Month: March 2021

The Local Math Wars Begin *Again*

3/27/2021 – A discussion began yesterday about a San Mateo-Foster City School District (SMFCSD) school Board effort “to get rid of the GATE program and all advanced math.” Nextdoor users who can access Baywood Park neighborhood posts can access the discussion entitled “The death of the San Mateo foster city school district” at https://nextdoor.com/p/Wtf3qFd5-J3w?utm_source=share&extras=Nzg3MzE3MQ%3D%3D

(Note – if this link does not work for you, please try cutting and pasting it into a new browser window. For some unknown reason WordPress is having a problem connecting to this link.).

I wrote the following response which I will quote here. Please read through to the end because the link to the slides has been made available and there is some controversy as to what was actually portrayed at the extremely long meeting. Stephen Floor on Nextdoor quoted the following from the meeting: “I want to make sure nobody walks away this evening with the idea that the district is proposing to get rid of compacted math. We understand the very important reasons that student want to accelerate in mathematics and the concern about getting to advanced math. We’re proposing to the board that due to the pandemic and related circumstances we really need to move to a heterogeneous math course and then engage with our stakeholders with what that would mean going forward for rising sixth graders in subsequent years.”

Unfortunately this comment was supposedly made at 5 hours and 28 minutes into the meeting…

Despite this comment immediately above, the concerns that I stated below remain relevant regarding reform efforts in mathematics education. There are several “progressive” influences that are currently impacting the California math curriculum.

I have been lobbying against efforts like these for years on my blog at www.eduissues.com. I call your attention to the following article

https://eduissues.com/2018/01/29/never-believe-educational-experts-or-me/

Jo Boaler is a Stanford professor of education whose work is highly influential in California. She is a strong influence on and is part of the group who is *** currently rewriting the CA Dept. of Education Math Framework *** so expect to see much more efforts like the above as time goes on if parents don’t get organized.

Parents can comment on the CA Math Framework revision through this link (or through the link on the CA Math Framework page entitled “Mathematics Framework Online Survey” if they obsolete the link), but note that the first page of the survey makes it look like you have to be an educator to comment. This is NOT the case. Just fill in your personal info in the required fields and then click Next to move on to the second page.

*** Comments are only being received through April 8th. ***

Note that Boaler’s research work is not without its critics. This is a hot topic so I will present Boaler’s case first followed by Milgram’s and Bishop’s replies. Both sides appear to have legitimate gripes, so your “homework assignment” is to read both carefully if you want to be informed.

https://web.stanford.edu/~joboaler/

https://www.nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Essays/v8n5.htm

https://www.nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Essays/v8n4.pdf

As I mention in my blog article cited above “Never Believe Educational Experts – (Or Me)!”, California has a long history of educational experimentation fostered by places like the Stanford School of Education which one would think is a prestigious organization.

In Silicon Valley we like to think that bold new ideas are great. I am a scientist by training who went back to teaching late in the game after a long career in science, scientific software, and biotech. I was in on the ground floor of the Human Genome Project and managed the national gene sequence database (GenBank) for the NIH in the early 90s. I have always been open to new ideas.

Unfortunately education research has many problems as I describe in my blog article above, and the sorry history of failed educational experiments in California that have resulted in damage to children is lengthy.

I wrote my blog to try to warn younger parents of these problems so that each generation does not keep repeating the same mistakes. I hope that you will find this information useful.

*** I want to be very clear though, that the inequities that the reformers on the school board are trying to address are very real and require action too. Please be respectful of this fact. We need to act in a way such that we raise the general level of our society; not just fight for our own children. ***

My concern remains though that we can hopefully achieve that goal without injuring our most talented students.

My experience working with local high school students is that better students who are put in mixed math classes are bored and feel held back. This is largely because our society has become so divided by income levels that there is a chasm in education levels among students of the same age.

At the same time, the opposite happens for students who are put into accelerated classes that are beyond their capabilities as the blurb cited at the top of this conversation indicates. I have addressed this problem at length in other articles on my blog.

Please get organized and speak up TOGETHER now, but PLEASE also heed my other concerns mentioned immediately above.

In general I favor evolutionary change in educational practice. Abrupt changes affect too many kids and can not be undone. Kids should NOT be guinea pigs in educational experiments done to enhance the publication records of academics.

I’ve been told that Jo Boaler, originally from England, likes to end some of her writings with the phrase, “Viva la Revolution.” referring to shaking things up in math education. Proceed with caution…

This is a later comment that I made on Nextdoor.  Note that the slides for the meeting are available here: 7_2_MiddleSchoolMathProgramUpdate032521_0.

I skimmed through the slide deck (43 slides !!!). I am not surprised that this meeting went on till late at night. Slides 11-29 appear to be a “lesson” in Common Core Math, for example, probably intended to illustrate its “richness.”

This is another example of the problem that I often see at school board meetings. Administrators make up massive slide decks that people can not take in at a single sitting and then proceed to lose their audience. As a result, all kinds of misperceptions can occur. This is not my idea of good teaching technique.

I agree with Stephen Floor above that the slides do appear to show that there is still a path to Calculus in High School, but, not having heard the actual discussion, I do not know how much this was emphasized during the meeting. I have often seen slides skipped over quickly as time grows short and the Board and audience grows restless.

I DO know that Common Core has always tried to slow things down and delve more deeply into topics, and this has led to this exact same debate in years past. Common Core itself is a subject of massive controversy which has also been discussed in articles on my blog.

