While most Waldorf schools are elementaries, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped launch the first public Waldorf high school four years ago at the George Washington Carver School of Arts and Science in Sacramento, Calif., replacing a failed America’s Choice program in the building. Test scores have since risen dramatically: In 2008, 67 percent of 11th-graders scored “far below basic” or “below basic” in English; in 2011, just 12 percent did. Teachers are happier as well, says principal Allegra Allesandri. While many teachers spent the summer boning up on content, Allesandri’s teachers also honed skills in bookbinding, painting, and felting. Many Carver faculty gatherings include singing in harmony and playing games. “Those skills, which might be about singing, are also about working together successfully,” she says.
Rebecca Patterson on 28 Oct 13"... you may be helping to perpetuate a pernicious myth that is harming underprivileged children-the myth of inborn genetic math ability." For high school math, inborn talent is just much less important than hard work, preparation, and self-confidence. Convincing students that they could make themselves smarter by hard work led them to work harder and get higher grades. In response to the lackluster high school math performance, some influential voices in American education policy have suggested simply teaching less math-for example, Andrew Hacker has called for algebra to no longer be a requirement. The subtext, of course, is that large numbers of American kids are simply not born with the ability to solve for x. Too many Americans go through life terrified of equations and mathematical symbols. We think what many of them are afraid of is "proving" themselves to be genetically inferior by failing to instantly comprehend the equations (when, of course, in reality, even a math professor would have to read closely). So they recoil from anything that looks like math, protesting: "I'm not a math person." Math education, we believe, is just the most glaring area of a slow and worrying shift. We see our country moving away from a culture of hard work toward a culture of belief in genetic determinism. In the debate between "nature vs. nurture," a critical third element-personal perseverance and effort-seems to have been sidelined. We want to bring it back, and we think that math is the best place to start.
