{"id":775,"date":"2011-01-21T10:52:56","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T14:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dacha.com\/?p=775"},"modified":"2011-01-21T10:52:56","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T14:52:56","slug":"mathematics-musings-the-common-core-algebra-and-instruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacha.com\/?p=775","title":{"rendered":"Mathematics musings: the Common Core, algebra, and instruction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I got math on the brain. Scary, I know, for an old English teacher.<\/p>\n

It started when a friend tweeted this article<\/a> about a charter school in San Diego that had revamped its math curriculum so that their kids would be better prepared for algebra. The school found that its students “were developing too many shortcuts and not enough understanding.” They were procedurally compliant, it seems, but were not developing deep conceptual knowledge. When these previously mathematics whiz kids hit algebra, their test “scores plummeted.”<\/p>\n

The article shared this graphic from the San Diego school district:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For more on this procedural\/conceptual dynamic duo, see this transcript and video<\/a> from Harvard’s Jon Star. (Full disclosure: Jon and I co-wrote this piece<\/a> for The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement<\/a>.) Jon states that “procedural knowledge and conceptual knowledge develop iteratively, that they sort of feed into one another…It\u2019s not so much that if you only do procedures then the concepts sort of develop by themselves or if you only do concepts for a long time then when you get around to the procedures, they\u2019re super easy. We haven\u2019t found that to be the case.”<\/p>\n

It was interesting that the San Diego school saw scores fall when kids hit algebra, given the importance of this subject matter. The final report<\/a> of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel stated that algebra “is a demonstrable gateway to later achievement. Students need it for any form of higher mathematics later in high school; moreover, research shows that completion of Algebra II correlates significantly with success in college and earnings from employment. In fact, students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college compared to students with less mathematical preparation.”<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, mathematics teachers generally feel that students are not adequately prepared to take Algebra I, as shown by this report<\/a> on the National Survey of Algebra Teachers, with data collected from 743 of them in the spring of 2007.<\/p>\n

My circuitous math path continued. There was the article on the San Diego school, and then the other night at my son’s school’s PTA meeting, there was a quick report on the just finished work and recommendations of our district’s K-12 Mathematics Joint Work Group<\/a>, which had been charged with exploring “the complex issues surrounding mathematics teaching and learning in” the district and developing “recommendations\u00a0on ways to improve student achievement in mathematics system-wide.” The group was formed about a year ago and ultimately devised this set of recommendations, after 18 meetings:<\/p>\n