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Rebecca Patterson

Lawmaker proposes making school districts pay for college remediation | The Salt Lake T... - 0 views

  • An estimated 18.7 percent of high school students who enrolled in Utah colleges and universities needed remediation in 2007, said Holly Braithwaite, spokeswoman for the Utah System of Higher Education.
    • Rebecca Patterson
       
      Only 18% as of 4 years ago. That's actually pretty low compared to other stats I've seen.
  • that would allow colleges to bill school districts and charter schools for the cost of remediating their students when they get to college. Dougall said it’s about making sure a high school diploma means something.
Rebecca Patterson

California reports eighth-grade dropout rate for first time - latimes.com - 0 views

  • "We still don't have an accurate way to determine who's dropping out," he said, citing studies that estimate L.A. Unified's four-year high school dropout rate at more than 50%. (The state-calculated dropout rate for L.A. Unified is 26.1%.)
    • Rebecca Patterson
       
      More California stats. Not pretty.
  • Statewide, about 3.5% of eighth-graders — 17,257 in all — left school and didn't return for ninth grade
  • Overall, 74.4% of California high school students graduated in four years, according to state data; 18.2% dropped out. The remainder were still in school (6.6%), were in non-diploma programs for disabled students (0.5%) or left high school by taking the General Educational Development (GED) Test (0.4%).
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  • The graduation rate is 68% for Latinos, 59% for African American students and 56% for students who are learning English. This compares with 83.4% for whites and 89.4% for Asians.
  • Among eighth-graders statewide, about 4,200 dropped out during the academic year; more than 13,000 finished eighth grade but didn't show up for ninth, the traditional beginning of high school.
  • L.A. Unified's estimated graduation rate for the four-year period is 55%. However, the state's new system places the district's rate at 64.2%.
Rebecca Patterson

In turnabout, teachers give students Apples, hope iPads boost test scores - Wednesday, ... - 0 views

  • The $49 Fuse application allows users to learn at their own pace, Blumenfeld said. If students miss a class, they can tap into about 400 video tutorials led by textbook author Edward Burger, a math professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. “Videos allow for anywhere, anytime instruction,” Blumenfeld said. “For students who might have missed class or didn’t understand the lesson, you can push a button and have it explained again and again. You have a teacher available anytime, anywhere.”
  • Test scores in Riverside, Calif., jumped 30 percentage points, from 60 percent to 90 percent proficiency in math, he said. A smaller iPad program in some of Chicago’s elementary schools also resulted in improvement, Ebert said.
  • Indeed, Algebra 1 is one of the most-failed courses in the School District, Ebert said. All Nevada 10th graders are tested on the freshman-level math subject before they can graduate. Only half of the students in Clark County passed the math section of the High School Proficiency Exam on their first try last year. A quarter of students won’t pass the math section by their senior year and, as a result, will fail to graduate. This year, the district has identified about 9,000 seniors who haven’t passed the proficiency exam. They are at risk of dropping out, Ebert said.
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  • At the time, the technology we used (in math class) was a graphing calculator,” he said. “Today, these kids have the privilege to learn math in a new, innovative way
  • Only the Fuse algebra application and a few key tools are loaded onto the devices. At school, students are blocked from inappropriate sites via firewalls. The App Store, where iPad users can purchase games and other applications, is locked on the device, but school officials are looking at opening the online store in the future. Freshman Catherine Rodriguez, 14, flashed a big smile as she received her new iPad. Math isn’t her strongest subject; she hopes the new technology will help her, she said. Passing math is a big concern for Rodriguez’s mother, who took three years to pass pre-algebra, she said.
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    Interesting place to funnel school district money. There should be some good research coming out on this application in the next few years.
Rebecca Patterson

Harvard Education Letter - 0 views

  • 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.
  • For example, at the Woodland Star Charter School in Sonoma County, Calif., test scores for 2010 show a stunning 81 percent of the second-graders scoring “below basic” or “far below basic,” compared with 32 percent of district peers. By eighth grade, however, none of the school’s students score in that level (in fact 89 percent are “proficient” or “advanced”), while 19 percent of district peers score in the lowest two levels and just 56 percent in the top two levels. Results have been less dramatic at some Waldorf-inspired charters, whose students in upper grades have scored about the same as district peers.
  • They still do project-based activities, start class with a verse perhaps by Albert Einstein, and end by thanking the teacher. But Bishop says the texts and 40-minute daily math lessons “look more like public school.”
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    Interesting article...wasn't Deborah in contact with these schools?
Rebecca Patterson

