have them'.

'My grandfather could add up a column of 50 figures in old pounds, shillings and pennies - including ha'pennies and farthings - in a matter of seconds,' he added. 'He used to insist that any staff we took on could do the same and we have carried on that practice.'

Maths dunces who don't make the cut: Haberdashers have to reject nine out of ten applicants because they can't add up

from Paul B:

Kids can't do 6 times 7 because they are 'taught' multiple ways to multiply. Then they discover the one they like best (usually involves fingers) and stick to it until somewhere along the way they are given a calculator to expedite things.

They are assessed subjectively. They are promoted without regard to those assessments. And finally, they're never given targeted remediation or practice that is up to the task of keeping them on track.

Other than that there's not much wrong.

I have already confessed my own problems with 6 times 7.

The long-running debate over whether students should be allowed to wield calculators during mathematics examinations may soon seem quaint.

The latest dilemma facing professors is whether to let students turn to a Web site called WolframAlpha, which not only solves complex math problems, but also can spell out the steps leading to those solutions. In other words, it can instantly do most of the homework and test questions found in many calculus textbooks.

The new tool will be a bane to teaching, some professors say—but others see a blessing.

WolframAlpha was created by Stephen Wolfram, an entrepreneur who invented Mathematica, one of the first computer math engines. His new site debuted last month to much media fanfare and, like Google, provides answers to questions typed into a simple search box. It is free and already boasts millions of searches.

A Calculating Web Site Could Ignite a New Campus 'Math War'
by Jeffrey R. Young

I need WolframAlpha for proofs.

A New Online Computation Engine Shakes Up Math

From the local weekly, the Country Almanac:

http://www.almanacnews.com/news/show_story.php?id=3625

The Menlo Park City School District is going ahead with plans to roll out new math textbooks in the fall, despite the vocal opposition of a group of parents. School board members appeared surprised by the controversy, and said they would do more to explain their decision to use "Everyday Mathematics" and dispel parents' "misconceptions" about the program.

The board approved the adoption of the textbooks in December, on the recommendation of a committee made up of teachers and administrators. At the board's March 24 meeting, a number of parents complained that they had just heard about the adoption of "Everyday Mathematics" and that the adoption decision was poorly publicized.

"I don't appreciate a process in which the community was almost totally shut out," said parent Perla Ni. "The choice of a math curriculum needs to be a total community process."

Several people said they'd done Google searches and found scathing indictments of the textbooks -- that kindergarteners learn to use calculators instead of learning basic math, that strange alternative algorithms like the "lattice method" are taught in place of traditional ones, and that students are left frustrated and unprepared for future math classes.

David Ackerman, the principal of Oak Knoll school, said those accusations simply are not true, and warned people that just because there's a lot of criticism on the Web doesn't mean it's valid. Try Googling "creation science" he said, and you'll find a lot of hits, but it doesn't mean that creation science is valid or meaningful.

"I have the third-grade textbook. Nowhere does it say to use calculators for learning basic math," Mr. Ackerman told the board. "Out of 600 pages, there are three pages on the lattice method. It's optional."

Superintendent Ken Ranella said that Menlo Park's math scores on the state STAR tests are very high. "A lot of districts would die for 80-85 percent of their kids (testing at) proficient or advanced. I don't think we're going to do something to go back on that."

"I have confidence and faith in the teachers and administrators who looked at (Everyday Mathematics)," said board member Mark Box. "It's not replacing basic and computational (skills) but enriching them with a deeper understanding of mathematics."

The "Everyday Mathematics" textbooks are being used in the nearby Woodside and Portola Valley school districts, but the recent recommendation to adopt them in the Palo Alto Unified School District has stirred up a great deal of controversy.

"If Palo Alto wasn't buzzing about this, there probably would not be a buzz (about it) here," said board member Jeff Child.

=====

Backstory from the local weekly's discussion area:

Hearing on EveryDay Math for MP Schools
Menlo Park, posted by Perla Ni, a resident of the Menlo Park: Allied Arts/Stanford Park neighborhood, on Mar 19, 2009 at 3:55 pm

Controversial new math curriculum focus on calculators, estimations rather than teaching traditional math

There’s significant controversy about the school district's decision to use Everyday Math starting in Sept. See the Palo Alto Weekly online and several thousand angry parent comments. This affects kids starting September 09 through the next 7 years.

The basic issue is that the new curriculum:

1. Ignores traditional multiplication and division and instead only teaches inefficient, contorted methods that cause confusion and math-avoidance among students. It teaches “partial-products method”, “Egyptian multiplication”, “Lattice multiplication”, etc. Mathematicians and parents have almost universally criticized these methods for teaching math.

3. Instructs kids to estimate rather than actually doing the math to get an exact answer.

2. Instructs kids to use calculators rather than calculating math themselves. Here's the manifesto from the teacher's manual: "The authors of Everyday Mathematics do not believe it is worth students’ time and effort to fully develop highly efficient paper and pencil algorithms for all possible whole-number, fraction and decimal division problems. Mastery of the intricacies of such algorithms is a huge endeavor, one that experience tells us is doomed to failure for many students. It is simply counter-productive to invest many hours of precious class time on such algorithms. The mathematical payoff is not worth the cost, particularly because quotients can be found quickly and accurately with a calculator."

