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All I said was economics courses should be electives, especially for kid who test out. As nearly 2/3 of the students in my classes do.
Interesting, you want to use the lame cop out of being a strawman, but you also want to claim that 2/3 of your students test out of a topic that half the American public cant pass a basic multiple choice quiz on? That math doesn't add up. What are they testing out of, give me specific topics that they are demonstrating this knowledge of.
Do you think any of this would be taught in a high school personal finance class? What you are describing would be a course in public policy.
There is definitely overlap, but considering some grown adults have no concept of the fact that SS cant fund their retirement that is one thing that requires some better education on, people need a better understanding of investing, compound interest, interest rates in general, all that stuff. Some is definitely public policy, but how it impacts you as an individual definitely falls into a personal finance class.
Initially I was not a Common Core fan, but I've really come around to support it. I like the depth of the foundation of understanding that it fosters and that it gives kids the ability to employ a wider range of different strategies to solve problems.
Sorry, meant to respond to this earlier. Simple supply and demand. Physics is hard. Fewer people get it. Schools are competing with industry for those few. AIP Statistical Research Center Typical Starting Salaries shows the gap between a BS in Physics who goes into teaching vs going into a STEM position earns in starting salary. If you want to compete for the good ones, you have to be willing to pay them competitively. Biology is just less competitive so they command less on the market. And so on to Education majors are a dime a dozen.
I think you can make a case for what your proposing. But that also means that I might have to pay a German/French teacher more than a physics teacher. Or a Latin teacher more than both. Is that a good idea?
And what about resentment on staffs. Although it was a different situation, we had a merit pay system in FCPS for a few years, and some of the teachers who did not earn the rating of "exemplary" were very negative toward their colleagues who did.
But also, you wouldn't be paying physics majors who are teaching to do "real" physics work. Let me give a comparison in my old field -- teaching earth science. With my geology degree, I could have been working for an oil company to discover new deposits of fossil fuels, or now I could be working for an environmental concern trying to determine if the extraction of oil and gas is resulting in earthquakes. Instead, I was teaching 14 year olds.
A physics major who is teaching, is working with kids, and never even covers the material he learned himself in physics 101. And a physics teacher works no harder than an English or history teacher. Same student load. Same number of classes.
I get your point, but I'm not sure there aren't other ways to look at any professional person who becomes a teacher.
Of course, personally I'd pay teachers more than men in physics-related professions, but that's not my point.
Think of it this way. A subject has parts A, B, C, D, and E. The standardized test has questions on A and D. So you only teach A and D, ignoring B, C and E.
Back in in the mid 90s I was a SME tasked to evaluated a particular courseware (this was an engineering course at the college level, but hang with me here). The developer had done a marvelous job of preparing a complete package: Text, student handouts, instructor manual, presentation notes, overhead that included not just text but animated graphics, video, and sound (keep in mind this is mid 90s and was pretty cutting edge). It was done in a proprietary platform I don't remember (PowerPoint was just taking off) and even included an interactive capability, though that required a mainframe based network (again, mid 90s). Sounds great. Well the problem was how they built it. They started with the test. Wrote the test questions. Then developed the whole program, text, course materials, etc based on the test questions. The problem was immediately obvious to all us SMEs reviewing it -- whole concepts were ignored because they weren't tested, but those concepts were common in the actual work. Students through this program would have high grades, but not a functioning knowledge of the field.
While I agree that understanding is critical as one goes along in math, people first need to know the foundation to build that understanding from. Common Core, at least as we have seen, builds a pretty shaky foundation and starts building a skyscraper from there. As parents we don't want that skyscraper to fall on our kids. It creates complexity where there should be none by taking the equivalent of four left turns to go straight. Tried to help my son with it and couldn't. Oh, I could solve the problems using simple math, but could not by any stretch set up and solve the CC way.
I understand your desire to wait for the research, but remember, these are our kids. We can't afford to sacrifice a generation's math skills while educators tinker. You get it wrong, you can't go back and fix it. There's already been too much tinkering with math education over the last few decades. This is a case where if it's not broke, don't fix it.
Okay, but I wonder if math education hasn't been broken for decades. Ask 100 middle schoolers which subject they hate the most (and I have asked many kids that), and the most common answer is math. Why? Maybe it's the way it's taught. What percentage of our students go into a specifically math field? It's tiny. Why?
But let me also ask you this. Should we not experiment in the field of medicine? Should we just do what used to be done? And I think back to what we knew about learning and the brain when I started teaching, as compared to what we know about learning and the brain now. It's a whole new world.
And what exactly is your evidence that current trends in math education are less effective than what we did in the past?
Initially I was not a Common Core fan, but I've really come around to support it. I like the depth of the foundation of understanding that it fosters and that it gives kids the ability to employ a wider range of different strategies to solve problems.
My view about Common Core is that it is a professionally developed set of standards that is disliked by a certain political segment of the population...usually not because of the standards themselves, but because of politics.
When I have had a face to face discussion with people who dislike Common Core (as opposed to a forum discussion, where someone can hop on to a website and quickly pick something out), and they rant about Common Core, and I ask them to tell me one standard in Common Core...so far not one of them has been able to answer me.