I will add a link to the slides in my blog article and add the qualifications above, but I don’t have the time to watch yet another five hour board meeting. Something is clearly wrong with this method of decision making.

NOTE – for those of you who are so motivated, the link to the Board meeting video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOKVK5VFzrQ. The meeting went on for SEVEN hours apparently.

NOTE added 3/27/21 at 9:30 PM: Gene McKenna has provided notes/comments on the Board meeting video on this topic at

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R41a3drvVVszgN7YQ4tsyKMj3tYz5YgAzHTyziS2pls/edit#heading=h.x4a5kbnpgepe

“Private Schools Are Indefensible” and a Speech for my Daughter’s Wedding

March 20,2021 – This morning I posted a note about the latest cover story in the April 2021 issue of The Atlantic entitled “Private Schools are Indefensible” to the “Public Affairs” discussion group that I administer on our local Nextdoor site.

I wrote:

Never having traveled in those elite circles of wealth, I suspect that there may be some exaggeration in the writing due to the clear disgust with what is described, but I don’t know how much.

It does strike me though that this is the logical end of a system that rewards money over all else…

This is probably the article that justifies my subscription price to The Atlantic  for this year. I will be writing up a detailed response later for my education blog.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/private-schools-are-indefensible/618078/

An interesting discussion ensued on Nextdoor and mention was made of a “landed gentry mentality” developing in our country along with references to the recent college admissions scandal which included people from our own backyard.

Regarding the subject of the influence of money in our lives, I felt that this was an appropriate time to share with the group a speech that I composed for my youngest daughter’s wedding in October 2018. The text follows below.

First, however, please note that this article is not the detailed response that I mentioned in the Nextdoor quote above. I am still pondering the article’s implications and am seeking other perspectives from readers before I write a response. After you read the Atlantic article, I welcome your opinions in the Comments section below.

Now for the wedding speech which, believe it or not, is relevant to the topic above. As it was not quite the appropriate time (plus a a bit late 😉 ) to give advice about sex, I spoke about the other big obstacle in many marriages – money. Obsession with riches has invaded many aspects of our society and leads to the behavior described in the Atlantic article.

 

Back in the early 1970s, while I was attending college at UC San Diego, one of my all time favorite movies was released, “Fiddler on the Roof.” I saw it on a truly enormous silver screen at the Loma Theater on Rosecrans Street in San Diego.

Little did I know that the girl who I would eventually marry lived just a short distance away from that theater, but I wouldn’t meet her for another decade and in a completely different city. That meeting would eventually lead me to this place today.

Why do I mention “Fiddler on the Roof?” Besides the memorable music, the picture it portrayed of traditional life being challenged by the powerful forces of modernity stayed with me, in particular Tevye’s haunting line, “… and because of our traditions every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”

This phrase resonated strongly in me, a member of a generation brought up on Simon and Garfunkel’s lyrics “‘Kathy, I’m lost,’ I said, though I knew she was sleeping. ‘I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.’”

Those in the audience who remember that time might also recall that biologist Paul Ehrlich was predicting catastrophe by 1975 due to population growth outstripping the planet’s resources.

Well, folks, we survived, and, looking around the room, I can’t help but think how blessed we are. Yes, now we are confronting other challenges like climate change, but I remain confident that we will find a way forward and that our children’s children will continue to thrive.

But this will be “because of our traditions,” not in spite of them.

We live in one of the most exciting and beautiful areas of the world, the Bay Area, which is home to Silicon Valley. This is where the future is being made.

We pride ourselves on being “disrupters,” exhorting knowledge workers to “move fast and break things.”

But humans need a source of stability and tradition in their lives in order to thrive, something that is not “disrupted,” and that is what we are celebrating here today, the marriage of Amy and David.

They are one of the happiest couples that I have seen, and thoroughly enjoy each other’s company. There is a wisdom in their relationship that almost makes me hesitate to give them any fatherly advice at all.

It’s a little late for me to give the “Sex Talk,” so instead I will address the other source of strife that many people encounter in marriage – money.

Everyone has heard the old saw, “Time is Money.”

I believe whoever composed this line got it completely backwards:

Time is not Money. Money is Time.

So many people, both husbands and wives, work very long hours and exchange their time for money. They have no time left for their families. Life in the Bay Area is demanding and expensive, and there seems to be little choice but to submit.

My advice to the newlyweds is to live modestly and not become slaves to possessions.

Unless you are the richest person in the world, there will always be someone with a bigger house, a nicer car, a bigger yacht, or a fancier wine cellar than you have. In my opinion, that is the road to envy, not happiness.

It is too easy to become trapped into devoting all of your time to paying for a lifestyle instead of living it.

When you work, you exchange your time for money, not just to pay your bills, but, most importantly, to ultimately gain the freedom to spend your time the way you wish to do so.

If you remember that money is primarily your store of time, you will not squander it, but invest it wisely for growth.

But, as with everything, one must strike a balance. Not only would it be sad to be a slave to possessions; it would be just as sad if one deferred consumption completely in favor of savings, and then ran out of time to enjoy it.

Finding that balance is your challenge, but, ultimately, time is your most important asset, and your money should only be a means to make the most of it.

So please raise your glasses and let me end with a toast, using the words from another, more recent, song:

“I hope you” have “the time of your life.”