Unconventional teacher builds top math program at ordinary FL school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, to sum up, a math teacher who can “scout” his own students from a bunch of college professors’ kids wins math competitions? Wow. Call me when he gets a random group of kids and can do the same thing.

You are missing the point. Why is his team dominating all the other teams who also have top talent?

The answer is because he taps that potential at an early age, pushes those kids to maximizes and reach their full potential at every stage. Rinse and repeat.

[Anonymous]

That is what aap should be

Instead it's a bloated program full of higher ses kids who aren't really gifted and have no business being there

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, to sum up, a math teacher who can “scout” his own students from a bunch of college professors’ kids wins math competitions? Wow. Call me when he gets a random group of kids and can do the same thing.

You are missing the point. Why is his team dominating all the other teams who also have top talent?

The answer is because he taps that potential at an early age, pushes those kids to maximizes and reach their full potential at every stage. Rinse and repeat.

Same as in the movie Stand & Deliver, which was based on an actual teacher. He achieved crazy impressive results with kids that most others had written off.

[pettifogger]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, to sum up, a math teacher who can “scout” his own students from a bunch of college professors’ kids wins math competitions? Wow. Call me when he gets a random group of kids and can do the same thing.

You are missing the point. Why is his team dominating all the other teams who also have top talent?

The answer is because he taps that potential at an early age, pushes those kids to maximizes and reach their full potential at every stage. Rinse and repeat.

Same as in the movie Stand & Deliver, which was based on an actual teacher. He achieved crazy impressive results with kids that most others had written off.

I'm quite surprised that given how interesting and catchy this article is, nobody here seems to have bothered to do a bit of research and just simply believed the headline "How a Public School in Florida Built America’s Greatest Math Team" :

When someone claims something is the greatest, one should instinctively ask, by what measure(s)? Reading the article it seems obvious that is based on their teams winning the national championship of Mu Alpha Theta. What does that mean exactly? Or, by what measure exactly is winning Mu Alpha Theta equivalent to being the greatest? Well if we assume Mu Alpha Theta is the most difficult math exam given to high schoolers, then we can conclude that... or can we? First off, if one looks at sample questions from past MAT exams and does a comparison with sample questions from other top high school math contests, one finds that MAT questions are significantly less challenging on average. But let's assume for a second that MAT questions are right there at the top of the challenge level. We still cannot conclude anything meaningful about the greatest without checking who actually participated in these competitions which the Gainsville team won. (It turns out that not many top math teams at elite high schools are that interested in MAT, their normal target is the AMC exams (because they lead to the Olympiad and ultimately the IMO), as well as HMMT, ARML and a few other contests that are historically ultra competitive, prestigious, and known to be difficult). Additionally, if you look at MAT participation rates, most schools come from Florida; it is something that is very popular there, but not necessarily in the whole country.

I don't want to detract from Buchholz and his math team's achievements (which are still impressive), but calling them greatest by the WSJ is not only meaningless without specific measures, but also just plain misinformed when compared to other elite high school math contests such as the AMCs and HMMT. Even at the middle school level, one will find many challenging questions on recent years of the national Mathcounts round that are significantly more difficult than what is found on the MAT.

The rest of the information about how he did it is now easy to piece together. They were obviously able to win so much because not only were they not competing at the highest levels as described above, but they also dedicated an incredible amount of time to practicing MAT questions/topics. For those who have not looked into the details, Buchholz shortly after finding success was at some point given thousands of dollars in funding by private individuals to continue the ability to win, and has consequently used that funding to grow and build a math culture over the years at the school (not unlike what a competitive sports team coach would do). That means that once he became well known for winning, he used that to tap into the most promising students from elementary and middle school to ensure they attend his math team via tryouts/tests, he regularly runs quite long summer camps that meet for multiple weeks and multiple hours a day working on math contests, and he has even been allowed to offer high school courses taken for credit at the school which literally are built from MAT problems (i.e a precalc course would teach the same topics a normal standard precalc course does, but using MAT problems and similar other contest problems, one can see these course descriptions in the school handbook). Additionally, many of these kids are from well off families, which is no surprise, as others above have mentioned, so this is not even close to a Stand and Deliver situation with "written off" kids.

