VA math changes - ways to speak out

[Anonymous]

Instead of us just talking to each other on DCUM, let's use this as a way to brainstorm how to elevate this issue politically and make sure elected officials know where we stand.

I drafted this brief letter and emailed it to the department of education. I also CCed Terry McAuliffe's campaign and officials from the VA Democratic and Republican parties. ([e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail])

Once there are town halls with the candidates for governor, it will be important that people ask about this issue. If people have other ideas, please add them here. If you like my letter, feel free to cut and paste it and use it yourself. If you hate it, write your own or draft a better one here and people can send that one instead.

Dear Virginia Department of Education,

As a parent in Virginia, I am very concerned about the proposed changes to the math curriculum, specifically the plan to eliminate accelerated math. If this plan moves forward, students who love math and want to be challenged will instead be bored and likely will not have the strong math background needed to prepare them for calculus and other college-level math courses. While some changes may be needed to the Virginia math curriculum to make sure that all students leave public schools with a solid understanding of key math concepts, those changes should not come at the expense of the state’s strongest math students.

This issue is extremely important to me and I will be asking the Virginia gubernatorial candidates where they stand on these changes during the upcoming campaign season. In the meantime, I ask that you go back to the drawing board and develop a math education program that supports all students and does not hold the state’s strongest math students back.

[Anonymous]

There are a lot of parent groups that have formed to advocate for RTS. I’d reach out to them to start raising this issue within those groups but also to reach out to those that are most vocal. They’ve been advocating at the state level and may have some insight for you. There is much wrong with public education these days and more is being exposed as parents pay more attention.

[Anonymous]

I think it is important to collect material to raise awareness in the public first. People can then forward this to people and then you can push for candidates to take action.

[Anonymous]

I think it’s important to ask for specific data showing how this is going to help students who are at or above grade level. If those students aren’t passing advanced on the math portion of SOLs, doing well in Algebra in 7th grade, or not passing Calculus or BC AP exams in the expected numbers, VDOE has a case for offering enrichment and not acceleration. If those students are doing well where they are and have the test scores to prove it, VDOE needs to provide data that supports putting them in a class with their peers who are one or two or three grade levels behind. How is that going to be beneficial for these students?

I’d also like to know how many districts that piloted this method plan on keeping it long term. And whether Virginia is planning to include the other interventions such as two teachers per classroom and lots of extra support for the struggling students. They’ve been awfully silent on certain details.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of parent groups that have formed to advocate for RTS. I’d reach out to them to start raising this issue within those groups but also to reach out to those that are most vocal. They’ve been advocating at the state level and may have some insight for you. There is much wrong with public education these days and more is being exposed as parents pay more attention.

Do you know the names of these groups or hoe to contact them? I tried googling around but didn't see anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of parent groups that have formed to advocate for RTS. I’d reach out to them to start raising this issue within those groups but also to reach out to those that are most vocal. They’ve been advocating at the state level and may have some insight for you. There is much wrong with public education these days and more is being exposed as parents pay more attention.

Do you know the names of these groups or hoe to contact them? I tried googling around but didn't see anything.

In Arlington, the group is Arlington Parents for Education (APE), they have a facebook group. You can also join AEM (Arlington Education Matters) and post there.

[Anonymous]

OP, can you link to some information on this change? I haven’t heard anything about it except here and I’m curious to read more about it. I doubt it would affect my 7th grader who is already tracked, but how quickly is it happening? I also have a 4th grader.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I never thought I would say this but I actually support the changes that VA is going to make.

It will almost certainly go through because too many parents are disillusion regarding their kids abilities and their kids never learn the basics of math and this becomes evident in high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never thought I would say this but I actually support the changes that VA is going to make.

It will almost certainly go through because too many parents are disillusion regarding their kids abilities and their kids never learn the basics of math and this becomes evident in high school.

What evidence do you have that these changes will actually lead to kids gaining a better understanding of the basics of math? Serious question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, can you link to some information on this change? I haven’t heard anything about it except here and I’m curious to read more about it. I doubt it would affect my 7th grader who is already tracked, but how quickly is it happening? I also have a 4th grader.

Thanks.