Why Schools Don't Value Spatial Reasoning - Forbes - 0 views

  • I suspect that testing spatial reasoning, especially in a standardized way, is more difficult than standardizing the testing of math and verbal skills. Again, this has to do with the limitation of resources and the limitation of trying to test 3-dimensional reasoning on a 2-dimensional surface.
  • Which means that such skills are either seen as being “beneath” or unattainably advanced to most people.
  • Until that cultural change happens, though, I suspect that those kids and their parents interested in the world of spatial intelligence will still have to find avenues outside of school to hone their skills
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    Opinion piece regarding math process education versus spatial reasoning skills. Interesting!
Rebecca Patterson

There's one key difference between kids who excel at math and those who don't - Quartz - 0 views

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    "... 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.
Rebecca Patterson

The American Spectator : Bad Math - 0 views

  • Thirty-six percent of high school seniors in 11 states scored Below Basic in math on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation's exam of student achievement
  • One out of every four eighth-graders in the entire country is mathematically illiterate.
  • the percentage of U.S. doctorates in engineering awarded to foreign students has increased from 47 percent to 57 percent between 1989 and 2009
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  • two out of every five American high school seniors scored Below Basic on the science portion of NAEP
  • Two out of 63 university school of education elementary math programs surveyed by the National Council of Teacher Quality met or exceeded standards for training math teachers
  • Kindergarten teachers, for example, ignore the need to show kids that numbers represents quantities.
  • teachers seem to think that "reading… is an aptitude" while "math is an attitude."
  • Only one out of 63 elementary math programs surveyed by the U.S. Department of Education has been rated as having "potentially positive" effects on student achievement
  • One out of every three American fourth-graders read Below Basic proficiency on the 2009 NAEP.
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    Great resources to quote for the horrible state of math in the US, but take them with a grain of salt as they are not referenced or in whole.
Rebecca Patterson

Back-to-school facts: $7 billion-plus in shopping and everything else - The Answer Shee... - 0 views

  • Back-to-school facts: $7 billion-plus in shopping and everything else
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    These are some very interesting statistics with links. Could use this with the data collection tool previously mentioned.
Rebecca Patterson

California students show moderate gains in English and math - latimes.com - 0 views

  • 50% scored proficient or better in math, compared with 48% last year. The scores are the highest since the standards-based testing began in 2003.
  • Students who were considered at grade level — or proficient — in English-language arts increased from 41% to 44%. In math, from 39% to 43%.
  • Over the last four years, the total of Reseda students who score at grade level or better in English rose from 39% to 47%; the percentage actually dipped slightly this year. In math over that period, the figure rose from 18% to 22%.
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  • About two-thirds of the school's students are low income and 18% are learning English.
  • Test score gains are highest in elementary schools and drop off precipitously in middle and high school.
  • Across L.A. Unified, fewer than 20% of high school students scored proficient or better in general mathematics, algebra 1 and 2 and geometry. In fourth grade, by contrast, 67% of students tested as proficient or better in math.
    • Rebecca Patterson
       
      Oh, my!!!! Here is the connection to the elementary article about losing connection with students!
  • In math, the numbers are 76% for Asians, 61% for whites, 41% for Latinos and 34% for African Americans.
    • Rebecca Patterson
       
      Proficient or better scores.
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    New California Stats.
Rebecca Patterson

Apollo Group to Buy Maker of Math Courses - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • the Apollo Group, which operates the profit-making University of Phoenix, said Tuesday that it would pay $75 million to buy Carnegie Learning, which offers computer-based math instruction.
  • Carnegie Learning is one of a number of small- to medium-size companies that offer instructional material for use on computers and tablets and data analysis for schools, a market that has piqued investors’ interest in the past year. It says its curricula is used by 600,000 students in grades 6 through 12, in 3,000 schools nationwide.
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    Interesting numbers here. A quick read just fyi.
Rebecca Patterson

Novato students learn algebra on the job - Marin Independent Journal - 0 views

  • Williams' students are participants in the Novato Algebra Academy — a three-week program created by the North Bay Leadership Council and the Novato Unified School District that debuted Aug. 1. Based on a similar program in Santa Rosa, the Algebra Academy helps English language learners from Novato's middle schools master formulas and solve tough equations — and then shows them how businesses, government and athletes use that analytical process on the job.
  • "I met with the owners of each business two months ago to talk about what math they use and to create lesson plans based on that," Griffin said. "Most of it is basic algebra: you create equations, and you solve for different variables."
  • "Algebra is part of the required curriculum everybody must take if they want to be admitted to the CSU or UC systems," Murray said. "But a lot of students don't realize that they needed algebra until they start applying to colleges. Many of these students are not only English language learners, but the first in their family to even get an idea about going to college. So we want to provide them what assistance is out there."
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  • That's particularly true of Williams, who began working as a treatment plant intern while still a teenager. Now 22, Williams has created several YouTube videos on wastewater math. He ended his presentation last week by showing his students one of the questions from the plant operator examination — a complex equation whose answer required at least a page of careful analysis — and assuring them that they had the skills to complete it."All the algebra you've learned? You know all these formulas," Williams said. "And this problem is just one formula stacked on top of another."
    • Rebecca Patterson
       