Interesting, you want to use the lame cop out of being a strawman, but you also want to claim that 2/3 of your students test out of a topic that half the American public cant pass a basic multiple choice quiz on? That math doesn't add up. What are they testing out of, give me specific topics that they are demonstrating this knowledge of.
Your 2/3 number is wrong. From your article: "only 57 percent of adult Americans know basic financial literacy concepts". It did not give a figure for high schoolers, so you can't argue with number either. And we still don't know what they asked.
Parents who aren't ignorant.
Parents who talk to their children, using good grammar.
Parents who expose their children to the world around them.
I'll add a fourth, which is strict structure in the classroom.
I'm a mother and grandmother, and now a volunteer at two grade schools. I read to several kindergartens, and I tutor a second grader. The kindergarten with a kind, but strict, teacher has a much better learning environment than the one with where the kids are allowed to "be kids". I'm all for kids being free to explore, but not during classroom time.
My second grader, who stayed back last year, can barely hold a conversation, is very shy, and still cannot read beyond a first grade level. She is not mentally defective, but just has had a very limited exposure to books and reading and the world around her. I fear she may not pass the reading competency test again this year.
I think you can make a case for what your proposing. But that also means that I might have to pay a German/French teacher more than a physics teacher. Or a Latin teacher more than both. Is that a good idea?
I agree with you. My whole point is, if you want highly qualified people entering teaching, you have to pay them comparable to what they can get elsewhere for those skills.
And what about resentment on staffs. Although it was a different situation, we had a merit pay system in FCPS for a few years, and some of the teachers who did not earn the rating of "exemplary" were very negative toward their colleagues who did.
Hard to tell here without more knowledge of the specific situation. The reason is I have seen merit pay work in some situations and I've also seen situations where it was really more of a good ol' boy network at play. Those situations do generate resentment. But if the system is truly merit based and can be shown so, then those who don't like their scores can either perform better or leave. But like I said, I'd be very careful to judge without knowing the reality on the ground in a particular situation.
But also, you wouldn't be paying physics majors who are teaching to do "real" physics work. Let me give a comparison in my old field -- teaching earth science. With my geology degree, I could have been working for an oil company to discover new deposits of fossil fuels, or now I could be working for an environmental concern trying to determine if the extraction of oil and gas is resulting in earthquakes. Instead, I was teaching 14 year olds.
A physics major who is teaching, is working with kids, and never even covers the material he learned himself in physics 101. And a physics teacher works no harder than an English or history teacher. Same student load. Same number of classes.
It's not that they might work harder, it's simply that you won't get them, at least the top performers that you really want, without matching the market for their knowledge and skills. I understand where you're coming from -- I work in gov where the GS system is structured much the same way in that individual knowledge and skills, and market value, are not part of the pay structure. And it has become well acknowledged that such a system is broken in pay because it can't match the market value of those skill, up or down. The result is low skilled individuals are over paid and high skill individuals are under paid. I can't compete when hiring, and can't keep good ones long if I do get them.
I get your point, but I'm not sure there aren't other ways to look at any professional person who becomes a teacher.
Of course, personally I'd pay teachers more than men in physics-related professions, but that's not my point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
Okay, but I wonder if math education hasn't been broken for decades. Ask 100 middle schoolers which subject they hate the most (and I have asked many kids that), and the most common answer is math. Why? Maybe it's the way it's taught. What percentage of our students go into a specifically math field? It's tiny. Why?
Completely agree. I too want to know why.
But let me also ask you this. Should we not experiment in the field of medicine? Should we just do what used to be done? And I think back to what we knew about learning and the brain when I started teaching, as compared to what we know about learning and the brain now. It's a whole new world.
Experiments in medicine start with years/decades in the lab then experiments on animals (which has it's own ethical questions) before human experiments begin. Then human trials are tightly controlled with knowing consent and multiple control and exit points. From that perspective educational experiments are uncontrolled, there is no consent (in fact, if you consider parent concerns such as about CC, we could say the experiments are done in spite of negative consent). Then we wait 15 years until they are adults to decide "well let's try something different." That is not good experimentation; that's tinkering.
And what exactly is your evidence that current trends in math education are less effective than what we did in the past?
Couldn't get a copy & paste to work, but trends in test scores are well acknowledge, to the point that they are a given.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
My view about Common Core is that it is a professionally developed set of standards that is disliked by a certain political segment of the population...usually not because of the standards themselves, but because of politics.
Don't focus on whether you agree or disagree with the politics, focus on the concerns.
When I have had a face to face discussion with people who dislike Common Core (as opposed to a forum discussion, where someone can hop on to a website and quickly pick something out), and they rant about Common Core, and I ask them to tell me one standard in Common Core...so far not one of them has been able to answer me.
I think most issues/concerns with CC are not the idea of standards, but the poor implementation of them. It doesn't take long for a parent to sit down with a kid and see the bizarre ways simple arithmetic has been turned into a complicated, not-understandable mess, to destroy any confidence in CC, the latest new math and everything with it. I saw it with the difference between my kids brought home with only a few years age between them and in the undecipherable concepts and language in my son's math texts. A couple of Googles quickly brings up examples. It doesn't really matter what the standards say when the result is gibberish.
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