“It’s still based on narrow, do-or-die, high-stakes tests, where some kids win and some kids lose.”
—Dennis Van Roekel, President, National Education Association

“Stagnating NAEP Math Scores Seen as No Surprise,” Education Week

59
The number of wealthy New Jersey school districts that may lose all state education aid under  Gov. Christie’s proposed budget.

“Details Given on Cuts by Christie to Schools,” New York Times

Just why are the Common Core standards good for American education? In today’s National Review Online, Checker Finn comes up with five good reasons, starting with this one:

First, they’re good, solid — indeed very ambitious — academic standards for primary and secondary schooling, at least in the two essential subjects of English and math. Students who attained them would be better off — readier for college, readier to get good jobs, readier to compete in the global economy — than most are today. (An overwhelming majority of states, according to analyses by my own Fordham Institute and other organizations, currently rely on standards that range from mediocre to abysmal.)

You can read more at NRO.

People like Obama more than Congress right now. Maybe just because it’s the anniversary of his first education speech – on merit pay, mind you. Or it’s because of the Common Core Standards (which are not a minute too soon!). Want to weigh in on them (after you read the sample texts list, of course)? All in favor? All opposed?  Want some advice from Arne first? Or are you too focused on history standards, NYC and Trayless Tuesdays? To succeed, we need to add some STEAM to this movement. Dream, Believe, Achieve, right?

–Daniela Fairchild, Fordham intern

I haven’t closely examined the new draft “Common Core” math standards (and am in any case shy about judging them, having myself forgotten the difference between cosines and tangents), but the draft “reading/language arts/literacy” standards are pretty darned impressive. Some of what makes them impressive, however, is buried deep in their infrastructure and won’t necessarily be obvious on first inspection. At least it wasn’t to me. Not until one of the drafters walked me through them did I grasp what they’ve built here.

Besides doing justice to the “skill side” of English/language arts (from early reading on up through sophisticated writing), they’ve taken language “conventions” and content seriously–and cumulatively–in a dozen ways. They’ve devised deft ways of incorporating literature (including means by which monitors of state/district curricula can gauge the quality and rigor of what students are actually asked to read). They’ve delicately balanced between “traditional” and “modern” approaches, between “basic” and “21^st Century” skills, etc. They’ve imaginatively incorporated the reading sides of science and history as well as English per se. They’ve supplied plenty of compelling examples of what kids at various levels should be reading. And they haven’t overpromised. Indeed, they state plainly at the very start that proper implementation of these standards hinges on also having a topnotch curriculum in place.

During the three-week comment period that starts today, Fordham’s experts and many others will pore over these (and the math standards). Grumps will inevitably be sounded from many directions. Nobody can say what will then happen. But my own initial reading is that millions of American kids would be far better off in schools adhering to these standards than they are today–and if their schools are serious, their curriculum strong, their teachers competent, and the still-to-come assessment systems are well-designed and properly aligned, those young people will emerge from 12th grade in possession of a plausible version of college readiness, at least in the fields addressed here. Read the rest of this post >>>

Quotable:

“We don’t want to cut public education, so we’re going to have to go to superintendents of schools and say: ‘Listen, you’ve got to find us some administrators, some bureaucrats, some public relations people that we can cut, because we’re not going to furlough teachers.”
-Thomas V. Mike Miller, Maryland Senate President

Baltimore Sun: School superintendents balk at Miller’s suggestion of administration cuts

Notable

57%:
Percentage of students, out of a total of 79,000, who passed an early version of Texas’s new end-of-course Algebra I test.

Dallas Morning News: Texas students struggle on early versions of end-of-course tests

Quotable:

“Everybody’s using the [budget] numbers now to their own benefit, so they can blame somebody else for these teacher firings…My job is to make sure the city balances its budget. You can just blame Jack Evans.”
-D.C. Council member Jack  Evans (D-Ward 2)

Washington Post: Schools Pay When Rhee Snubs Donors

Notable:

45%:
Percentage of Ohio fourth graders proficient in math, according to NAEP.  State tests say more than 78 percent of fourth-graders are proficient in math.

Columbus Dispatch: Ohio students’ math proficiency doesn’t add up

Not long ago we presented a graphic illustrating the gross discrepancy between Ohio’s achievement test scores and those from NAEP. Such “grade inflation” is common in the post-NCLB era, where many states appear to select standards and assessments – not based solely on academic rigor – but in order to ensure that more students are proficient  and to bump up their state scores.