      Know formulas or know concepts?
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    On the job math training
Rebecca Patterson

PLoS ONE: Preschoolers' Precision of the Approximate Number System Predicts Later Schoo... - 0 views

  • Preschoolers' Precision of the Approximate Number System Predicts Later School Mathematics Performance
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    Actual open access article. 8 page pdf...free!
Rebecca Patterson

Primary Sources: America's Teachers on America's Schools | Scholastic.com - 0 views

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    Scholastic and Gates Foundation Research
Rebecca Patterson

Va. Community Colleges Dive Headfirst Into Remedial-Math Redesign - Students - The Chro... - 0 views

  • Mr. DuBois wanted the system to become smarter in how it invested in people, talent, and technology, as well as do a better job of taking advantage of its size and resources.
    • Rebecca Patterson
       
      Glenn DuBois, the chancellor
  • One study by the college system found that only 16.4 percent of students sent to developmental-math classes ever managed to pass a college-level math course.
  • Recent high-school graduates are among the most vulnerable. They become frustrated when they learn they can't immediately enroll in credit-bearing classes, and they sometimes leave college even before taking a single course.
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  • Institutions are equally affected. A recent report by the Community College Research Center put the annual cost of remediation at $1.9-billion to $2.3-billion at community colleges and $500-million more at four-year colleges.
  • There is growing recognition that the traditional semester-long course sequence used by many community colleges doesn't work, says Michael Lawrence Collins, associate vice president for postsecondary state policy at Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based nonprofit that studies education and work-force issues. It's inefficient to have students take up to a year and a half in remediation when many need just pieces of what they're being taught.
  • The Virginia system is betting on that promise. Its colleges will soon replace their semester-long developmental-math courses with nine units, which can be taken as one-credit classes or Web-based lessons with variable credit hours that allow students to complete more than one unit in a self-paced computer lab and classroom. The number of units that students are required to complete will depend on their placement-test scores and intended program of study. Students focused on the liberal arts will have to show competence in only five units, for example, mastering basic algebra concepts such as linear equations. Students who plan to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, math, or business administration must complete all nine units.
  • Although he has help from a tutor in the class, it's a lot to juggle, he says. Mr. Wyrick does like how the Web-based class allows him to peek at students' quizzes in real time and track their progress a lot faster than by sorting through homework and test papers himself. "It allows me to intervene even before they ask for help," he says.
  • There is one certainty. The Virginia Community College system is not the only one anticipating the outcome. Equally curious are researchers and other colleges searching for successful ideas. "There is a risk," Mr. Collins says, "but there is also power in being that bold."
  • The Virginia Community College system is poised to find out. Starting in 2012, it will adopt a new systemwide developmental-math curriculum that will allow students to focus only on those math concepts they haven't already mastered rather than taking a series of semester-long math courses.
  • Half of all incoming students in the system need developmental education—and three-fourths of those students fail to graduate or transfer within four years.
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    Great article on a Community College network taking a chance to revamp its remedial math program. Read on!
Rebecca Patterson

Does not compute: court says only hard math is patentable - 0 views

  • the court ruled that you can't patent mental processes—even if they are carried out by a computer program.
  • no-patenting-math rule doesn't apply if the math in question complicated enough that "as a practical matter, the use of a computer is required" to perform the calculations.
  • So you can't patent calculations that could be done with a pencil and paper. And such calculations remain unpatentable even if the steps are encoded in a machine-readable format. But this leads to an obvious question: why is software patentable at all? All software consists of sequences of calculations that could, in principle, be done with a pencil and paper.
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  • Theoretically, you could have performed the calculations with a pencil and paper, but no one actually did so. Yet the Supreme Court still held them to be unpatentable mental processes.
  • The Federal Circuit displays a similar confusion about a more recent case, this one involving an algorithm for digital image half-toning. The court upheld the patent despite the fact that mathematical formulas were "admittedly a significant part" of the patent's claims. In Tuesday's opinion, the court argued that the half-toning patent was different from the fraud-detection patent because the half-toning algorithm "required the manipulation of computer data structures (e.g. the pixels of a digital image and a two-dimensional array known as a mask)."
  • Of course, a "computer data structure" is just a way of organizing numbers and symbols. When I served as a teacher's assistant (TA) for computer science courses in grad school, I would regularly draw diagrams of data structures on the whiteboard and perform example calculations on them. Similarly, many branches of math involve manipulating "data structures" like ordered pairs and matrices—presumably the Federal Circuit doesn't think you can patent new results in linear algebra because "data structures" are involved.
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    Not quite math stats here, but interesting patent ruling trends. Worth a read, Cooper!!
Rebecca Patterson

