By
Andrew Doughman
March 10, 2008
University of Washington professors claimed UW freshmen lack the ability to do simple math in a controversial public statement asking for improvements in math instruction. The letter was published in late February and was signed by 60 UW professors in the math, science and engineering departments.
Signatures from professors in the College of Education, which trains new math teachers, were notably absent from the letter.
Signatories of the letter claim students are unable to manipulate fractions or do algebra and trigonometry.
“Those of us who are in the sciences and math subjects are seeing the problem and we think it’s necessary to say there’s a real issue society has to deal with,” said Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences and one of the letter signatories. “What I and many of the faculty have noticed is that a lot of students are coming to the UW without a strong math background.”
There are many different methods of instructing math, which may play a part in how students are learning, said Norm Arkans, executive director of UW media relations, in an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
“We’ve got a bunch of different people working on math education, and they don’t necessarily agree on what the best approach is,” he said.
Some UW students claim the state’s math curriculum has inhibited their education.
“Washington education systems in public schools are questionable,” said freshman Avery Hilliard, a student in a remedial math class. “My high school was trying to phase out a certain math program, leaving transfer students like me in weird math pathways [between integrated and traditional algebra].”
Other students believe high school math curriculum is not entirely to blame for what Mass claims is the degradation of students’ math abilities.
“I wouldn’t necessarily blame it on their high school math instructors,” said math tutor Charlene Reyes, a senior in electrical engineering.
“People get nervous about subjects they are unfamiliar with.”
Statistics show that two percent of Washington state high school students who attend the UW end up in remedial math classes. That level may be much higher across the state, especially in community colleges, Mass said.
“The remediation rates in colleges have gone way up,” Mass said. “The community college level is now on the order of 50 to 70 percent.”
Mass, who recently taught the introductory atmospheric sciences class, said many of his students were unable to do simple algebra.
“Many couldn’t do fractions,” he said. “Many didn’t know what sine and cosine were.”
Mass and his colleagues hope distributing their letter to the Washington State legislature will encourage the state superintendent of public instruction to effectively revise the state’s math curriculum.
Although the cause of the problem is debatable, Mass is sure that today’s math students aren’t getting the instruction they deserve.
“We can’t give the same kind of questions we gave to students in 1985,” he said. “The students’ math background is much weaker now.”
Additional reporting by Chantal Anderson.
[Reach reporter Andrew Doughman at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]
12 Comments
#1 Dan Dempsey
on March 10, 2008 at 8:12 a.m.(Olympia, WA | Unverified Name)
If the 2% figure for remedial math is accurate which I doubt (how many UW students have taken a remedial math class at a CC since high school graduation -- only two out of 100?)
then Check the content of some of the math courses that count for UW credit - remedial by another name is still remedial.
“We’ve got a bunch of different people working on math education, and they don’t necessarily agree on what the best approach is,”said Norm Arkans.
That is because the UW's CoE is averse to using relevant data to assess results and make decisions.
A profession is one in which relevant research is used to improve both practice and performance. Clearly education over the last decade in Washington is not a profession.
Check the rhetoric coming from UW CoE. Then check the Math Equity gap expansion for Blacks, Hispanics, and Low Income students in Bellevue and Seattle.
For an encounter with actual math reality through relevant data, visit:
The Math Underground
(just Google: Math Underground Blog)
To improve a system requires the intelligent application of relevant data.
--- W. Edwards Deming ( 1900-1993)
If we used the actual intelligent application of the relevant data, many might conclude that the UW in the interest of procuring more NSF grant money - has decided to disable the children mathematically by pushing and peddling ineffective NSF math curricula.
Dan Dempsey
of The Math Underground
#2 Mac
on March 10, 2008 at 8:34 a.m.(Vancouver, WA | Unverified Name)
"People get nervous about subjects they are unfamiliar with.”
Hmmm. Something is wrong with that statement. Unfamiliar with math after 12 years of education? Are the students unfamiliar with English or Social Studies, too?
#3 Niki Hayes
on March 10, 2008 at 8:50 a.m.(Waco, TX | Unverified Name)
The repetition of the "2%" quote needs to stop. At best, it follows the maxim that "Figures don't lie but liars do figure." At worst, it's a flat-out lie.
The state's own Math Transition Project gave the figure for remedial math in 4-year colleges as being closer to 20% several years ago, when I was a principal in Seattle.
Go to that site today (as I just did) to see how students, college staff, and employers declare the significant unpreparedness for on-level learning in post-secondary environments (http://www.achieve.org/node/548).
#4 Danielle
on March 10, 2008 at 11:25 a.m.(Monroe, MI | Unverified Name)
I'm a retired high school math teacher from Ohio and I've seen this coming for years. The elementary schools in my system adopted the "Everyday Math" textbooks. I cautioned the new department head at my school who took over for me about this. I recently spoke with him and he now says the fallout from this is beginning to hit the fan! The administration at my school do not have math or science majors yet they have ignored my concerns. Their focus is solely on getting as many students as possible to be "proficient" according to the weak state standards. Big deal! Public relations! When the focus is on "getting by", then getting by is all you get. When you focus instead on "excellence" by having rigorous and challenging math standards and adopting textbooks which actually do some real math, the "proficiency" problem will take care of itself. The administration doesn't want to hear this and they don't want to listen. Why do we allow amateurs to make decisions over subjects they know nothing about?
