there's a huge amount of CYAing going on.....I need some brainstorming from me & from anyone else who's interested

the basic rhetorical tricks are:

• misdirection (flying turtles)

• CYA (you didn't read the memo)

• yessing to death (I use these homework assignments to assess student learning)

If you remember KTM Guest's post, that was his/her smackdown to me: 'you were told at the orientation'

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

Google Master

I think they're actually playing the piano some....but I'll check.

We parents are never told anything about the classes at all.

No syllabus

No curriculum

No course guide

No classroom visits

We have essentially no information whatsoever

We have now been told, by Raina Kor, the assistant principal, that they 'know they have to' prepare solution keys and writing samples for parents

So we'll see

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

This is how I look at it:

1. The fact that so many kids failed the test indicates that the teacher hasn't done his job. There are no ifs, ands, or buts.

The teacher may be doing his best, but it's unacceptable any way you look at it. Perhaps he should be given a less demanding job? Not as a punishment, but to better match his talents to a job?

2. IIRC, many teachers don't use Edline and/or email. I think you're entitled to a consistent policy from the school: Either all teachers use email/Edline, or you can't be expected to catch every email/Edline that pops up.

3. But regardless of (1), DiGiovanni hasn't been doing his job.

-- VerghisKoshi - 20 Apr 2006

"Yesterday the kids spent the entire hour of social studies drawing Medieval pictures. They were given no instruction in how to draw a Medieval picture; they were just told to draw."

And the goal is? ...

Bad teaching?

-- SteveH - 20 Apr 2006

"you're finding that none of the discovery teaching actually works as discovery?"

I can't detect any significant discovery learning-type questions. At best, they try to lead the student along very slowly to see the meaning (?) of what they are doing. And, of course, Everyday Math spirals (circles?, jumps?) around so much that one has trouble following their educational philosophy. As I have said before, it seems that the EM people think that students have the average attention spans of nervous chipmunks.

Last night's homework (4th grade) was to (1) Write the whole alphabet in capital letters. (2) List all letters that have vertical symmetry. (3) List all letters that have horizontal symmetry. (4) List all letters that have both horizontal and vertical symmetry. Five minutes later - OK, what's next?

They spend very little time on subjects that require more work and lots of time on subjects that require very little work. It's as if the developers came up with a laundry list of topics that they wanted to cover and tried to fit them all into a multigrade spiral format. They spent little effort ranking subjects into greater or lesser importance. It reminds me of a homework assignment where everything is done and all the blanks are filled in, but the results are poor. Form over function.

EM is driven by pedagogy, slower coverage of the material, and reduced demands on mastery. Discovery and critical thinking is just a cover.

Can anyone show an Everyday Math problem that is based on discovery? I haven't seen any. The major common thread of all reform math programs is slower coverage of the material and reduced demands for mastery. They just love it if we talk about constructivism because it's a great cover - old, dumb, rote math versus modern, discovery, critical thinking math. When you get into this discussion, the assumption is that that is what they are doing. If you can find some discovery problems, the students are probably not discovering much anyways.

Show me the problems.

-- SteveH - 20 Apr 2006

"But by and large, when Saxon uses inductive teaching, it works."

Ironically, Saxon probably does more discovery-like teaching than any of the reform math programs.

-- SteveH - 20 Apr 2006

"There is now, here in Irvington, no possibility of paying off your mortgage and living cheaply in a fully-owned house."

That is happening here. Public schools take up two-thirds of the budget, the cost per student broke $14K this year, and this is in spite of a huge subsidy by the parents of 25 percent of the kids in town when they pay to have them go to private schools.

-- SteveH - 20 Apr 2006

"EM is driven by pedagogy, slower coverage of the material, and reduced demands on mastery. Discovery and critical thinking is just a cover."

This is an enormously perceptive discovery.

What's really driving these "reform" efforts is to make "math" palatable to what the fuzzies would call traditionally marginalized groups. The poisonous assumption is that these groups can't be expected to do real math.

-- CharlesH - 20 Apr 2006

"1. The fact that so many kids failed the test indicates that the teacher hasn't done his job. There are no ifs, ands, or buts."

