Math 4/5 criteria and range
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Anonymous
Sure kids are lazy, but they aso respond to guidance and rise to challenges. If they are bored at math they might give up on it, which is a tragedy. There's no point in school being so far behind, but they are, so we have to cope. Ther are more fun options than Singapore, though. That's only better than Kumon. |
Anonymous
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here- at our school, there are 2 classes of math 4/5 and 1 class for regular math 4. It does seem that our school has chosen to accelerate most kids.
Some kids do get outside enrichment (RSM, mathnasium, Aops etc) and therefore their scores are so high. But I am sure you don’t need to be 3 years ahead in math from doing outside enrichment to be in math 4/5. So everyone should be fine, even the kids scoring in 75th percentile. [/quote] Seriously I’m not understanding why it’s called acceleration here. Compact math is super slow for my DD and she didn’t get outside enrichment. I let her do some Singapore math book exercises at home since she’s so bored at school.[/quote] You have to consider the entire pathway, which puts the student at calculus in grade 11. That is definitely accelerated by most standards. Maryland requires four years of math in high school so calculus in grade 11 means stats or multivariable senior year.[/quote] Or Stats junior year and Calc senior year. Or Discrete Math which is excellent, fun material that should really be taught before calculus. Or Calc AB then BC if they want to slow down . There is plenty of worthwhile math to do after Algebra 1, and doing it earlier also unlocks learning science in a more meaningful quantitative way. Holding kids back in math causes science class to be dumbed down. |
Anonymous
The regular pace of math is so slow it’s like watching paint dry. Students have to be sufficiently challenged. My child was so bored in regular he developed some awful habits of spacing out for long periods of the day. So thank goodness MCPS finally offers something more interesting starting in 4th grade. They need to extend these opportunities into middle school as well, specifically for ELA. It makes no sense for every student to take the same remedial-type of ELA class. |
Anonymous
omg I was guiding my kid doing a lesson from school. After skimming 4 nearly identical sets of problems I thought, wow, I expected it to be tedious, but I didn't expect it to be this long! Then I realized we had done 4 lessons! It was half a "topic", and the topic had 8 "lessons". Each lesson is 1 day (plus a couple of review/test days for each topic), so we had covered a week of curriculum in one sitting. And remember, in ES a lot.of the content reviews and extends math they already did the previous. I understand that some kids are slower to pick up the idea, but this ain't it, chief. Doing the same problem 20 times doesn't build understanding. They need to see the idea in different contexts to build the intuition. And the word problems are totally inane: 15 variations of "There are 12 boys and 15 girls, so the ratio is 12:15". |
Anonymous
| Ok we get it, all your kids are so smart. But then explain why the most recent mcap data shows kids are way behind in math? |
Anonymous
Bimodal distribution thanks to pandemic. Students who relied on the schools stopped learning 3 years ago. Students whose parents took responsibility excelled. |
Anonymous
This again? 
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Anonymous
DP. I don't have the data, but the theory would seem to fit/answer the question posed. |
Anonymous
At our school, all the kids moved up except a couple who struggled in 4/5 and 5 was more appropriate. Several kids who did math 4 and were very successfully moved up to 5/6 in 5th grade. |
Anonymous
You don't have the data so you're making things up to fit your narrative. Thanks for clearing that up. |
Anonymous
And you have the data to show it's a bell curve? I was just pointing out that a bimodal distribution would explain a decline in the mean without a decline in the population showing a need for acceleration. That, if true, would answer the question. Neither position, either that poster's (presumably based on anecdotal evidence of many from their school) or the other (possibly yours? which seems to presume the low mean score reported as indicative of decline across the spectrum with a normal distribution), is correct with certainty. Only those with the data (MCPS) would be able to say for sure, but they don't typically report deeper stochastic analysis to the BOE/public, much less make that data (anonymized) available for others to review. |
Anonymous
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Around here, most 5th graders in Math 5/6 scored 230-260. As the low end that's close to 1 year (10pts) of growth past the the 4th grade 209 that OP reported.
The few kids who find Math 5/6 very easy scored above that range. |
Anonymous
| My kid scored 83rd percentile in 3rd grade and is now in accelerated math in 4th grade. The sheet with his score listed 80th percentile as the cut-off as well as other criteria such as teacher survey and district assessment. |
Anonymous
How do you know the scores of the other kids in the class? |
Anonymous
Because the kids share their scores. They ask other kids and the tell their scores to other kids in class. |