Blog

YourHub.com \\ Longmont \\ Blogs \\ Education \\ Education (General)

Blog Entry 12 of 13 Life in the St. Vrain

News and commentary on educational issues, especially as they pertain to education in the St. Vrain Valley.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~BradJolly

St. Vrain Math - Dumb and Getting Dumber (Part 2)

e-mail to a friend | print this | link to this

Contributed by: Brad Jolly on 12/9/2007

Having reviewed some of the ways the memorandum High School Mathematics Pilot Report ensures that pre-algebra and geometry texts are sufficiently dumbed down, the blog now turns its attention to the book for Intermediate Algebra.

The Intermediate Algebra course is neither. That is, most of the topics are either not algebra or not algebra of a variety that is intermediate, meaning between Algebra I and Algebra II. To be specific, the 71 standards in the course fall into the following categories:

Geometry (15 standards)
Probability and Statistics (15 standards)
Trigonometry (2 standards)
Other non-algebra topics (2 standards)
Algebra I (9)
Algebra II (17)
Algebra, Intermediate (11)

The name of the course is essentially fraudulent. When the school board decided to require three years of high school math, the staff created this dog's breakfast of a course to ensure that weak math students would not have to actually learn a third year of math to graduate. This would allow the board to look good by saying they had "raised standards," while providing a back door for students who would otherwise have to learn a lot of material to meet the challenge.

The original name of the course was "Math Connections," but district administrators renamed it to Intermediate Algebra because college admissions officers would correctly reject "Math Connections" for not being a legitimate third year of math. The renaming of the course is similar to the way dress shops for rich old ladies relabel dresses so that 180-lb. women can wear size 4.

The selected textbook, Modeling with Mathematics: A Bridge to Algebra II, is not a bad math book overall, but it is not suitable for the course at hand. It is calculator intensive, meaning that students will miss out on some key skills. Furthermore, the following topics from the course standards appear to be either omitted or covered in a very limited fashion by this textbook.

· Linear programming
· Correlation coefficients
· Hypothesis testing
· Best fit cubic functions
· Standard deviation
· Interquartile ranges
· Law of large numbers
· Permutations
· Combinations
· Absolute value
· Geometric sequences and series
· Sigma notation
· Conversion between repeating decimals and fractions
· Outliers
· Tessellations
· Trigonometry of 30, 45 and 60 degree angles
· Cube roots
· Matrix inverses
· Matrices for solving systems of equations

Of course, this is St. Vrain, The Land That Excellence Forgot, but it would be nice if the textbook selected for a course actually came close to covering the subject matter the course pretends to cover.

My favorite part of the memorandum is the concern regarding a problem with the selected text:

It was acknowledged that the book will require reading on the part of the students, but it was more suitable to help students who have struggled in their Algebra I and geometry classes.

What? This is outrageous! The book will "require reading on the part of students?" High school students will actually be required to decode and construct meaning from little black marks on paper? Oh, the humanity!

The board should demand an explanation as to why the staff selected this text, given that it does not even come close to covering the material. Better yet, the board should reject the "Intermediate Algebra" course altogether. The topics in this course appear to have been assembled with the careful precision normally associated with filling a frat house punch bowl. Students are not well-served by this course, even if it does provide them with the phrase "Intermediate Algebra" on their transcripts.

< Previous: 'St. Vrain Math - Dumb ...' | Next: 'Skyline Volleyball Awe...' >

[Report this as objectionable content.]

SUBMIT COMMENT

Rate the above blog

Current Rating

Based on 1 user ratings.

Talk Back : submit comments to the blog

*Note: you need to log-in to add a comment or rating.

Thank you! Your comment has been updated.

Showing 1-2 of 2 comments

Submitted By: Brian Crandall

posted on 12/10/2007 @ 10:51:50 AM

(Not Rated)

We lived in Phoenix from '03 - '05. The District was on the verge of losing Federal Funding due to an over 50% rate failing to graduate high school. How did they raise that number? DRASTICALLY reducing the requirements needed to graduate.

[Report as objectionable]

Submitted By: David Isaacs

posted on 12/9/2007 @ 6:51:59 PM

(Not Rated)

The fact that these textbooks even exist should tell you this is not an isolated problem. But really...how much math does the average college graduate need to work the register at wal mart?

[Report as objectionable]

Showing 1-2 of 2 comments

CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Brad Jolly

Longmont , CO

Brad Jolly has posted 13 blog entries and 3 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. Brad Jolly 's average blog rating is 5.

view profile » view other postings from Brad Jolly »

SAVE AND SHARE THIS BLOG ENTRY

digg	Google
del.icio.us	Yahoo!
reddit	Newsvine

What is this?

BLOG ENTRY RSS FEEDS

All blog entries

All blog entries in Longmont

All blog entries by Brad Jolly

BLOG LIST

WANT TO WRITE FOR YOURHUB.COM?

Want to see the stories you write and the photos you shoot featured in the YourHub.com Thursday print section available all over the Front Range and with home subscriptions of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post? All you have to do is register, then post a story or column, start a blog or tell everyonewhat events are happening in town. We will print the best stories, columns, event listings, photos and blog entries in our print sections.

Loading Ad