I agree.

-- SteveH - 20 Apr 2006

"What's really driving these "reform" efforts is to make "math" palatable to what the fuzzies would call traditionally marginalized groups. The poisonous assumption is that these groups can't be expected to do real math."

Exactly. As I said before, one of the developers of EM said on a math forum that EM was not for the elite. Anyone can take a subject, slow it down, and require less mastery of the material. Discovery and critical thinking are blatant covers. They know this.

-- SteveH - 20 Apr 2006

I finally found you guys -

1. The fact that so many kids failed the test indicates that the teacher hasn't done his job. There are no ifs, ands, or buts.

I agree.

In our case, we've not met our responsibility, which is to make sure Christopher does his homework.

BUT when 3/4 of the class fails a test, the teacher isn't doing his job, period.

Now, the kids say nobody is doing their homework, and I'm sure that's true, because the email Mr. G sent was in fact (I THINK) a mass email to all the parents giving a list of homework.

Come to think of it, that's one of the reasons I blew it off. Ed said it was a list of homework assignments, and Christopher normally does his homework, AND I WAS SICK, AND I WAS FED-UP AND SULLEN, and I blew it off.

If you've got a class in which none of the children are doing their homework, then you've got classroom management problems, big-time, and you need to figure that out.

He's in a tough spot, because the kids and the parents are run ragged, and something's got to give.

Ed says that, in Mr. G's situation, he needs to have the kids do all their work in the classroom.

He says the guy needs to understand the situation, realize that no one's going to put the course on the same level as math & English, and adjust his teaching practices accordingly.

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

Verghis

2. IIRC, many teachers don't use Edline and/or email. I think you're entitled to a consistent policy from the school: Either all teachers use email/Edline, or you can't be expected to catch every email/Edline that pops up.

THANK YOU

I am going to tattoo this to my forehead.

This is a CONSTANT 'gotcha' with this school.

There is no consistent communication policy whatsoever, and unless you're hypervigilant, which I am not, you miss things.

The teachers do not consistently use edline; nor do they consistently use email; some do not respond to email; etc. Sometimes fliers come home in the backpack; sometimes meeting announcements are buried deep inside a school board email. (The 'transition to 7th grade meeting' was 'announced' in the dead center off a school board email no one ever reads. AND you had to RSVP to attend the thing.)

What happens is exactly what you say; parents give up. You never know what's going on, or how you might find out about it.

Then, when you didn't find out about it, the school says, 'I sent you an email.'

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

These people really are brilliant blame-shifters.

You've got to handle that.

No matter WHAT is going on, somehow it will turn out to be my kid's fault or my fault

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

"Yesterday the kids spent the entire hour of social studies drawing Medieval pictures. They were given no instruction in how to draw a Medieval picture; they were just told to draw."

And the goal is? ...

Bad teaching?

She's actually one of Christopher's best teachers, I would say....though this huge two-week project is a nightmare.

This is one of the enrichment projects funded by the Irvington Education Foundation BUT the IEF is not allowed to fund anything the teachers haven't explicitly asked for, so it comes from the school somehow.

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

Steve & Charles

really?

do you think that's really true?

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

It is absolutely true that Saxon does some discovery learning (where you take a difficult problem and grapple with it - and USUALLY can get it) AND 12 lessons of inductive learning in each textbook.

The inductive lessons are wonderful.

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

The way it's structured is that each lesson has one & only one 'Problem Solving' problem. That's what it's called. These are similar to the 'Extended Response' problems I've posted, but not onerous and impossible.

Often he has you do a number of similar problems, one to each lesson, leading up to the eventual teaching of the principal.

He has you do HUGE numbers of what I think might be 'factorial' problems (I don't know what that is)

He'll say, 'John, Jane, & Connie are standing in a line & how many different orders can they stand in' - things like that.

They may be related to probability.....(obviously, I didn't end up making much of a connection to these things!)

There are also 12 'Investigations' per book, one after each 10 lessons.

The Investigations are quite long, and sometimes involve paper manipulatives, which are provided in the Test book.

There is a bit of text setting up and commenting on an illustration or concept, then you ask a sequence of questions that, when you're finished, will have made a point.

