Anonymous wrote:I don't think it should be called grade inflation. The issue is the curriculum, lack of classwork, and homework. They need to bring back old-style math with textbooks, classwork, and homework. Teachers need to teach a lesson, assign work, go over the work and test. We've only had one teacher in pre cal teach that way and it was wonderful.

They do this at my kids MCPS schools so not sure where you're living.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Math education in MCPS is a hot mess. There are kids who do well despite MCPS. But they are generally from higher income families and have the luxury of math tutors, or parents helping them at home or they are just very bright and pick up math easily. But in general, students are not picking up basic math skills. And worse, they do not understand how to manipulate numbers at the most basic level possible. High school kids have no idea how to multiply or divide without a calculator. They can’t catch any mistakes because they blindly follow problem solving steps with no understanding of what they are doing. Central Office administrators responsible for math should be given a year to come up with a strong plan to completely overhaul math instruction and if they can’t get their act together, they should be fired

The Great Courses
Khan Academy
Textbooks.

Anyone can teach their kids Maths at home if they are literate.

What an ignorant comment. You must not have any children, and if you do, oh boy.

If these kids are learning math that the parents and school board members don't understand, maybe MCPS isn't doing so bad after all?

That is the whole discussion here: are they actually LEARNING.

Many kids are learning, but they may not be learning enough and with enough depth to be considered in grade level by the Common Core standards and thus state testing.

The curriculum at every grade assumes kids are on grade level with math and literacy (really why would it not). It also assumes teachers really understand the standards and are planning, because the curriculum can’t account for the variables in a classroom. Example-A curriculum might provide extra resources for a student struggling to understand a topic. However a teacher needs both the resource and additional time to be able to work with that student. Also, math is meaningless in isolation. It’s a universal language design to explain/help solve problems in other subjects. Which means students need reps not just in practice the math but also using/applying it in real context.

Folks need to realize that the Loznaks at central are not the decision makers. That starts with Hazel, who has some latitude, and goes up. Those below, even if preparing the presentations to the BOE, have that reviewed and edited. When your slide that would hint at an uncomfortable truth gets altered by a superior to obfuscate that, you become loath to respond when the board asks a related question.

I’ve taught on level math in MCPS MS and HS for 19 years. A math coach is not the answer. The problem I see is students in secondary schools who don’t know basic math skills. What’s 7x3? Shoulder shrug. Show me where (3 , -2) is - shoulder shrug. Part of that problem is that they stare at their phone for much of class, and in HS, many students don’t see the importance in consistent attendance. Another new issue is the updated criteria to qualify for certificate track. I teach 2 students with IQs lower than 60. They are struggling tremendously (that’s a separate thread), but their scores and data are included in these reports.

If the answer is scrutinizing grade books, and sending in “math coaches” to help teachers with authentic grade books, grade inflation will continue. The root cause of poor math skills is way deeper than supporting teachers.

Anonymous wrote:Who cares!?! Seriously why get all wound up over this. My teen is in magnet math is doing great. There are wonderful opportunities for anyone who is interested and if you aren't then that's your choice.

“My kid is doing great! Who cares about anyone else in the system?”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What even is the point of inflating grades if there is standardized testing? The disparity comes out eventually.

Is it just about buying time?

Because then MCPS spends all of its time discrediting testing and insisting that MCAP is flawed and shouldn't be believed OR that "some kids just don't test well" when AP/IB scores don't match classroom grades.

MCPS doesn't want to be accountable, which is why the system fights back against any kind of external standardized testing.