See samples yourself here: Web Link

There's a school board meeting and parent attendance is encouraged:

March 24, 6pm, MP School District Office, 181 Encinal Ave, Atherton

Join the googlegroups parent group on this topic:

google.com/group/pampparentsaboutmath

AND come out on March 24th!

I think we need a math movie for YouTube, too. I don't have as much math expertise as everyone here, but I would be willing to produce and upload the movie.

I would need either a dialogue I could read and some words for slides, or better yet, actual mp3 or other audio files and some powerpoint or jpeg slides. Watch a bit of my sight word movie (2 posts down) to get an idea. (Trust me, if you don't have a script to read, you may end up sounding like an idiot. I have tried the no script plan, it's usually bad.)

What do you all think are the most important things parents need to know that we can say in the 10 minute limit?

Here are a few of my thoughts:

Everyday Math bad, Singapore and Saxon good. Calculators before you really need them for something like trig are bad, drill and kill on multiplication and addition facts is good, worksheets may work better for some kids than flashcards. Counting on fingers is bad. For the truly math challenged parent, Math-U-See or something else with DVDs to teach it may be the best option, and much cheaper than tutoring. Knowledge good, stupid projects bad.

from Tracy W:

Okay, I love my calculator. Sharp EL-5120. It's on my desk at the moment. It's not much to look at, but its functionality means that it rocks my world. In terms of calculator-adoration I am probably in the top 1% of the world's population. My calculator has literally travelled around the world with me (there's no way I'd trust it to any removal company). I'm not a poet, but if I was I would write love poems to my calculator. The only reason I do not sleep with my calculator is that I fear it will disappear down the end of the bed and I will never see it again. When it comes to using calculators, I strongly suspect I am not normal. However, despite my deep and undying affection for my calculator I am sometimes without it, and on those occasions it is useful to be able to do basic arithmetic such as long division with pencil and paper or in my head. This may not be normal, but why should we educate kids merely to be normal people anyway?

Priceless!

Jefferson Davis Learning Center

• developmental math

• algebra worksheets

Fantastic resource. Word problems are great; come with ready-made charts & "buckets" for mixture problems.

Looks like it probably has graphing calculator tutorials or some such, too.

C's graphing calculator has surfaced.

It was in his locker, jammed between two notebooks.

That's a good thing.

Unfortunately, it is also a bad thing, because it means C. has a graphing calculator. Leafing through the many-colored spendor that is our new Glencoe Algebra textbook, New York Edition, I spy numerous graphing calculator exercises, lesson upon lesson culminating in graphing calculator "features" and the like.

This can't be good. Apparently, the kids are going to be poking away at their hundred-dollar graphing calculators during "math lab," an extra period of math the 8th graders attend every other school day. The math lab teacher has told the class they will "need" their graphing calculators for math lab.

Let us hope the math lab teacher misspoke.

The math lab was originally put into the schedule by our former principal, who had noticed long lines of students snaking out of the then-chair of the math department's office every morning, each awaiting his turn to receive "extra help." Since at that time the big tests happened in the 4th and 8th grades, he decided to add extra periods of math to the 8th grade schedule.

The new middle school principal, who is forging ahead with planning for the dreaded middle school model on orders from our superintendent, wants to get rid of the math lab, which will have the effect of rendering our middle school exemplary (very important!), because it will free up time in the schedule for Exploratory Programs on Darfur and the like. That was the example he gave, an exploratory program on Darfur.

Needless to say, Ed and I were counting on the extra math period to serve as catch-up time for C. As far as we are concerned, there should be NO graphing of functions on hundred-dollar calculators by a student who, exactly 8 weeks ago, did not know how to figure 10%.

There should be diagnostic assessment, and there should be remediation.

By remediation I mean formal remediation, remediation planned and overseen by actual math education professionals, not by me.

So.

I'll probably bug them about this.

Then I'll do it myself.


the good news

The good news is that C's math teacher is fantastic. That's the math teacher I'm talking about, not the math lab teacher.^*

He is a real, live teacher -- and a guy, to boot!

A guy who watches football, and roots for a particular team!

C. is in heaven.

His homework assignments, thus far, have been perfect.

I had heard good things about this teacher, but by the end of the summer I had been thinking we were beyond the point at which an effective teacher was going to make a difference one way or another. By now a lot of these kids -- by no means all, but a number of them -- are going to have math knowledge so riddled with gaps, holes, and yawning chasms that one teacher working alone isn't going to cut it.

But now I'm thinking.....perhaps all is not be lost.

More later.


TI 84 page on ebay
"instructional time issues"
hundred dollar calculator
178 days left 'til summer
email to the principal re: hundred dollar calculators
other people's money
what is the opposite of a silver lining?



^* The math lab teacher may be great, too; I've heard one report thus far, and it was glowing. I like glowing. My point is simply that the math teacher and the math lab teacher are two different people.