#5 ajax
on March 10, 2008 at 3:52 p.m.(Oak Harbor, WA | Unverified Name)
Who is responsible? Look no further than the people at OSPI, the UW ed dept. and the millionaire consultants they hired to preach to us about core plus, imp, everyday, cmp, etc. A bunch of deceitful liars - they robbed children and replaced math with their fraudulent misery. They should go rot in the hell they created. Would the politicians on the education committee do anything to support teachers who were critical - no way they had their own agendas. They weren't about public education. They supported a bunch of white racist nonsense, like segregating kids. I bet there's a big bust coming, but that would be far too easy - I'd like to see these right leaning fascists raked over the fires first.
#6 tatiana
on March 10, 2008 at 4:16 p.m.(Oak Harbor, WA | Unverified Name)
You know what angers people most, is this wasn't an important issue until two things happenned - professors found that UW freshmen couldn't add two fractions together and Bellevue's test scores went down (real hard). There were complaints from all over the state -teachers lost their jobs and kids were dropping out of schools and nobody cared. NOBODY CARED. Racists don't deserve to call themselves teachers - you have a generation of rebuilding to do, and who's going to do it. There'll never be a prison large enough for this ship of fools.
#7 Langdon
on March 10, 2008 at 5:24 p.m.(Oak Harbor, WA | Unverified Name)
Math Reform a Cult?
The "thought reform model" posits that people join not because of their own psychological needs, but because of the group's influence through forms of psychological manipulation.
- Sociologist Michael Langdon
The people involved in math reform had something to gain financially when they stepped on the school reform bandwagon, The math oyster cult. They are not teachers, I'd rather live in poverty than be one of the mugwumps who chose to make a life stealing the futures away from children. Socrates would be rolling in his grave now. Project Seed was the hoax and so was everyone connected to it.
#8 Lev Vygotsky
on March 10, 2008 at 6:18 p.m.(Oak Harbor, WA | Unverified Name)
Math reform movement go home. Washington has been subjected to enough propaganda. You can't eat a balanced meal if one half of it is poison. Kids don't want rich people's charity, they want real textbooks. You've made schools into prisons and kids just want to escape from them.
Seriously, you don't do peasant multiplication yourselves. You don't even use partial quotients to do division - yet you teach this nonsense to kids. You are the most hated, contemptible people in America and you have the nerve to call yourself teachers. May the gods rain reform textbooks in Hades forever, because that's where the math reform movement is going.
Where's geometry, where's algebra, where's fractions, division, mulltiplication, decimal points, exponents, .... You still don't get it. What is it that you teach kids anyway?
Take your stupidities back to Kalamazoo and leave kids out of your equations. Rather than look at what works, and you, a tyrant, want to blame the drinking water? Why don't you focus your attention on making kids successful.
#9 Dan Dempsey
on March 10, 2008 at 9:42 p.m.(Olympia, WA | Unverified Name)
Dear Lev,
I thought you died in 1934. You must be really steamed about this issue as you came back to comment.
Thanks for your support,
Dan
#10 Dipso Proles
on March 10, 2008 at 10:12 p.m.(Oak Harbor, WA | Unverified Name)
Long live the insurgent proletariat.
The math reform cult is Orwell's Dystopia and all that. If I can see it; then so can they.
[stopthink]
#11 Ergasius Sorexes
on March 10, 2008 at 10:35 p.m.(Oak Harbor, WA | Unverified Name)
This is a symptom of a bigger problem. Bad government goup think. We don't need just new textbooks, we need a government that genuinely cares about its people. I am tired of being spit on with lies.
We need honest research, so people can honestly argue what's good. A problem of this magnitude, does not go away. It will catch up to us and by the time we recognize something is wrong, it will be too late. The problem won't be solved in my lifetime.
Teachers are helpless, and children don't count. The math reformers have no shame, no modesty. They gloat at their own wisdom, while everyone else suffers the consequences.
Washington will have to reformulate itself. Change its goals and redesign its schools. This can't be what we hope to achieve. We are not the world's envy - just the opposite, a model to avoid, not emulate.
#12 Becca
on March 13, 2008 at 12:51 p.m.(None, None | Unverified Name)
Parents tell me that they are so upset that they have to pay for high school again in college. Their children took higher level math classes, passed the odd WASL - but have to take remedial math in college. They blame the colleges. I tell them that the same math entrance tests and math has been taught in colleges to students for years and years. What has changed is the high schools have to dumb-down math so kids can pass it with the reform mentality taught to them. Then kids think they are above average, although in reality they are not doing advanced work or being prepared for college.
My college freshman daughter is the only one out of eleven of her friends that tested into college level math last summer. (same college) Heck, the teachers would call me and request that she teach the kids that didn’t get it. She thought that was fine, but wondered why she wasn’t getting paid. She even sent the district a bill –of course they thought her billing was hilarious. She refused to do teach after that. Instead, she intentionally told kids in her group the wrong answered. Her explanation was she was so bored she needed some kind of entertainment.
I can see changes even in five years since she took Algebra as a freshman that my son's high school freshman algebra book has been further dumbed-down and is equivalent to what I learned in 7th grade.
If the state math standards aren't fixed now, we will have another generation of math deficient kids. Every kid needs to be able to test into college level math. But, sadly they won't until the reform **** is eliminated for good. And the WASL demised and rebuilt using research and reliable tests. It's a dirty rotten shame that we're on our way to a $2 billion disaster. We must demand quality math standards for every K-12 grade.
Washington taxpayers Wake UP!
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