Reply to The decade-long "learning recession"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is really a school created problem.

When schools noticed that top students deeply understood math concepts, they changed the curriculum for everyone. They assumed that forcing all children to learn through abstract, big-picture thinking would automatically make them better at math. However, this ignored how math skills actually develop.

High-performing students often master the rules, formulas, and repetitive practice first, using that solid foundation to unlock deeper conceptual understanding later. By removing traditional math practice and drill-work from classrooms, schools left average and struggling students without the basic tools they need, ultimately making them worse at both the formulas and the concepts.

For example, students spend a massive amount of wasted time as teachers get them to draw out pictures and circles to understand multiplication, talk about it, and try to construct their own understanding and problem-solving methods. This visual drawing process takes so much more time than traditional math. Furthermore, when they manually count up all those drawings, they have no real way of confirming if the problem is correct because they have no automatic recall to verify it against.

If schools just had students memorize the multiplication tables first, and then did a couple of days' worth of conceptual understanding, the students would have it down quickly. Instead, math students now get no real procedural, repetitive practice, so they don't really develop conceptual knowledge either. They are just low in math all around. [/quote]

Different curriculum works for different kids.  Homeschool parents understand this.  Some kids do very well with conceptual, abstract math and they don't need repetition.  Other kids need traditional math with algorithms and multiplication tables.  I think math is where ed tech makes the most sense.  Put the top kids in something like AoPS and put the struggling kids in a program in a more traditional program. [/quote]

This is not true. All kids need to nail down math facts. Some do it more quickly and instinctively than others, but the way they learn is not different.

Ed Tech does not help at all here. [/quote] It seems you're agreeing with PP - give the fast learners something that teaches the math facts quickly and briefly and review them in the context of challenging problems (which is what Beast Academy does) and give the normal kids something with regular facts practice well into upper elementary if necessary.[/quote]

I do.  I would prefer to send my kid to nature school with amazing teachers and no tech, but absent that option, I'd rather give the kids who are ahead something rigorous online like Beast Academy rather than make them sit and listen to the teacher teach to the lowest denominator how to add and subtract within 20 when they can already mentally add and subtract 4-digit numbers. [/quote]

Part of the problem is that schools aren't using the ed tech appropriately.  My kid was far ahead and allowed to spend most of math class using ed tech.  We requested that he be allowed to use Beast Academy, and the school said "no."  Dreambox, and later ST Math were the county "approved tools," so he was required to use them rather than use his own subscription for a program that actually is good.[/quote]

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