This is all available on the web by googling and is quite interesting, so I'm still surprised nobody filled in these details. Again, I don't want to detract from what he has achieved which is still quite hard to do, as well as the fact that these kids obviously have learned a lot of math beneficial to them later in life, which is a great thing. (I would love to have my kids attend his program instead of FCPS, if I had the choice). But people should in general in this country call out meaningless comparisons and fill in the details more, otherwise we run the risk of continuing to become a misinformed society.

[Anonymous]

pettifogger wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, to sum up, a math teacher who can “scout” his own students from a bunch of college professors’ kids wins math competitions? Wow. Call me when he gets a random group of kids and can do the same thing.

You are missing the point. Why is his team dominating all the other teams who also have top talent?

The answer is because he taps that potential at an early age, pushes those kids to maximizes and reach their full potential at every stage. Rinse and repeat.

Same as in the movie Stand & Deliver, which was based on an actual teacher. He achieved crazy impressive results with kids that most others had written off.

I'm quite surprised that given how interesting and catchy this article is, nobody here seems to have bothered to do a bit of research and just simply believed the headline "How a Public School in Florida Built America’s Greatest Math Team" :

When someone claims something is the greatest, one should instinctively ask, by what measure(s)? Reading the article it seems obvious that is based on their teams winning the national championship of Mu Alpha Theta. What does that mean exactly? Or, by what measure exactly is winning Mu Alpha Theta equivalent to being the greatest? Well if we assume Mu Alpha Theta is the most difficult math exam given to high schoolers, then we can conclude that... or can we? First off, if one looks at sample questions from past MAT exams and does a comparison with sample questions from other top high school math contests, one finds that MAT questions are significantly less challenging on average. But let's assume for a second that MAT questions are right there at the top of the challenge level. We still cannot conclude anything meaningful about the greatest without checking who actually participated in these competitions which the Gainsville team won. (It turns out that not many top math teams at elite high schools are that interested in MAT, their normal target is the AMC exams (because they lead to the Olympiad and ultimately the IMO), as well as HMMT, ARML and a few other contests that are historically ultra competitive, prestigious, and known to be difficult). Additionally, if you look at MAT participation rates, most schools come from Florida; it is something that is very popular there, but not necessarily in the whole country.

I don't want to detract from Buchholz and his math team's achievements (which are still impressive), but calling them greatest by the WSJ is not only meaningless without specific measures, but also just plain misinformed when compared to other elite high school math contests such as the AMCs and HMMT. Even at the middle school level, one will find many challenging questions on recent years of the national Mathcounts round that are significantly more difficult than what is found on the MAT.

The rest of the information about how he did it is now easy to piece together. They were obviously able to win so much because not only were they not competing at the highest levels as described above, but they also dedicated an incredible amount of time to practicing MAT questions/topics. For those who have not looked into the details, Buchholz shortly after finding success was at some point given thousands of dollars in funding by private individuals to continue the ability to win, and has consequently used that funding to grow and build a math culture over the years at the school (not unlike what a competitive sports team coach would do). That means that once he became well known for winning, he used that to tap into the most promising students from elementary and middle school to ensure they attend his math team via tryouts/tests, he regularly runs quite long summer camps that meet for multiple weeks and multiple hours a day working on math contests, and he has even been allowed to offer high school courses taken for credit at the school which literally are built from MAT problems (i.e a precalc course would teach the same topics a normal standard precalc course does, but using MAT problems and similar other contest problems, one can see these course descriptions in the school handbook). Additionally, many of these kids are from well off families, which is no surprise, as others above have mentioned, so this is not even close to a Stand and Deliver situation with "written off" kids.