I think it may be correct to call it 'Socratic questioning,' but I don't know.

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

This is 4th grade?

An entire assignment writing the alphabet?

gee, by 4th grade, Christopher was flunking whole big unit tests

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

He has you do HUGE numbers of what I think might be 'factorial' problems (I don't know what that is)

He'll say, 'John, Jane, & Connie are standing in a line & how many different orders can they stand in' - things like that.

You're looking for the term combinatorics. These are combinatorial problems.

-- GoogleMaster - 20 Apr 2006

oh, right!

I've heard that term!

(I've got a ways to go....)

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

"These are combinatorial problems."

They're definitely related to probability.

Aside: Richard Garfield, the designer of the first collectible card game, Magic: the Gathering, has a PhD^? in combinatorial mathematics. He used that background extensively when designing the game -- it's a big part of the reason the game has been so successful.

-- DougSundseth - 20 Apr 2006

Catherine,

I remember reading on several occasions (quotes from fuzzies) that fuzzy math is designed to make math "accessible" to women and minorities. Real math supposedly is too hard and can only be mastered by the wrong group, according to the fuzzies. I think David Klein also commented on this.

I found an eight-year-old article by Lynne Cheney that addresses some of these issues. http://www.junkscience.com/news/wholemat.htm

But constructivism and the teaching practices that go along with it have also been embraced as a way to transform science from "a white male domain," in the words of one NSF grantee, into an undertaking more in tune with "the sensibilities and values orientations of the underrepresented." This grantee, the New York State Systemic Initiative, is one of 59 projects in 42 states that together receive more than $100 million from the taxpayers a year to promote ideas like whole math on the grounds that they will, as the New Yorker explain it, "expand the caricatured image of science" from "logical" to "creative" and from "competitive" to "cooperative" and thus create a "science for all." Another NSF grantee, the Interactive Mathematics Project, a highly controversial textbook series developed with more than $16 million in taxpayer funds, promises to make "the learning of college preparatory mathematics accessible to students, such as women and minorities, who traditionally have been under-represented in college mathematics classes." This will be done, according to the IMP application, by de-emphasizing mathematical facts and formulas, having students work in groups, and making sure that each of them has a calculator at all times. But why will women and minorities fare better if science and math are presented as artistic and cooperative enterprises? Why will they benefit if everyone carries a calculator? The race-and-gender activists who advance these ideas seem not to realize that they are advancing stereotypes that portray women and minorities as inept at logic, competition and mental calculation.

[...]

According to Mr. Cromer, NSF review panels for elementary and secondary education are now largely composed of people friendly to constructivism: "Panelists aren't picked who don't go along." In his book, "Connected Knowledge," he describes some of the results, including an NSF-funded middle-school science textbook that includes an exercise in which students squat by their desks while the teacher pops popcorn. The students gradually stand as the intensity of popping increases and then, with their eyes closed, make a graph of the event. "The point of this, believe it or not," Mr. Cromer writes, "is to demonstrate diversity. Each student, you see, will draw a different graph."

-- CharlesH - 20 Apr 2006

absolutely, fuzzy math is supposed to be the way women and minorities learn - we don't learn deductively!

I don't get offended easily, but that one got to me

I don't learn deductively?

Ever?

Because my genes and people-of-color genes are so darn inductive?

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

Doug yup - that's it (I'm having memory problems - Wickelgrenian memory problems - I've been doing so much 'pre-algebra' that I'm having trouble keeping it all straight)

He has tons of these combinatorial problems, and they finally culminate in a very challenging 'Investigation' into probability

the kinds of 'geometric' handshake-diagrams he has you draw (which I was unable to 'discover') lead to various branching tree diagrams & sample spaces for beginning probability

THANKS!

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Apr 2006

"absolutely, fuzzy math is supposed to be the way women and minorities learn - we don't learn deductively!

I don't get offended easily, but that one got to me"

That type of offensive stereotypical thinking appears to be the driving force behind fuzzy math.

See, for example, David Klein's presentation in which he quotes an NCTM president:

http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/aei.htm

The NCTM has adopted the point of view that most girls and minority children have learning styles that are different from white males and Asians of both genders. Professor McKeown^? has commented on that already.

