Discouraging Students from Taking Math

Coryoth writes "Following on from a previous story about UK schools encouraging students to drop mathematics, an article in The Age accuses Australian schools of much the same. The claim is that Australian schools are actively discouraging students from taking upper level math courses to boost their academic results on school league tables. How widespread is this phenomenon? Are schools taking similar measures in the US and Canada?"

:) weird. back in my time we loved this

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when I was going to school in India this was one subject where we could score a 100/100, boosting our overall grades. In any other subject (civics/history/english, even physics/chemistry to an extent) there is always some section where you need to write prose or some explanation of something and it leaves some scope for the teacher to maybe give us 4 out of 5 marks. With Maths the questions and answers were always unambiguous and so was the scoring. It was the easiest subject to max out your marks.

Not really a new thing

[rsavela]

At my high school 10 years ago, I was not allowed to take Calculus senior year. An A or B+ average was required in trigonometry to take the calculus course. Other than pushing up the schools average on the AP exams, I didn't understand why I was not allowed to take the course. Trig is a small part of differential and integral calculus. Memorizing double and half angle formulas turned out to be a waste of time anyway (my professors later in life insisted that we be able to derive them ourselves, rather than memorize...) Besides, I had passed trig anyway. Why take trig again for a better grade? I calculus needed it for the university I ended up going to. I ended up paying out of my own pocket to take the course at a local university after school. Kind of a waste for me to be sitting in a study hall, while the class was already being taught at my high school. In the end, it worked out for the best. A university mathematics professor is a far better qualified to teach calculus than a high school teacher. I knew plenty of teaching majors that went on to teach high school math. Compared to engineering majors, they understood very little about mathematics.

I taught 8th grade science

[EMB Numbers]

I taught 8th grade science, and we were always encouraging students to take as much math as possible.

Unfortunately, students make short sighted decisions in 8th grade that determine whether they are on the calculus track or not. You must start on the path that leads to calculus in 8th grade or it is unlikely you can catch up by 12th grade.

We held an annual pep-rally for 7th graders encouraging them to enroll in math and science courses in 8th grade. If they don't, they are closing doors for future opportunity. Without calculus in high school, it is difficult to be accepted directly into technical/science degree programs in universities. At a minimum, some remedial college math is likely to be required. If you think you might want to be an engineer, scientist, doctor, mathematician, actuarial, astronaut, architect, etc. you should take the most advanced math offered by your school.

In fact, with few exceptions, if you want a high paying job that doesn't require graduate school, you are well served to take advanced math in high school.

Re:Math?

[dosius]

In the US it's "math". In the UK (and also Australia, at least) it's "maths". Like elevator/lift or color/colour, prolly.

-uso.

Re:Shhhhhh

[sqrt(2)]

I read that same article earlier today. Did you notice the part where Germany and several other countries dropped out too? And the price tag? We could throw that money somewhere else, maybe...hire a few more math and science teachers?

Re:Math?

[Spazmania]

Math and maths both being short for mathematics. I guess it depends on whether you consider mathematics to be a science (ergo singular) or a group of sciences (ergo plural).

Of course they are

[Kashra]

Schools in the US and Canada have made it policy to discourage upper-level math. Its only news because other countries are beginning to follow suit. Who here grew up in a US/Canada high school that actually -required- more than a year or two of math? My high school was one of the best ranked public schools in the nation, and it only required 2 years of Math and Science, but a full 4 years of English and Social Studies. So what do you think the majority of students did? OPTED to take upper level Math and Science? Hell no. The schools all but said "you don't need to know that."

It make me sad to see...

[AccioBrain]

It makes me sad to see that there are actually comments here that claim most people only need arithmetic and fractions. Well, first of all, the majority of people I know have trouble even doing that. I'm convinced that it's because elementary school teachers (at least here in the US) are *education* majors and can get through college without taking even a basic college level math class (the remedial courses are *not* college level).

But, since one of my majors in college was math, I have seen the valuable skills math gives you to go into any science or tech field, most business fields (in fact if more business majors did *real* statistics in college, they'd be much more valuable to the companies that hire them), and even law.

Proof, logic, and statistics (which requires calculus if you do it right) teaches people to think.

But perhaps by "upper level" people are thinking abstract? It's true that abstract math is mostly a play field for us mathies, but even some extremely abstract stuff has proven to be very important in computer science hundreds of years after it was merely played with. (See:cryptography [wikipedia.org], error checking codes/coding theory [wikipedia.org], Galois theory [wikipedia.org].)

