The post Education Writer Jay Mathews appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The panel’s moderator, Jennifer Ouellette, author of The Calculus Diaries, opened the conversation by finding fault with American culture at large for its acceptance—often joking acceptance—of a widespread general lack of math skills. Is this attitude problematic—or is it evidence that these skills are unneeded?

Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews, author of The War Against Dummy Math, said that he has no problem with adults not knowing high school or even middle school math; we tend to forget a lot of what we learned in history class as well. However, added Mathews, while early math offers us competence in a wide range of daily life situations, higher math can “energize and give more choices to people in our society” who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Panelist Caz Pereira, a workforce expert with the nonprofit Growth Sector, said that the low value we put on math skills is scary. Seventy-two percent of students enter college at only an eighth-grade math level—yet higher math skills can mean the difference between a $40,000-a-year job and a $70-80,000-a-year job. California alone is going to have thousands of engineering jobs to fill—and no one to fill them with. “If we’re not going to focus on math, we’re going to have a serious problem in the future,” he said.

But, asked Ouellette, since most students don’t plan to be engineers, why teach them a skill they aren’t going to use?

Mathews said that algebra teaches students to buckle down, to think about what they’re doing, and to work hard. Most American high schools don’t challenge students; algebra can get them into a habit of putting in time and effort that will serve them well later in life.

Orange County math teacher Sarah Armstrong—who stressed that she was offering her own views and not speaking for her district—said that algebra gives students the ability to stick with a problem until the end. And she disagreed with critics who claim most of us don’t use algebra; a lot of us, she said, use it every day but don’t know it. Calculating the rate of the price of gasoline is algebra, for instance—but because math is taught in a vacuum in our schools, we wouldn’t know it.

Pereira said that at the community college level, he’s encouraging schools and professors to teach math together with engineering—and to have schools make math more applied and connected to industry even earlier, at the high school level.

What about students who struggle with math?

Pereira said that we need to stop underestimating students, start engaging them in the curriculum, and make them understand the future opportunities math skills offer.

Armstrong said that we need to offer remedial help to struggling math students much earlier; kids who can’t read are identified in the first grade, but math remediation doesn’t start until fourth or fifth grade—at the earliest.

“In inner-city schools that have succeeded,” said Mathews, “you see math as a low-hanging fruit.” Because math, unlike reading, is taught almost exclusively in schools, teachers have a lot of influence on their students—and at the leading inner-city schools, like the KIPP charter schools, math scores go up faster than reading scores. “This is something we should be able to do at every school,” he said.

Ouellette asked the panelists if they’ve seen proof that algebra causes students to drop out of schools.

None of the data backs that up, said Mathews. More and more states are making algebra a requirement for high school graduation, yet the nation has fewer dropouts today than we have in a long time.

Armstrong is excited about the new Common Core curriculum standards California is adopting, which will no longer require eighth graders to take Algebra 1. Many of her students weren’t ready for the class, and she thinks this will help them get a stronger foundation before entering high school.

In the question-and-answer session, the panelists talked about the uses of math beyond the classroom and the role of technology in teaching the subject.

How, asked an audience member, does math help you understand life?

Math can give a sense of the moral, said Mathews.

Armstrong called math “the alphabet of science,” and Pereira concurred, pointing to the landing of the Mars rover as one example of how the two subjects work in concert.

Ouellette said that math also is crucial to reasoning. Even if you’re not using differential equations in your job, you’re using the math skill of framing problems in order to solve them.

Are computers in classrooms changing the way math is taught?

Mathews said that, so far, there’s no data to show that teaching computers makes students better at anything than using a computer. And, added Armstrong, on a practical level, most schools, including her own, don’t have the computer access or resources to meet students’ needs.

The post You’re <em>Not</em> Too Dumb For Algebra appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

She had to teach five classes a day of something called Lodestar Math. Over 60 percent of incoming freshmen in the district’s 11 high schools took the course. It had almost no algebra in it. The students came to class each day, took a quiz, and were handed a worksheet by Pors. If there were questions, she would answer them, but the idea was to learn by doing. When they completed one worksheet she handed them another.