Unsurprisingly, the recent release of math results from the National Assessment of Education Progress confirms this trend, with 78 percent of Ohio fourth graders passing the state’s math test, compared to only 45 percent who passed NAEP. In eighth grade, the gap is even wider, with 71 percent of students passing the Ohio math exam, but just 36 percent passing NAEP.

 ODE vs. NAEP Math Proficiency Averages, 2008-2009

Sources: Ohio Department of Education; National Assessment of Educational Progress in Math, 2009

Even worse than this year’s low pass rates of 45 and 36 percent for fourth and eighth-graders, respectively, is that:

“While Ohio students have a higher average score than students nationwide and those scores are better than they were in the early 1990s, there has been little improvement in the fourth or eighth grades since 2005″

And

“There has been no significant change in the gap between Ohio’s white and black fourth- or eighth-graders for roughly a decade.”

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: such discrepancies (in Ohio as well as in other states) point to a need for national (common) standards. As Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said at Fordham’s conference last week, to have these proficiency gaps “is a huge disservice to students.” We’d argue that it’s also a huge disservice for all of those parents, educators, and lawmakers trying to make sense out of NAEP test scores and get a straight answer to the question “how are Ohio students really doing?”

Fraud! Misleading information! A huge price tag for America! I’m not talking about the mortgage-backed securities meltdown. I’m referring to the new TOM LOVELESS ALGEBRA STUDY.

AP story here. The main point: The number of kids taking “Algebra” doubled from 1990 to 2007–but test scores for these 8th graders have actually declined. Call it the name game: the prestige of the course labels goes up, the amount of learning goes down. Just wait till reformers tackle “Calculus.”

Over at Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabbarok writes about females and math.

Well, is it or isn’t it?

Update: The Onion weighs in.

Chinese students are, overall, far more advanced in mathematics than their American peers. Which is probably why they can create Segway armies.

(Hat tip to The Big Picture.)

The rigorous-math crowd continues its string of victories in California with this decision to test all eighth graders in algebra. State board chair (and generally good guy himself) Ted Mitchell wanted to allow a watered-down version of algebra but relented under pressure from the Gubernator. Here’s hoping that other states follow California’s lead.

From the Los Angeles Times: “California mandates testing every eighth-grader in algebra–ready or not“

Science writer Jonah Lehrer on algebra: “Abstract concepts, untethered to experience, are never internalized by our neurons.”

Or are they?

Maybe the National Math Panel report is having an impact, after all.

Find more here.

I had never heard of it. But I predict a pandemic as soon as it makes the New York Times style section.

But what if the second version of the problem makes about as much sense as the first? If the mere sight of it causes a fluttering heart and sweaty palms? What if there is confusion between the 9 and 6 on the one hand, and the addition and multiplication symbols on the other? Or 23 is read as 32? Or the numbers and symbols are identifiable, but how to begin the problem is a complete mystery?

Update: Wikipedia tells me that perhaps 5 percent of the population may be dyscalculic.

Reportedly, police found equations in his freezer. (See here.)

It may not be simply that they study harder (though anecdotal evidence suggests they do). In this week’s New Yorker, Jim Holt profiles Stanislas Dehaene, a young French neuroscientist investigating how our brains handle numbers. According to Deheane’s research, we think about numbers in three distinct ways, each of which developed at a different point in human evolution.

The number sense is lodged in the parietal lobe, the part of the brain that relates to space and location; numerals are dealt with by the visual areas; and number words are processed by the language areas.

This last way of thinking about numbers poses problems for English-speakers:

Today, Arabic numerals are in use pretty much around the world, while the words with which we name numbers naturally differ from language to language. And, as Dehaene and others have noted, these differences are far from trivial. English is cumbersome. There are special words for the numbers from 11 to 19, and for the decades from 20 to 90. This makes counting a challenge for English-speaking children, who are prone to such errors as “twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven.” French is just as bad, with vestigial base-twenty monstrosities, like quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (“four twenty ten nine”) for 99. Chinese, by contrast, is simplicity itself; its number syntax perfectly mirrors the base-ten form of Arabic numerals, with a minimum of terms. Consequently, the average Chinese four-year-old can count up to forty, whereas American children of the same age struggle to get to fifteen. And the advantages extend to adults. Because Chinese number words are so brief—they take less than a quarter of a second to say, on average, compared with a third of a second for English—the average Chinese speaker has a memory span of nine digits, versus seven digits for English speakers. (Speakers of the marvellously efficient Cantonese dialect, common in Hong Kong, can juggle ten digits in active memory.)

The lesson? Skip the STEM bills and pass instead the Mastering Asian Tongues at Home (MATH) Act. Then watch the Asian Advantage disappear.