While he was president of the NCTM, Jack Price said that minority groups and women do not learn math the same way as white males. He stated:

"... women have a tendency to learn better in a collaborative effort when they are doing inductive reasoning."

This was in contrast to the way white males learn math. According to Jack Price,

"males ... learn better deductively in a competitive environment."

This attitude toward women and minorities is consistent with the NSF funded math books. They rely heavily on superficial repetitive patterns, a form of inductive reasoning, rather than logical deduction, which is the core of mathematics.

The NCTM has attempted to redefine mathematics itself in order to support a notion of learning styles in math associated with skin color and gender.

-- CharlesH - 21 Apr 2006

Aside: Richard Garfield, the designer of the first collectible card game, Magic: the Gathering, has a PhD in combinatorial mathematics. He used that background extensively when designing the game

Another mathematician turned game designer is Reiner Knizia. Very prolific. Great games that usually have a mathematical element.

-- KDeRosa - 21 Apr 2006

Most good "German" family games* are built around mathematically interesting engines. Knizia games are usually especially interesting systems, but he clearly designs the system first and bolts the theme on afterwards. They often mesh poorly.

For an example, see Samurai. The game is excellent, requiring interesting (and difficult) decisions at every turn, but it has little to do with either samurai or Japan.

* The center of deep family game design is Germany, so the genre is usually referred to as German games, regardless of where the games actually come from. The most prestigious award is the "Spiel des Jahres"; the biggest game show is in Essen.

ps. Did I ever mention that I was the editor of Games Quarterly Catalog, Games Annual Magazine, and Hobbies Quarterly Catalog for many years?

-- DougSundseth - 21 Apr 2006

I can't add much to what Charles says. In our town, however, it's not really minorities, but special ed kids. They don't want math to be a "filter". They don't want any subject to be a filter. They want to develop and promote "joyful learning". Of course, it's human nature to find the path of least resistance. Kids are really good at that. Parents say that kids won't try for a grade of 'E' (exceeding expectations) because it requires a large quantity of work (not necessarily advanced work). And, it's too easy to do very little and still get a grade of 'M' (meeting expectations).

As I have said before, many parents don't know a thing about constructivism, but they sure know low expectations when they see them.

-- SteveH - 21 Apr 2006

Alright Doug, what are your favorite family games? My son is only three right now, so I understand if you don't have suggestions for today (seriously, how many times am I expected to play candyland?). But I'd love suggestions for the future. We've got "Set" (played obsessively in college), and I've played that with 7 year olds before. What else?

-- StephanieO - 21 Apr 2006

I'll preface this by saying that I have hundreds of games, so the list will be a bit less systematic than I might prefer. I'll also warn you that this has gotten a bit longer than I planned at the start. At any rate, here we go:

Acquire - Design by Sid Sackson, simple tile-laying mechanism. The meat of the game is buying stock in the right hotel chains to be richer than all the other players at the end of the game. The game was designed in 1962, and I still play it pretty regularly.

Domaine - This is a terrority control game, vaguely similar in some ways to Go, but with a variety of conflict mechanisms and a scoring system that's much more complex. This isn't to say it's as difficult to play as Go, though the rules are more difficult.

Medici - Nearly pure auction/perceived value game. This is quick, but the decisions are very hard. Easy to teach, but hard to play well.

Medieval Merchant - Network building game, nominally about trade in medieval Germany. Not conceptually difficult, but it rewards a good understanding of opportunity costs.

San Juan - A card game derived from the same company's Puerto Rico. It plays very fast (under 30 minutes when everyone is experienced and playing quickly). Each game's strategy is driven by each player's card draw, so the replay value is high. The decisions are difficult, especially the first few games.

Starship Cataan - Deceptively complex, this is one of my favorite 2-player games. The game revolves around exploring, trading, upgrading your spaceship, and occasionally fighting to gain 10 victory points.

Ticket to Ride - Railroad network game set in the US. Connecting randomly chosen pairs of cities and building long track links both give the points necessary to win. Fast and easy to understand, but very competitive. Opportunity cost and tempo are critical to success.