Your 4th grader would be impacted, here is the link to more info

https://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/mathematics/vmpi/index.shtml

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never thought I would say this but I actually support the changes that VA is going to make.

It will almost certainly go through because too many parents are disillusion regarding their kids abilities and their kids never learn the basics of math and this becomes evident in high school.

What evidence do you have that these changes will actually lead to kids gaining a better understanding of the basics of math? Serious question.

OP here, I would support reconsidering how to teach math to non-accelerated students so that they get more of a grounding in statistics and other topics everyone should know for their everyday life. But my fear is that the changes being proposed would leave people who want to major in STEM fields unprepared. It is not clear to me how getting rid of accelerated math helps non-accelerated students. Instead I would love to see the state develop programs to provide additional support to all students and to give any student who expresses an interest an opportunity to try the accelerated track.

Personally I am skeptical this will go through because policies with concentrated costs and diffuse benefits are very tough politically (although in this case I would argue that there may not be any diffuse benefits). But if parents don't speak out to elected officials, it could easily go through.

[Anonymous]

I realize this is not the point, but that page has some terrible "infographics."

Quotation marks because color + arrows + boxes does not actually equal infographics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never thought I would say this but I actually support the changes that VA is going to make.

It will almost certainly go through because too many parents are disillusion regarding their kids abilities and their kids never learn the basics of math and this becomes evident in high school.

What evidence do you have that these changes will actually lead to kids gaining a better understanding of the basics of math? Serious question.

OP here, I would support reconsidering how to teach math to non-accelerated students so that they get more of a grounding in statistics and other topics everyone should know for their everyday life. But my fear is that the changes being proposed would leave people who want to major in STEM fields unprepared. It is not clear to me how getting rid of accelerated math helps non-accelerated students. Instead I would love to see the state develop programs to provide additional support to all students and to give any student who expresses an interest an opportunity to try the accelerated track.

Personally I am skeptical this will go through because policies with concentrated costs and diffuse benefits are very tough politically (although in this case I would argue that there may not be any diffuse benefits). But if parents don't speak out to elected officials, it could easily go through.

+100 I had to roll my eyes multiple times watching their webinar. They talk a good game about the importance of statistics and the rise of data science (absolutely stats is important!) but higher level math is also important. My son will be starting college as a data science major and I doubt he'd have as good college outcomes if he didn't have calculus on his HS transcript (both AB and BC plus AP stats and another DE data analysis class).

And, their reasoning that kids shouldn't take calculus in HS because most re-take it in college makes no sense. College calculus goes at a faster pace and it is really helpful to have been introduced to it in HS if you are continuing on with math for a STEM major. IMO, fine to skip it if it's really the only higher math required for your major (as it was for my business major long ago) or if you really aced it and feel 100% solid on it before going to the next level but anything less than that, you probably should re-take it. That doesn't mean there was no value to taking it in HS. My son with AB/BC is allowed to skip the first calculus class but while BC technically is billed as Calc 1+Calc 2, he's not allowed to skip level 2 since it's a required major class.

[Anonymous]

Yup anyone who had taken a statistics course taught by a college math department would know that you need to take calculus and linear algebra first. In fact, UVA's interdisciplinary stats major requires calculus. Did the people who are behind this talk to a single math professor?

https://statistics.as.virginia.edu/interdisciplinary-major-applied-statistics

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never thought I would say this but I actually support the changes that VA is going to make.

It will almost certainly go through because too many parents are disillusion regarding their kids abilities and their kids never learn the basics of math and this becomes evident in high school.

What evidence do you have that these changes will actually lead to kids gaining a better understanding of the basics of math? Serious question.

It's no secret that taking the time to learn the basics of Math well and gain a great understanding will be beneficial.

Most kids are rushed through and by the time they get to high school they are struggling and need a tutor to get them through their higher level math classes.

Most accelerated classes all throughout the schools years make allowances for students who aren't doing well by doing things to prop up grades like grading homework participation, giving many retakes and so on.

Now that my child is in high school and does really want to go into a STEM field and we are looking at colleges, we are finding that many students once they get to college are repeating their advanced math courses from high school in college. Even when the student gets a high AP exam score. Some schools for some majors seem to require the student take the math courses at their school.