This is all available on the web by googling and is quite interesting, so I'm still surprised nobody filled in these details. Again, I don't want to detract from what he has achieved which is still quite hard to do, as well as the fact that these kids obviously have learned a lot of math beneficial to them later in life, which is a great thing. (I would love to have my kids attend his program instead of FCPS, if I had the choice). But people should in general in this country call out meaningless comparisons and fill in the details more, otherwise we run the risk of continuing to become a misinformed society.

+ Terrific post!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

pettifogger wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, to sum up, a math teacher who can “scout” his own students from a bunch of college professors’ kids wins math competitions? Wow. Call me when he gets a random group of kids and can do the same thing.

You are missing the point. Why is his team dominating all the other teams who also have top talent?

The answer is because he taps that potential at an early age, pushes those kids to maximizes and reach their full potential at every stage. Rinse and repeat.

Same as in the movie Stand & Deliver, which was based on an actual teacher. He achieved crazy impressive results with kids that most others had written off.

I'm quite surprised that given how interesting and catchy this article is, nobody here seems to have bothered to do a bit of research and just simply believed the headline "How a Public School in Florida Built America’s Greatest Math Team" :

When someone claims something is the greatest, one should instinctively ask, by what measure(s)? Reading the article it seems obvious that is based on their teams winning the national championship of Mu Alpha Theta. What does that mean exactly? Or, by what measure exactly is winning Mu Alpha Theta equivalent to being the greatest? Well if we assume Mu Alpha Theta is the most difficult math exam given to high schoolers, then we can conclude that... or can we? First off, if one looks at sample questions from past MAT exams and does a comparison with sample questions from other top high school math contests, one finds that MAT questions are significantly less challenging on average. But let's assume for a second that MAT questions are right there at the top of the challenge level. We still cannot conclude anything meaningful about the greatest without checking who actually participated in these competitions which the Gainsville team won. (It turns out that not many top math teams at elite high schools are that interested in MAT, their normal target is the AMC exams (because they lead to the Olympiad and ultimately the IMO), as well as HMMT, ARML and a few other contests that are historically ultra competitive, prestigious, and known to be difficult). Additionally, if you look at MAT participation rates, most schools come from Florida; it is something that is very popular there, but not necessarily in the whole country.

I don't want to detract from Buchholz and his math team's achievements (which are still impressive), but calling them greatest by the WSJ is not only meaningless without specific measures, but also just plain misinformed when compared to other elite high school math contests such as the AMCs and HMMT. Even at the middle school level, one will find many challenging questions on recent years of the national Mathcounts round that are significantly more difficult than what is found on the MAT.

The rest of the information about how he did it is now easy to piece together. They were obviously able to win so much because not only were they not competing at the highest levels as described above, but they also dedicated an incredible amount of time to practicing MAT questions/topics. For those who have not looked into the details, Buchholz shortly after finding success was at some point given thousands of dollars in funding by private individuals to continue the ability to win, and has consequently used that funding to grow and build a math culture over the years at the school (not unlike what a competitive sports team coach would do). That means that once he became well known for winning, he used that to tap into the most promising students from elementary and middle school to ensure they attend his math team via tryouts/tests, he regularly runs quite long summer camps that meet for multiple weeks and multiple hours a day working on math contests, and he has even been allowed to offer high school courses taken for credit at the school which literally are built from MAT problems (i.e a precalc course would teach the same topics a normal standard precalc course does, but using MAT problems and similar other contest problems, one can see these course descriptions in the school handbook). Additionally, many of these kids are from well off families, which is no surprise, as others above have mentioned, so this is not even close to a Stand and Deliver situation with "written off" kids.

This is all available on the web by googling and is quite interesting, so I'm still surprised nobody filled in these details. Again, I don't want to detract from what he has achieved which is still quite hard to do, as well as the fact that these kids obviously have learned a lot of math beneficial to them later in life, which is a great thing. (I would love to have my kids attend his program instead of FCPS, if I had the choice). But people should in general in this country call out meaningless comparisons and fill in the details more, otherwise we run the risk of continuing to become a misinformed society.

+ Terrific post!