Ticket to Ride, Europe - Very similar game system to Ticket to Ride, but the game plays very differently. Points from long links are limited, so the game revolves around connecting cities. The board is much more crowded than the board for Ticket to Ride.

Titan - Out of print for many years and nearly impossible to find, I mention this because I love the game and because there's a Java version of the game here. The boardgame version can take nearly forever to play (I remember a game taking 17 hours when I was younger), but the Java version is much faster. The game requires remembering what is likely to be in each hidden stack of each of your opponents, and a certain tactical facility for success on the battle maps.

I'll also mention a game I don't like much, but that everyone else seems to love:

Settlers of Cataan - This is consistently one of the most popular games at gaming conventions. It requires that you build a small empire by outcompeting your opponents for space and resources. It is likely that one player in a full 4-player game will find himself out of the running fairly early, but people still love it.

And a couple of games that my wife likes (her tastes are a bit different than mine):

Blokus - An abstract territorial control game, the game wants exactly 4 players. (There's a two-player travel version as well.) Both my wife and my six-year-old son like this game, and it rewards pretty deep thought as well.

Evo - This is a quirky game that plays pretty well with 3-5 players. Each turn, you'll try to evolve your species to take advantage of the prevailing climate and competition. You can win by outbreeding, outfighting, or outmaneuvering your opponents. Part of the fun is building your bizarre species.

I'll also mention a couple of genres of games that can be fascinating, but that are decidedly not to everyones' tastes:

Collectible Card Games (CCGs) - The first of these, and still the biggest, is Magic: the Gathering. This class of games involves each player purchasing random assortments of cards and building decks from the available cards to play against the decks built by other players from their own collections. Biggest problem - the games can be expensive. That said, if you're good, you don't need to spend much to be competitive below the very highest levels. While the basic rules of the games aren't all that complex, each card can modify those basic rules in a wide variety of ways. Combinatorics, cost-benefit analyses, and a very strong understanding of opportunity costs are your very best friends here.

Role-Playing Games (RPGs) - The original, and also still the market leader, is Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). They're basically just "let's pretend" with rules. The simplest have very limited rules, the most complex have thousands of pages of rules. Many players have credited RPGs with providing incentive for learning complex vocabularies and improving their math. Given the demonstrated literacy levels of some of the posters at the website above, these claims may be exaggerated.

The reported problems with these are wildly overblown. While obsession can be a problem, the same is true of video games, football, or nearly any other pastime. My wife and I have played simplified versions of D&D with our son with very good results. When you're six, the chance to be the hero of the story is really cool.

Finally, I'll note that many of the links to individual games were to pages at www.boardgamegeek.com, which is an excellent source of information about boardgames.

-- DougSundseth - 21 Apr 2006

I liked this sentence from David Klein's presentation (quoted by Charles):

According to Escalante, "whoever wrote [the NCTM math standards] must be a physical education teacher."

-- VerghisKoshi - 21 Apr 2006

I can't add anything to what Doug has said except to point interested parties to Board Game Geek.

Oh, and to recommend Steve Jackson Games for inexpensive games with a quirky sense of humor.

-- GoogleMaster - 21 Apr 2006

Thanks, Doug!!! :):)

-- StephanieO - 21 Apr 2006

superficial repetitive patterns, a form of inductive reasoning, rather than logical deduction, which is the core of mathematics

That's a fantastic way of putting it - THANKS

I was just about to buy Settlers - is it good? It has fantastic reviews...

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Apr 2006

oh, i know, I love that Escalante quote

thanks for finding this!!

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Apr 2006

"I was just about to buy Settlers - is it good?"

If you like boardgames, I'd recommend it. I'd say probably 85-90% of people who play it love it.

Heck, you could even buy this version. (There's also a travel version available, but it's not as insane.)

-- DougSundseth - 21 Apr 2006

I MUST GET THIS GAME LIST ARCHIVED, PULLED UP FRONT, AND BOOKMARKED FOR ETERNITY!

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Apr 2006

I'm getting it for Christopher & Ed, not me.

They'll probably love it.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Apr 2006