Wednesday, October 19, 2005

US Better at Math, But Asians Lead, Equal to White Reading

US BETTER AT MATH, ASIANS LEAD EVERYBODY ELSE, = WHITES IN READING

National Assessment of Educational Progress

The Nation's Report Card

AP Oct 19, 2005 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9750535

http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2005/s0026.asp?printver=

AP reports that Americans are doing better in math on the NAEP
nation test. Blacks are "catching up" with whites. But they don't mention
that Asians are still leading whites in math, as Asians have in most years
since 1992. In grade 4, Asians lead whites by about the same margin that
Hispanics lead blacks. Asians are equal to whites in reading at both grade
4 and 8, on most tests like the SAT, Asians tend to lag in verbal scores,
but they appear to be assimilating at these grades, or just studying a lot.


Grade 4
1990 1992 1996 2000 2003 2005 Rank
W 220 227 231 234 243 246 2
B 188 193 199 203 216 220 5
H 200 202 205 208 222 226 34
A NA 231 226 NA 246 251 1
N NA NA NA NA 223 226 34
L 207 208 222 225
L = free / reduced lunch
Asians lead whites by same margin as Hispanics
lead black.
Free/Reduced lunch students score better than black
average.

Grade 8
1990 1992 1996 2000 2003 2005 Rank
W 270 277 281 284 288 289 2
B 237 237 242 244 252 255 5
H 246 249 251 253 259 262 4
A NA 290 NA 287 291 295 1
N NA NA NA NA 263 264 4

Asians score equal to whites in Readng
Grade 4
1990 1992 1996 2000 2002 2003 2005 Rank
W 224 224 226 225 229 229 229 12
B 192 185 193 190 199 198 200 5
H 197 188 195 190 201 200 203 4
A 216 220 221 224 224 226 229 12
N 207 202 204 3
L 203 201 203

Grade 8
1992 1994 1998 2002 2003 2005 Rank
W 268 267 271 272 272 271 12
A 267 265 267 267 270 271 12
N 250 246 249 3
H 241 243 245 250 246 246 4
B 237 236 243 245 244 243 5

Monday, October 17, 2005

Kirkland Jr High PTSA WASL and Math

Some observations from the Kirkland Jr High School PTSA meeting: (Lake Washington / Kirkland)

KJH wants WASL scores from the high school broken down by feeder jr high schools. The principal mentioned that WASL scores were disappointing (I think it was lowest of the district jr high schools). The PTSA state convention puts #3 and #4 top items as "alternatives to the WASL test", evidently they still don't have the guts to challenge the beast outright, and "improving math and science education" which unfortunately sounds like they've bought into the fuzzy math and science teaching crowd.

A math teacher didn't give a formal presentation on the new "discovery based" math, however, I looked over the new Algebra books my kids are getting at 7th and 8th grade, it introduces matrix muliplication, and later uses matrices to solve linear equations, something I didn't even do much of in college. For the normal 7th grade track, they are using the 2nd version of Connected Mathematics. It seemed to be a minor improvement over the series we got in 6th grade that had infinite nonsensical homework, and spendng 4 times as many pages to make sure that the one standard method was NOT covered or explained to do averages, or adding or multiplying fractions. I was surprised to find solving for a linear equation, which used to be the culmination of an entire algebra course, covered in all of 2 pages. Just add, subtract, factor or divide both sides, yeah, right. Solving quadratic equations was similarly covered in just two pages.

Compare that to MY 7th grade math worksheet, which was a 8.5 x 11 sheet of 1 digit by 1 digit multiplications, which I completed about 85%, and got 1 or 2 wrong. I wonder how many of these kids who are expected to solve quadratic equations with 2 pages of instruction know how to add fractions with uncommon denominators, or divide a 5 digit by a 3 digit decimal number.

Some parents commented that their students were having big problems with Math Analysis in high school after going through integrated math in middle school. My peek at McDougall Littell was that this curriculum aimed at high school, but offered at middle school level crammed a shot gun ful of college level material concepts all over the place, while providing no instruction in basic arithmetic, nor the old fashioned baby-step per week build up of algebra. I couldn't even FIND how to solve a simple equation like 2 x + 8 = 15 among all the instruction in graphing, statistics, and problem solving.

I don't know if moving from integrated back to to Algebra is better or worse, but so far not too many complaints from my kids and I haven't had to do their homework left.

Parents in LWSD are still pretty much clueless as to the harm of fuzzy new-new math.

Hu's On First Introduction

OK world, I'm going to take a shot at blogging again. I'll be posting interesting tidbits on Asian Americans, education, and the rest of Humanity, and whatever I find is worth posting to the outside world.