|
Welcome to --- School Truth |
|
Washington State Mathematics education at the moment is a system becoming more ineffective by the week. Few educational curriculum decisions that are made by Administrator’s have any chance of improving this system. Why? Because the adoption of curricular materials and programs of instruction are not made by a critical analytic selection process based on relevant reliable statistical data. In short the way this system operates prevents its own improvement. Our children are the losers.
Businesses must improve or go out of business. School districts can go bankrupt. Oakland, CA school district bankruptcy was preceded by academic bankruptcy. Many US school districts are following right on Oakland’s trail of misery. The State never goes out of business no matter how incompetent. My purpose and your purpose should be to hold this tragic system accountable. For the good of our children and our nation this must happen. [ Read this site’s Statement of Purpose for further information on this. ]
There is no relevant valid statistical data on the mathematical content learned by Washington students. Most Washington schools no longer have a real mathematics curriculum and OSPI does not test any high school level mathematics learned by students.
The WASL is largely a public relations tool not a testing instrument. WASL reading scores showed great improvement during the 1999-2005 years while ITBS and ITED scores remained constant. For those of you not versed in the Education Alphabets, all you need to know is that the ITBS and ITED are valid reliable tests that measure reading. The WASL reading must measure something we are just not sure what it is measuring.
The entering math skills of those entering the University of Washington and our Community Colleges have seriously declined in recent years. The State now spends 50 million dollars per year offering sub 100 level community college courses. Those are the courses that do not count for college credit because the students in them do not have enough skill to take community college classes.
Read the promotion / non-promotion policies of the Seattle Schools. These are wonderful policies that are currently a total fairy tale. They speak of necessary skills required for promotion. They speak of meaningful interventions. They speak of the CAT test as the primary means of determining necessary skills. The CAT is a test that has not been given in years. There are no necessary skills required for promotion.
This promotion of everyone is producing the current high school disaster in math and the current freshman math disaster in college. In automotive lingo when something is so badly damaged that it is beyond repair, it is totaled. Many high schools have a major math collision of titanic proportions, which can not possibly be fixed in only four years.
The administrator’s mantra is Math must be accessible for all whether skilled or not. As a result we have the profusion of pseudo-math programs. These programs require little math knowledge or testing to bring about supposed student success. The IMP program teaches no Algebra at the grade 9 level and leaves the distributive property until grade 10 [ which is at most seventh grade topic ].
Most NCTM programs leave most students unprepared for collegiate level mathematics.
So you may be asking: how did education get to this sorry state? Or who is this Dempsey guy? Does he know what he is talking about?
That is the reason this site exists. To bring you to the realization of what has happened, why it is very unlikely to be fixed unless you help. Our children need your help.
Sincerely,
Danaher M. Dempsey, Jr. BA in Mathematics, M.Ed with technology emphasis No Child Left Behind: Highly qualified teacher in Mathematics, Chemistry, & Science
Currently Pathways Mathematics teacher at West Seattle High School Proud teacher of Pathways kids in room 122B (every student I deal with failed the MATH WASL at level 1 lack of proficiency) I am an Agent of math repair, trying to fix the math victims of the Giant Math Wreck caused by OSPI, NSF, NCTM, etc. |
|
Send your thoughts, comments and articles to dempsey_dan@yahoo.com |