Unconventional teacher builds top math program at ordinary FL school

[Anonymous]

Never heard of this competition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never heard of this competition.

Me too, but maybe I missed that one on the AoPS site.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More evidence in support of the AAP center model. Sticking smart kids together will help them. Level 4 at every school will not produce the best results.

Sticking the smartest kids from each school together might benefit them a little but at everyone else's expense.

No one else is harmed by the center model. Parents just like complaining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is cool, but not totally surprising that it’s a Gainesville school. Gainesville is home to the University of Florida and Buchholz probably has lots of high achieving professors’ and doctors’ kids who far outperform the average.

Exactly. As soon as I saw Gainesville, I knew the drill.

[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.

Take a look at what the racial composition is, from this news article's picture:

https://www.mainstreetdailynews.com/education/buchholz-math-wins-national-title

I’m from near Gainesville and honestly surprised that there are even that many Asian families in the entire town. Talk about selecting your pipeline.

[Anonymous]

So scouting the best students from a district to win a lesser math contest doesn't sound all that unconventional.

[Anonymous]

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.

It's disturbing that people don't realize this is rigged.

and are using this to promote the idea that the slow kids need to be kept away from the bright kids.

I have a bright kid with an IEP who was always stuck in the lowest level classes. They got the worst teachers. His freshman english class was useless. He said they learned nothing and repeated the same grammar lesson again and again.

To play devil's advocate here, perhaps some kids in that class needed that much repetition? Maybe your kid wasn't where he should have been - he needed to be in a class that went a little faster. This is exactly the argument for AAP.

FWIW, lousy/lazy teachers don't show up only in gen Ed. For just one example, I had an honors MS English teacher that did nothing all year but give us word search puzzles because he assumed we didn't need instruction because we were the smart kids. His gen Ed classes actually got taught things

[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.

How many other school systems will let a high school math coach decide on which kids to put on a math track in ES?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More evidence in support of the AAP center model. Sticking smart kids together will help them. Level 4 at every school will not produce the best results.

Sticking the smartest kids from each school together might benefit them a little but at everyone else's expense.

No one else is harmed by the center model. Parents just like complaining.

Teachers teach to the middle. Remove the top, and the middle the rest are left with is lower

[Anonymous]

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.

How many other school systems will let a high school math coach decide on which kids to put on a math track in ES?

lol, it's easy, the smart high school math coaches should get involved with the AAP selection process. As a math major from a top US university, I can tell you this can be easily achieved based on IQ scores and sample works. Have bunch general ed teachers for this selection can never achieve this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous 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.

How many other school systems will let a high school math coach decide on which kids to put on a math track in ES?

lol, it's easy, the smart high school math coaches should get involved with the AAP selection process. As a math major from a top US university, I can tell you this can be easily achieved based on IQ scores and sample works. Have bunch general ed teachers for this selection can never achieve this.

when you specify US university, you out yourself as a troll

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More evidence in support of the AAP center model. Sticking smart kids together will help them. Level 4 at every school will not produce the best results.

Sticking the smartest kids from each school together might benefit them a little but at everyone else's expense.

No one else is harmed by the center model. Parents just like complaining.

Teachers teach to the middle. Remove the top, and the middle the rest are left with is lower

NP, so? In an ideal world you'd have tracking for high, medium and low levels. Are you saying that low levels wouldn't benefit from their own curriculum? They should be taught more akin to a vocational school and allow the kids to gain real life skills and certifications. They'd still have the HS diploma.

We are wasting our geniuses by not having more tracking and opportunities for them. (And I have no bias here. My kids are smart, but not geniuses)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More evidence in support of the AAP center model. Sticking smart kids together will help them. Level 4 at every school will not produce the best results.

Sticking the smartest kids from each school together might benefit them a little but at everyone else's expense.

No one else is harmed by the center model. Parents just like complaining.

Teachers teach to the middle. Remove the top, and the middle the rest are left with is lower

NP, so? In an ideal world you'd have tracking for high, medium and low levels. Are you saying that low levels wouldn't benefit from their own curriculum? They should be taught more akin to a vocational school and allow the kids to gain real life skills and certifications. They'd still have the HS diploma.

We are wasting our geniuses by not having more tracking and opportunities for them. (And I have no bias here. My kids are smart, but not geniuses)

PP said that no one is harmed when the smart kids are removed from a class. That's not true the kids in the middle are. If you also remove the slow kids, then it works out, but that won't happen anymore.

[Anonymous]

Buchholz sends a couple of kids to USAMO most years, and scores near TJ and Blair at ARML.

MAT is very popular/competitive in Florida but not popular much anywhere else.

The AoPS curriculum uses some problems from old MAT contests.


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[Anonymous]

I think this is great. I can’t understand why we can scout high performing athletic kids to high school, but not high performing academic kids. It is totally backward.