WSJ is owned by Murdoch who has a vested interest in selling BS to people to achieve his political goals.

[Anonymous]

pettifogger wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, to sum up, a math teacher who can “scout” his own students from a bunch of college professors’ kids wins math competitions? Wow. Call me when he gets a random group of kids and can do the same thing.

You are missing the point. Why is his team dominating all the other teams who also have top talent?

The answer is because he taps that potential at an early age, pushes those kids to maximizes and reach their full potential at every stage. Rinse and repeat.

Same as in the movie Stand & Deliver, which was based on an actual teacher. He achieved crazy impressive results with kids that most others had written off.

I'm quite surprised that given how interesting and catchy this article is, nobody here seems to have bothered to do a bit of research and just simply believed the headline "How a Public School in Florida Built America’s Greatest Math Team" :

When someone claims something is the greatest, one should instinctively ask, by what measure(s)? Reading the article it seems obvious that is based on their teams winning the national championship of Mu Alpha Theta. What does that mean exactly? Or, by what measure exactly is winning Mu Alpha Theta equivalent to being the greatest? Well if we assume Mu Alpha Theta is the most difficult math exam given to high schoolers, then we can conclude that... or can we? First off, if one looks at sample questions from past MAT exams and does a comparison with sample questions from other top high school math contests, one finds that MAT questions are significantly less challenging on average. But let's assume for a second that MAT questions are right there at the top of the challenge level. We still cannot conclude anything meaningful about the greatest without checking who actually participated in these competitions which the Gainsville team won. (It turns out that not many top math teams at elite high schools are that interested in MAT, their normal target is the AMC exams (because they lead to the Olympiad and ultimately the IMO), as well as HMMT, ARML and a few other contests that are historically ultra competitive, prestigious, and known to be difficult). Additionally, if you look at MAT participation rates, most schools come from Florida; it is something that is very popular there, but not necessarily in the whole country.

I don't want to detract from Buchholz and his math team's achievements (which are still impressive), but calling them greatest by the WSJ is not only meaningless without specific measures, but also just plain misinformed when compared to other elite high school math contests such as the AMCs and HMMT. Even at the middle school level, one will find many challenging questions on recent years of the national Mathcounts round that are significantly more difficult than what is found on the MAT.

The rest of the information about how he did it is now easy to piece together. They were obviously able to win so much because not only were they not competing at the highest levels as described above, but they also dedicated an incredible amount of time to practicing MAT questions/topics. For those who have not looked into the details, Buchholz shortly after finding success was at some point given thousands of dollars in funding by private individuals to continue the ability to win, and has consequently used that funding to grow and build a math culture over the years at the school (not unlike what a competitive sports team coach would do). That means that once he became well known for winning, he used that to tap into the most promising students from elementary and middle school to ensure they attend his math team via tryouts/tests, he regularly runs quite long summer camps that meet for multiple weeks and multiple hours a day working on math contests, and he has even been allowed to offer high school courses taken for credit at the school which literally are built from MAT problems (i.e a precalc course would teach the same topics a normal standard precalc course does, but using MAT problems and similar other contest problems, one can see these course descriptions in the school handbook). Additionally, many of these kids are from well off families, which is no surprise, as others above have mentioned, so this is not even close to a Stand and Deliver situation with "written off" kids.

This is all available on the web by googling and is quite interesting, so I'm still surprised nobody filled in these details. Again, I don't want to detract from what he has achieved which is still quite hard to do, as well as the fact that these kids obviously have learned a lot of math beneficial to them later in life, which is a great thing. (I would love to have my kids attend his program instead of FCPS, if I had the choice). But people should in general in this country call out meaningless comparisons and fill in the details more, otherwise we run the risk of continuing to become a misinformed society.

Bravo!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always thought tracking was a good thing. It’s what they had when I was in school.

Yep. And proof that SES is not the sole determinant for academic success that people on here like to claim it is.

No one claims it's the sole determinant, just that when you look at the data overall it's an overwhelming predictive factor of academic success. That's just the data.