This was at once tragic—and unsurprising.

Such low-level, fill-in-the-blanks math classes were common in U.S. high schools. Yerba Buena, like the majority of U.S. schools, operated on the belief that algebra—the prerequisite to the math and science that were essential to modern civilization—was too tough for most ninth graders. So instead, they got remedial math. Teachers and students called it dummy math. Many students graduated from high school without taking algebra at all. Instead they were assigned an assortment of arithmetic courses with names like Business Math or Consumer Math.

Pors wanted more ninth graders to be taught algebra, so they could advance to geometry, trigonometry, and lab sciences. She thought many of her students were capable of that, but were being overlooked because they were low-income and their parents had not gone to college.

It took 15 years of struggle, as she rose to math department chair and then math coordinator for her school district, before she had a chance prove she was right in a national experiment, rare in the history of U.S. schools.

For Pors, that experiment—designed to eliminate remedial math from high schools altogether—began in 1990. One day, East Side superintendent Joe Coto asked Pors to join him at a meeting with College Board officials at their regional office near San Jose International Airport.

The officials explained that the College Board was launching a program called Equity 2000 in pilot areas throughout the country. They wondered if East Side, representing all the San Jose high schools east of the 101 Freeway, would like to participate. They handed out copies of a study by psychometricians Sol Pelavin and Michael Kane called Changing the Odds.

The study had inspired the $32 million program. Reading it became a sacred moment in Pors’ memory. The paper from Pealvin and Kane revealed data buttressing Pors’ long-held suspicion that the district was hurting students by failing to challenge them with algebra and other math courses needed for college.

According to Pelavin and Kane, students who took algebra and geometry in high school were far more likely to go to college than students denied a chance to get those courses. The effect was even stronger on the minority kids who were the majority at East Side.

“Only one out of every 40 black students who did not take at least one year of high school geometry attained a bachelor’s degree or senior status [in college] within four years of high school graduation; the comparable figure of Hispanic students is one in 60,” Pelavin and Kane wrote.

Changing the Odds became Pors’ favorite book. She kept it on her nightstand and never let anyone borrow it, although she found ways to get people their own copies.

The College Board regional officials said if East Side wanted to participate, and be eligible for funds for training and other expenses, the district had to agree to require that all ninth graders take Algebra I and all 10th graders take Geometry I.

Pors and other supportive East Side educators suffered frustration for many years. In 1991, when the project began, the district had only 45 percent of high school freshmen in Algebra I or more advanced courses. It would take five years before every ninth grader not in a special education program was enrolled in algebra.

Resistance to the experiment from principals, teachers, and the teachers’ union proved stronger than Pors expected. At some training sessions, Pors said, “they would come in because they had to come in, but they would open their newspapers and turn their backs on us.” After learning more techniques during the sessions, about 65 percent of teachers surveyed agreed that ninth graders could master the subject. “But I was saying, ‘What about the other 35 percent that we didn’t get?’” Pors recalled. “I think one of our shortcomings was that we didn’t keep after that 35 percent. The 35 percent that didn’t believe were the ones that would ultimately hold us back.”

Pors was in charge of staff development, giving teachers and counselors the methods and tools to bring more students into algebra and geometry and help them succeed. Many principals told her it wouldn’t work. Parents, too, called in to protest their children’s placement in algebra. They thought it was too much. Pors insisted that students take the course.

Progress at East Side eventually accelerated as a critical mass of students entered the program. From 1991 to 1997, the percentage of ninth graders in algebra increased from 45 to 90 percent. The pass rate in algebra increased from 43 to 65 percent. When Barbara L. Schallau, a math teacher and later coordinator in the school district, finished her master’s thesis on achievement trends in mathematics in East Side, she reported that “more Hispanic students (2,780) passed college preparatory mathematics classes in 1999 than were enrolled (2,157) in 1990.”

