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Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 617

I worked at a school that did exactly this, and you're right, the pressure was still there to pass kids.

Two things made this somewhat successful:

1. The 'marginal' range did move up. So while maybe you're allowing just as many close-but-not-quites to get C's as you would have with D's, the bar for 'marginal' was definitely higher.

2. The administration was behind it. They were very clear: if a kid should not get credit, give them an F.

So, like i said, some success. More than none.

Comment Mathematician, Taught Public HS for 5 Years (Score 2, Insightful) 677

Though I don't need the rhetoric, this hits it on the head, in every aspect.

I'd like to try teaching math like English -- Math 1, Math 2, Math 3, Math 4, with curriculum determined in part by such apparently meaningless factors as what might be useful in other classes or what's happening, you know, outside of my room.

The textbook comments are particularly right on -- step 1, burn them. If teachers complain that they won't know what to teach, fire them on the spot.

Geometry is also a lousy place for proof. Teach deduction all the time, in every topic -- and in classrooms other than math. "Here's a bunch of fake stuff you don't know anything about that's hard to draw. Now let's think really abstractly about how we're thinking about it!" And induction doesn't get taught at all.

The practical deal-killer, the one that drove me out of the profession, is that the barrel full of math teachers is so close to empty that you're pretty much scraping bottom from day 1. This kind of instruction -- and this kind of critique -- can only originate with someone who likes math, and is sort of good at it. You'd be amazed (or maybe you wouldn't) at how few public high school math teachers this describes.

America has gotten the math teaching instruction it asked for when it decided to prop up bad teachers with lousy but easy-to-use texts, and to boot it got the benefit of not having to pay very well for people willing to go through these motions. (It's not about money, but really, it's a little bit about money. I doubled my salary when I left last year.) It's a big, huge problem, and since you're going to have to convince parents that it needs the kind of dramatic overhaul this (great) article describes, and since parents were largely victimized by the existing system, I'm pretty sure it's a losing battle.

Comment Re:I Heart Money (Score 1) 660

your claim that there's a spectrum is speculative, and i'd say it's at odds with my experience. there are people who would like to be teachers, and people who wouldn't, and no amount of money is going to allow the second group to survive the first week. there's the claim that some amount of money will allow more of the first group to actually do it, but this is at odds with the fact that teachers actually get paid pretty well. when we talk about teacher pay, we're not talking about mcdonalds here -- maine pays quite poorly, and i still make more than enough to get by.

i'm not sure what your point is about the second quote. it doesn't say anyhing at all about raising salaries, except that it might not solve anything. whatever.

as to the phd scenario, you suppose several things that aren't really supported by fact -- that a phd in math will help you teach 7th greaders, that didactic skills are more important than other related skills, that the job will remain interesting to people with this sort of training, that there's consensus on how abstract thinking skills develop. i'm not sure where you're getting this from, and it would be 'nice to think about' if it were true, but i have no reason to believe that any of these things are.

finally, in re: 'a few really, really talented people,' we don't need a few really really talented people. we need a whole lot of passable people who can go to work and be teachers. the people who claim they 'can't justify doing it now', they haven't really looked at the math -- or they've committed themselves financially to a level that's well beyond that of the median american household which, again, is their prerogative. but let's not make this out like there's a huge class of noble geniuses out there just waiting to bail out american learners if only they could afford to help. it ain't like that. the right answer can't be money, because money won't solve the problem. if there's an answer, that's not it.

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