I was also a computer science major and continue in that vein for work; some of the best computer scientists and programmers I have met were also originally math majors.

My Experience

[eepok]

In high school, they took the me and other 49 or so kids that were taking more than 2 AP classes aside for an entire day of testing in the school library. We had snacks and were able to take breaks. They did this so that we would have a calm, cool, environment to do the best we could and thus bring the school scores up. Far from ethical, but better than denying others the same test.

Working now in education and having worked with a very large school district, I've seen a similar system practiced.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[thePsychologist]

Mathematics, like reading, exercises the mind, which is never a bad thing.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[CastrTroy]

In Ontario, there's a board that you apply to when you are applying to university/college. They know about all these stupid tricks that highschools try to pull to make their students seem smarter. They know that some schools hand out A's like candy on halloween, and they also know that some schools don't give out a lot of As. My physics teacher told us that he could give us all As, but that wouldn't make much difference for getting into university, because they would look at the class average and conclude that you didn't do much better than anyone else, and you were just average. I think this kind of situation works out a lot better than standardized tests where students can study the test, and learn to pass it without actually learning any applicable knowledge. It also works better than assuming that all schools are following some magical grading standard and assuming that getting an A at one school is the same as getting an A at another school. I think they should take the same approach in this situation. Do a more in depth analysis of what courses the students are taking, as well as how well they do after they leave the school, and you'll get a much better picture of how well the school is actually doing. Basing any metric just on the marks of the students is a very bad way to measure things.

Re:Math?

[ricree]

In general, community colleges in the US only offer two year degrees, whereas universities generally offer four year degrees. However, the courses at many community colleges are transferable, so it is very common for people to spend a year or two at a community college to save money before transferring to a university to get a four year degree. So employers in the United States will obviously care which you graduated from simply because they are different degrees. However, there is generally no distinction made between someone who spent part of the time at a community college versus someone who spent the whole time at a university. However, you also need to keep in mind that colleges and community colleges are not synonymous in the US. In general, universities tend to be larger institutions with many areas of study (often divided into smaller units called colleges), while there are many smaller institutions called colleges that have a much narrower academic focus. These sorts of colleges usually offer four year degrees as well as advanced degrees, so they are generally comparable to universities in terms of prestige and value of the degree.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[Sigma 7]

It would make a little more sense if this was college when you have an idea what you want to do with your life and realize it doesn't make sense to take calculus to finish out an art/language major.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that it seeped over onto the more technical paths, including Computer Science. Most students (incorrectly) believe that they won't need the advanced math when they go out into the business area, which has resulted in focus being removed on what should be a critical course.

In my opinion, I feel that high-school has suffered from this reasoning as well - especially when combined with the fact that you do not get to keep a permanent reference for future study.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[phulegart]

"NCLB does not divert resources away from teaching. It influences what is taught."
--Wrong.

"In either case, however, the solution is to make sure the tests are measuring the right things. There are a lot of people who feel the tests aren't doing that - so let's fix the tests."

Let me give you some real world perspective. In 2005 I worked for an after-school tutoring company, in Las Vegas. We would tutor high school kids in basic math and English, so that they could pass the state proficiency tests. This was not to boost a school's ratings. This was because just about half of the high school students in Las Vegas were flunking the math portion of those standardized tests. Were the tests too difficult? No. These students could not do math involving fractions. These students could not do math involving decimals. Some of these students could not do math involving division. These were 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. There was no predominant racial bias to the spread of students. I know that these students could not do these things, because I had to tutor them 2 to 3 times a week for between one to two hours a session. I would tutor up to 5 students per session, and it was a full time (40 hour work week) job.

Do you know what No Child Left Behind means? It means that regardless of whether or not the student can do the work they get promoted to the next grade with their classmates. It also means that at graduation time, if they cannot pass the standardized tests, they are out of school without a diploma. If you find that you cannot believe this, then educate yourself. I was one of the people that had to take a 12th grader who obviously would have been held back much earlier because he did not know algebra, geometry, trigonometry, or even basic fractions, and teach him all of these things so he could actually graduate with a diploma.

The tests don't need to be fixed. The students need to stay in those classes until they learn the information that the tests are testing for.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[hazem]

NCLB does not divert resources away from teaching

Having worked in a school district when NCLB was instituted, I can tell you that it does, indeed, divert resources from teaching.