Vinetta Jones, the national director of Equity 2000, overseeing the seven school districts that were part of the project, reported that “more ninth graders (22,579) passed Algebra I by the end of 1997 than were even enrolled at the start of the project (18,934).”

Dummy math was pretty much dead. A few students, mostly those in special education or limited English programs, remained in non-algebra programs, but their numbers were small. In 2004, algebra became a high school graduation requirement in California.

Once educators were comfortable with all ninth graders taking algebra, they began to discover that many eighth graders could also do well in the course and be on track to take calculus by the end of high school. Between 2003 and 2009 in California, math education experts Ze’ev Wurman and Bill Evers reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, “the number of African-American students successfully taking Algebra I by grade eight more than tripled from 1,700 to 5,400; the jump among Hispanic students was from 10,000 to 45,000.”

Today California faces another era of change. The state is switching to lessons based on deeper common core standards. More honors courses are being required. Whether this effort produces the same long-term effects as Equity 2000 will depend on the persistence of teachers like Pors, who know their students are capable of doing more than worksheets in remedial arithmetic if given enough time and encouragement.

The post When Math Was Dumb appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

San Mateo looked pretty much the same. But I found I wasn’t recapturing the simpler days of my youth. When I started reconnecting with favorite spots like my old high school, I encountered complexities and advances I had not expected, particularly after the many headlines about California in decline.

The little house where I grew up on Voelker Drive still has no garbage disposal, no dishwasher, and no air-conditioning. But my brother Jim, the computer teacher at Baywood Elementary School, set up a Wi-Fi system and satellite TV. I felt up-to-date until I visited my alma mater, Hillsdale High School, a sprawling campus two blocks away on Alameda de las Pulgas.

I write about education for The Washington Post and its web site. High schools are my specialty. Suburban schools like Hillsdale rarely if ever change, except in their ethnic mix. Hillsdale was about 95 percent white when I graduated in 1963. Today the 1,343-member student body is 45 percent white, 30 percent Latino, 15 percent Asian, 4 percent Filipino, and 2 percent black. About 20 percent are low income, roughly what it was when I was there.

That is a typical demographic shift for a California suburban school, and not what makes it so startling to visit Hillsdale now. Through many twists and turns, while I wasn’t paying attention, it has become one of America’s first 21st century schools.

I often make fun of that label. Attempts to describe what 21st century schools look like often make them seem like 20th century schools with better equipment and fancier mission statements. Hillsdale, by contrast, has changed significantly the way students are taught, and raised the level of instruction for both kids going to college and kids not sure what they want to do.

Getting there wasn’t easy. A team of educators who were part of the transformation helped put together a manuscript, written by social studies teacher Greg Jouriles, that explains the process. The changes happened in the same unpredictable way that the computer and Internet revolution swept San Mateo and much of the rest of the Peninsula.

The term “Silicon Valley” did not exist when I graduated from Hillsdale. I still find it hard to believe that the ratty shops of El Camino Real and the nondescript warehouses along U.S. Highway 101 are backdrops for a now famous international center of commerce and innovation. That public schools, among our most change-resistant institutions, might be similarly altered is even more surprising.

At Hillsdale students are organized into small advisory groups that meet daily with a staff member trained to help them with any problems–a system pioneered by private schools. The ninth and tenth grades are divided into three houses that focus on interdisciplinary lessons and ambitious projects such as a recreation of a World War I battle and a trial of Lord of the Flies author William Golding. Students of all achievement levels are mixed in the same classes, sharing in discussions but doing different homework based on their needs and wishes. All seniors must define an essential question, write a thesis of at least eight pages, and defend it before a panel of graders including outside experts. More changes are planned. The idea is to do much more than prepare students for the annual state tests, but the changes have helped raise the school’s Academic Performance Index on California’s 1000-point scale from 662 in 2002 to 797 this year.

