Reply to Not being in Math 4/5?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The decision made in 3 rd grade impacts your kids through high school with the new math tracking - so I would fight for getting my kids in the compact classes.   [/quote]

NP here.  My kid was in compacted Math 4/5 last year in HGC.

It was the biggest disappointment ever.  I do not care if my kid is accelerated or not, but I expect mastery of concepts at grade level.  The teaching was so damn spotty, the teachers so ill-prepared and clueless, the process, curriculum not at all transparent, that these kids learned NOTHING.  Now most of the HGC parents are taking outside help, not because these kids cannot handle the math that is being taught - but because we want them to actually ignore what is being taught and actually learn grade level Math of previous years.

Frankly - Math has been a pile of horse manure for the past year in HGC. I do not understand why you would fight tooth and nail to get your kids into the compacted Math? Sit with a textbook and teach them Math - and then also teach them to write BCR explaining the process of arriving at the solution - so that they can handle the MCPS requirements.

As it is US schools were lagging behind in Math - now they are even further behind. Reminds me of the movie "Idiocracy"!    [/quote]

I agree the MCPS math  for 4 and 5th grade is bad ( both at HGC and home schools). However, the point is that if a child is not in the Compacted Math starting in 4/5 grade then they will not be taking IM in 6th, Algebra in 7th etc as it tracks forward through high school. - they will never be able to "catch up" and be placed in the with the more advanced math kids in their grade.   Not all kids are math focused but for those that are focused on Stem, the 3rd grade selection process really sets the tracking through high school. [/quote]

But pre 2.0, wasn't tracking done then, too, even earlier?  So wasn't this a problem pre 2.0 as well?[/quote]

No, "missing the train" wasn't a problem in preC2.0 acceleration opportunities.

Under the pre2.0 system there were more opportunities to "change tracks".  If you look at the old "math pathways" pamphlet that MCPS put out (see here http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/redlandms/academics/math/Pathways.pdf)  there were MANY different acceleration options starting as young as K, lasting up to 8th grade, and including 2 yr acceleration (which no longer exists under C2.0).  This allowed the math curriculum to fit the student.  Some kids were ready to skip 2 years in K, some skipped one year early and another year later.   It also allowed kids who came into the system from the outside to have access to accelerated math.

Under pre C2.0 curriculum, choices for acceleration were expanded even further by allowing school to teach a class "with acceleration".  In other words, the 3rd grade teacher would teach 3rd grade math plus 4th grade math.  The 4th grade math was treated as "challenge."  Unit tests included graded test questions for both 3rd and 4th grade math, with 4th grade Qs clearly labelled as challenge.  The grade for the year was based on the on grade level test questions only.  Students were pre in the beginning of each year.  Students unit tests showed clearly what math skills they had mastered from the on grade level material as well as the above grade level material.  Some students could complete 2 years of math in one year this way and, thus, skip appropriately.

Now under C2.0, there appears to be only 1 point in time to get on the acceleration train and that is between 3 and 4th grade, and a student can only be accelerate 1year (unless, maybe, they go to summer school in high school to get ahead).   I think this is bad education policy.  [/quote]

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