NCLB requires use of standard tests, which cost a lot of money to administer. In Oregon, those tests are done by computer, and the systems required upgrades to the computer systems and computers. In fact, several schools in the district created computer labs that were only to be used for testing and not for instruction. In addition, new administrative staff have to be hired to handle the workload of ensuring compliance.

In a rural school district with limited resources, the money for all this testing and equipment has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is usually the budget for optional programs, laying off teachers, skimping on resources such as needed new textbooks, and building enhancements.

This is why many school districts claim the NCLB requirements are an unfunded mandate. They have been required by the federal government do to these things yet were not given funds to do it.

On top of that, the testing regime takes about a week of class time out of the year.

So basically NCLB is a big win for companies who sell and administer standard tests. Everyone else pretty much gets screwed. Schools have less money, students get less education, and the country gets dumber.

If you really want to help the US education system, do the following:
* ban sodas and candy and fastfood
* expand the free lunch program to every kid and include breakfast - hungry kids can't learn - and there are too many of them
* go to year-round schooling with longer non-summer seasonal breaks
* make physical education mandatory at every grade level - they need breaks and exercise
* allow merit-based pay/bonuses for teachers who do a good job (using a variety of metrics)
* lower class sizes - a teacher can't manage 38 kids AND teach them
* lower the administrative burden on schools so they can hire more teachers and fewer administrators

Inequality and education.

[Anonymous Coward]

Income Inequality [pbs.org]
In America, the top one-tenth of one percent of earners make about the same money per year collectively as the millions of Americans in the bottom fifty percent combined. This is putting a tight squeeze on the middle class, while leaving millions of others in the cold.

This week, David Brancaccio talks with Pulitzer prize-winning financial reporter David Cay Johnston, as well as author and advocate Beth Shulman about the state of our country's vast income divide and how it's hurting those just trying to make ends meet.

This is relevant to the main story in that education costs are rising AND even getting an education doesn't mean you'll be doing that much economically better than those who didn't.

Re:in college this would make some sense

[Fulcrum of Evil]

if this was college when you have an idea what you want to do with your life and realize it doesn't make sense to take calculus to finish out an art/language major.

Why not? I took shakespeare and comparative religion to round out my CS degree.

Re:It'll all work out

[mcmonkey]

Evidently, they've already cut out critical thinking considering that high school grades are only a small part of what universities look at when considering a student, at least in the US. Standardized tests such as the SAT play a far more important role. Get a 1600 on the SAT and it doesn't matter what your grades were, you have your pick of the colleges.

Actually, high school grades are a better predictor for college grades than SAT scores. And most colleges know this. SATs are only a big deal for folks selling SAT prep courses and TV shows that can't come up with anything more original than another 'JR's worried about his SATs' episode.

Someone with a perfect SAT score (which would actually be 2400 now adays, not 1600) and bad grades is likely a smart, lazy high school student who will become a smart, lazy college student. Been there, done that, have t-shirts from several fine institutions of higher learning.

Re:Math?

[Your.Master]

Community college has a negative connotation here in the US, same as in Canada.

I think you misread the person you were responding to. Community college just does not have the same negative connotation in Canada as it has in the US, in my experience -- and that's because these are only rough equivalents to your Community Colleges. The education system is different even though we share a lot of terminology. However, the terms University and College are delineated much more carefully in casual speech, and precisely what they mean is not quite identical, although the 2-year diploma vs. 4-year degree thing is a facet of it (as is University's academic approach to education vs. College's practical approach, and others). Just to explain some differences in terminology -- and I know not all of the US or Canada is the same in this -- I go to University, I do not go to College, I do not have the British accent. I went from grade 1 in elementary or public school, 1st Grade in grade school (note that even a private school can be called public school as a synonym for elementary school), and high school went from grade 9 through grade 12. In high school, Junior meant grades 9 and 10 while Senior meant 11 and 12. In elementary school, similarly, Junior was Kindergarten through Grade 4 and Senior was Grade 5 through Grade 8. There was no Freshman or Sophomore. I get good marks, not good grades. In University, my 1st year there was called 1st year. My second year there was called 2nd year. That much was pretty straightforward. We did also call 1st year students "Frosh", which is apparently a contraction of Freshman. Frosh was also slang for the first week of school, and the parties and events that went on during that time.