How to Fix Our Math Education - 0 views

  • The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.
  • The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.
  • The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.
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  • This highly abstract curriculum is simply not the best way to prepare a vast majority of high school students for life.
  • most citizens would be better served by studying how mortgages are priced, how computers are programmed and how the statistical results of a medical trial are to be understood.
  • there is a world of difference between teaching “pure” math, with no context, and teaching relevant problems that will lead students to appreciate how a mathematical formula models and clarifies real-world situations.
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    "The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact. "
Rebecca Patterson

Views: 5 Myths of Remedial Ed - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

  • And remedial education -- the ‘catch-up’ work now required for the nearly 40 percent of students who come to college lacking basic skills needed to succeed -- is a prime candidate for elimination on almost everybody’s list.
  • everyone admits that remedial education is not working, with just 25 percent of community college students who receive it going on to complete a college credential
  • colleges have not clearly articulated the skills that students must possess to be college-ready, students are blindsided when they are placed into remedial courses, and high schools don’t have a clear benchmark for preparing students for success.
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  • With so many adults returning to higher education, remedial education must be transformed to meet their needs. Institutions should provide a wide range of options for students based on their competency, recognizing that many don’t have time for semesterlong courses.
  • A study by the Board of Regents in Ohio -- one of the few states that actually have cost data for remedial education -- found that although 38 percent of incoming freshmen were taking remedial coursework. This translated to only 5 percent of actual full-time students, and around 3.6 percent of undergraduate instructional costs.
  • The lack of clear college-ready standards, poor assessment practices, the lack of customized learning options and the cost in time and money to students make it clear that postsecondary institutions are not committed to ensuring the success of millions of students who seek a college credential.
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    Remedial College Education Myths...good read!
Rebecca Patterson

How to Break the Cycle of Remedial College Classes - Education - GOOD - 0 views

  • This month, more than half of community college freshmen and at least a third of university students started college already behind. They're in at least one remedial course that does not count toward a degree, thus beginning at least four months—and sometimes years—delayed in getting the degree they enrolled to earn.
  • Like many of their fellow freshmen nationally, a whopping 95 percent of high school graduates from West Hills who received As and Bs in their senior English courses did not "pass" the placement test. Yet when allowed to enroll in college-level courses instead of remedial classes, 86 percent successfully completed college-level English, lost no time in their progress, and stayed on course toward earning a degree.
  • Only 24 percent of students placed in the lowest level of English remedial courses in California ever get through.
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    Whoops...forgot to write that this is mostly reading stats, but they are remediation percentages.
Rebecca Patterson

Is Grade 8 too early for algebra? - The Daily Breeze - 0 views

  • More and more eighth-graders in California are taking algebra I or higher, regardless of whether they are ready for it.
  • In just seven years beginning in 2002-03, the statewide percentage of such students has nearly doubled, from 34percent to 62 percent.
  • a third of students who performed poorly in regular seventh-grade math were nonetheless placed into algebra I in eighth grade, "with almost no chance for success."
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  • "Are all kids ready for that level of abstraction and complexity by eighth grade?" district spokeswoman Carolyn Seaton said. "Many (experts) say no."
  • the district three years ago launched an initiative to boost performance in the elementary grades, with an eye toward the ultimate goal: that all eighth-graders not only take algebra I, but also succeed. She said the effort is beginning to pay off: Last year, it produced a class of students so advanced they were able to take algebra in seventh grade.
  • Math problem There were 90 employees in a company last year. This year the number of employees increased by 10 percent. How many employees are in the company this year? A) 9 B) 81 C) 91 D) 99 E) 100 The answer is D. A report by the Brookings Institution found that only 49 percent of eighth-graders taking algebra knew the correct answer.
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    California school systems.
Rebecca Patterson

Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It's Just So Darn Hard) - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Research confirmed in the 1990s that students learn more by grappling with open-ended problems, like creating a computer game or designing an alternative energy system, than listening to lectures. While the National Science Foundation went on to finance pilot courses that employed interactive projects, when the money dried up, so did most of the courses.
  • he also says it’s inevitable that students will be lost. Some new students do not have a good feel for how deeply technical engineering is. Other bright students may have breezed through high school without developing disciplined habits. By contrast, students in China and India focus relentlessly on math and science from an early age.
  • The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has long given freshmen only “pass” or “no record” grades in the first half of the year while they get used to the workload.
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