Tracking might be good for some upper level kids. The ones it was terrible for were those who were stuck in a permanent low track. Once you're in it, you're learning at a slower pace and so moving up is really unlikely. So a kid who was slow to learn to read, had bad handwriting, had an emotional upset or whatever during 2nd grade got stuck. The data is clear on this--the damage from tracking for lower kids was far more than any benefit for the upper level kids.

The alternative that works the best is flexible, compartmentalized ability grouping. So you get grouped by your current ability on a set of skills and receive instruction to suit that and then get pre-tested on the next set of skills to see what level you should be at for that. Unfortunately we've never adequately provided teachers structures and supports that make this kind of differentiation realistically effective. So teachers are told to "differentiate" but are given no reasonable way to do it.

[Anonymous]

I would call Buchholtz a pretty average high school. Buchholtz High School does not offer AAP or IB curriculum. Eastside High School in Gainesville offers the AAP and the IB curriculum. Oak Hall, a private high school also has a lot of the professor's kids.

Kids attending Buchholtz are not on the AAP or IB track.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, to sum up, a math teacher who can “scout” his own students from a bunch of college professors’ kids wins math competitions? Wow. Call me when he gets a random group of kids and can do the same thing.

+1. This scouting idea is what sports have been doing for ages.

[Anonymous]

pettifogger wrote:
I don't want to detract from Buchholz and his math team's achievements (which are still impressive), but calling them greatest by the WSJ is not only meaningless without specific measures, but also just plain misinformed when compared to other elite high school math contests such as the AMCs and HMMT. Even at the middle school level, one will find many challenging questions on recent years of the national Mathcounts round that are significantly more difficult than what is found on the MAT.

I agree with everything you've posted, but it is worth noting that Buchholz had a very impressive performance on the AMCs, as well. They had over 20 AIME qualifiers from the AMC 12A alone.

Greatest math team in the country? No. Greatest math team in a low-middle income smallish town? Quite possibly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, to sum up, a math teacher who can “scout” his own students from a bunch of college professors’ kids wins math competitions? Wow. Call me when he gets a random group of kids and can do the same thing.

+1. We are so desperate for a good STEM story we miss the core story - this guy is basically a gamer. Having said that it is cool he has created a pipeline.

[Anonymous]

Also fascinating it’s a high school in Florida. DCUM constantly wants to take out public school systems that pay significantly less for their schools. Funny how this school is arguably rivaling Blair Magnet in its success at a significant cost reduction. Oh Maryland, my Maryland….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also fascinating it’s a high school in Florida. DCUM constantly wants to take out public school systems that pay significantly less for their schools. Funny how this school is arguably rivaling Blair Magnet in its success at a significant cost reduction. Oh Maryland, my Maryland….

Unfortunately, I don't think this is remotely true. The top 10% of Blair is likely not comparable to the top 10% at any FL school.

[pettifogger]

Anonymous wrote:

pettifogger wrote:
I don't want to detract from Buchholz and his math team's achievements (which are still impressive), but calling them greatest by the WSJ is not only meaningless without specific measures, but also just plain misinformed when compared to other elite high school math contests such as the AMCs and HMMT. Even at the middle school level, one will find many challenging questions on recent years of the national Mathcounts round that are significantly more difficult than what is found on the MAT.

I agree with everything you've posted, but it is worth noting that Buchholz had a very impressive performance on the AMCs, as well. They had over 20 AIME qualifiers from the AMC 12A alone.

Greatest math team in the country? No. Greatest math team in a low-middle income smallish town? Quite possibly.

Given the size of their math team and the amount of consistent, targeted practice, I'd definitely expect them to have multiple AMC qualifiers. Studying for the AMC would also provide benefits to improving on the MAT, and vice-versa, so it's in their best interest to tackle problems at the AMC level. However, I would not expect there to be very many kids that can pass the AIME and have some significant score at the olympiads. There should likely be a few, but not a significant number, unless they also target it (which requires additional skillsets than what's on the MAT, and significantly more time to learn more math).