Mixing students of different achievement levels in the same classes and giving them different homework is extraordinarily rare in American public schools. Defending research work before a panel of experts is what happens in graduate school, not high school.

True, the football team is not doing as well as it did when it was led by my 25-year-old gym teacher, future Super Bowl coach Dick Vermeil. The Knights this year are 2-4. Like with everything else at the school, the faculty is looking for solutions, while enjoying the fact that the Friday night games, as in my day, have stands full of students and parents, a loud and boisterous band, and tasty hot dogs.

There is something else that connects the new era with the old. When I first moved into our San Mateo house in 1952 and enrolled in third grade, one of my classmates was a big kid named Don Leydig. He was kind, smart, and the best all-around athlete I had ever met. We became friendly rivals for good grades. He made places for me in baseball, basketball, and flag football games where I would not embarrass myself. At Hillsdale, he became the shining light of our 1961 championship football season, Vermeil’s best player as a halfback, and the league’s most valuable player.

Leydig played freshman football at Stanford under another future Super Bowl coach, Bill Walsh, but realized he wasn’t fast enough for the varsity and focused on his studies. He was in the Peace Corps in Libya, then returned to the Peninsula and built a splendid reputation as a high school history teacher, coach, and administrator. In 1989 he became Hillsdale’s principal.

Many coaches and teachers remembered him. They were happy to have as a boss one of the most talented and respectful kids they had ever taught. Don told me, “They would have done anything for me.”

He understood the importance of the American high school. It defines our national character as the last educational experience we share before some of us go to college and others to work. Leydig knew our high schools were in a slump. American 17-year-olds have shown no significant gains in reading and math achievement in the last three decades. Challenging courses are rare. Nationally, the average teenager does less than an hour of homework a night.

According to Jouriles’ written account of Hillsdale’s transformation, Leydig did not charge into the school waving a banner of reform and knocking down the opposition. Instead he renewed old relationships and got to know new people, using the modesty and thoughtfulness that made him so popular when we were students. He hired teachers with ideas for reform and let them make changes. He worked with the teacher’s union. He forged ties with the Stanford University education school, particularly its nationally renowned reform expert Linda Darling Hammond. He cut shop classes and secretarial slots to have more resources for the reforms. He let new ideas start small to iron out flaws. He got grants and finessed district budget rules. At crucial moments he forged consensus with surveys of teacher opinion that did not ask simply if they were for or against a change, but instead gave a range of choices. Were they for it with qualifications? Could they live with it? Were they against it but wouldn’t quit over it?

The change at Hillsdale came in spurts, with some backsliding. It was a team effort, like our class’s football wins. It was hard for everyone, including Leydig. Jouriles describes the afternoon an assistant principal and a teacher called faculty leaders to a secret meeting at a pub on 25th Avenue in hopes of getting the principal fired.

It didn’t work. Leydig’s recruiting helped produce a new generation of school leaders, including innovative teacher Jeff Gilbert who now leads the school. Leydig retired in 2005 and heads the Hillsdale Foundation, raising money to keep the changes alive. He often travels to coach administrators and advise on school redesign. There are a few other thriving California efforts to remake schools such as the New Tech Highs and High Tech Highs. But Hillsdale is the most advanced homegrown project I know of.

Leydig and I sometimes sit together at football games. Still trim, he avoids the hot dogs and cupcakes while I gorge myself. We enjoy the noisy, colorful stream of young people passing by. They seem like our classmates from 1963–from all levels of the income scale, happy to be together on a warm night. They no longer know the words to the fight song, but they have something better: lively, accessible teachers and a widening knowledge and appreciation of the challenge and excitement of the world outside.

Don and I loved the old Hillsdale. But if you ask us where we would like to send our grandchildren, the new Hillsdale gets our vote.

Jay Mathews, a Washington Post education columnist and the father of Zócalo’s California editor, is the author of eight books, including Work Hard, Be Nice: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America.

*Photos courtesy of Jay Mathews.

The post Back to High School at Age 66 appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.