One reason I am grateful for MCAP and MAP testing. I feel I get a much better sense of how my kid is ACTUALLY doing I’m so sick of the grade inflation!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Math education in MCPS is a hot mess. There are kids who do well despite MCPS. But they are generally from higher income families and have the luxury of math tutors, or parents helping them at home or they are just very bright and pick up math easily. But in general, students are not picking up basic math skills. And worse, they do not understand how to manipulate numbers at the most basic level possible. High school kids have no idea how to multiply or divide without a calculator. They can’t catch any mistakes because they blindly follow problem solving steps with no understanding of what they are doing. Central Office administrators responsible for math should be given a year to come up with a strong plan to completely overhaul math instruction and if they can’t get their act together, they should be fired

The Great Courses
Khan Academy
Textbooks.

Anyone can teach their kids Maths at home if they are literate.

What an ignorant comment. You must not have any children, and if you do, oh boy.

If these kids are learning math that the parents and school board members don't understand, maybe MCPS isn't doing so bad after all?

That is the whole discussion here: are they actually LEARNING.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Math education in MCPS is a hot mess. There are kids who do well despite MCPS. But they are generally from higher income families and have the luxury of math tutors, or parents helping them at home or they are just very bright and pick up math easily. But in general, students are not picking up basic math skills. And worse, they do not understand how to manipulate numbers at the most basic level possible. High school kids have no idea how to multiply or divide without a calculator. They can’t catch any mistakes because they blindly follow problem solving steps with no understanding of what they are doing. Central Office administrators responsible for math should be given a year to come up with a strong plan to completely overhaul math instruction and if they can’t get their act together, they should be fired

There is no overhauling math in a year for a public school district with 160k students. Especially without a huge influx of resources. Especially since the first overhaul would have to start with Teachers, many of whom don’t understand math. Just because you learned something doesn’t mean you have a firm enough grasp and mastery of the subject material to be great at teaching it to others. It’s the same reason why parents are struggling to help their kid with the homework. Folks keep saying, “we didn’t learn it this way.” True, but the reality is that if you understood the math it shouldn’t take you a long time to understand a different math strategy. Second, you would need more people available in schools and outside of school to provide intervention support for students and coaching/PD for staff. There are only 12 math coaches(8 at the ES level and 4 at the MS level). There’s 134 ES.

MCPS has overhauled math education TWICE since my kids started K. Curriculum 2.0 / Common Core, and then the switch to Eureka / Illustrated. (Eureka /Illustrated might even count as two more, since they switched from one to another for some grades.)

Common Core is not a curriculm. It is the federal guidelines as to what should happen in each grade so its consistent around the country.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Math education in MCPS is a hot mess. There are kids who do well despite MCPS. But they are generally from higher income families and have the luxury of math tutors, or parents helping them at home or they are just very bright and pick up math easily. But in general, students are not picking up basic math skills. And worse, they do not understand how to manipulate numbers at the most basic level possible. High school kids have no idea how to multiply or divide without a calculator. They can’t catch any mistakes because they blindly follow problem solving steps with no understanding of what they are doing. Central Office administrators responsible for math should be given a year to come up with a strong plan to completely overhaul math instruction and if they can’t get their act together, they should be fired

The Great Courses
Khan Academy
Textbooks.

Anyone can teach their kids Maths at home if they are literate.

What an ignorant comment. You must not have any children, and if you do, oh boy.

If these kids are learning math that the parents and school board members don't understand, maybe MCPS isn't doing so bad after all?

That's exactly why there is a problem and they need to fix the curriculum.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Math education in MCPS is a hot mess. There are kids who do well despite MCPS. But they are generally from higher income families and have the luxury of math tutors, or parents helping them at home or they are just very bright and pick up math easily. But in general, students are not picking up basic math skills. And worse, they do not understand how to manipulate numbers at the most basic level possible. High school kids have no idea how to multiply or divide without a calculator. They can’t catch any mistakes because they blindly follow problem solving steps with no understanding of what they are doing. Central Office administrators responsible for math should be given a year to come up with a strong plan to completely overhaul math instruction and if they can’t get their act together, they should be fired

The Great Courses
Khan Academy
Textbooks.

Anyone can teach their kids Maths at home if they are literate.

I think a big part of the problem is we keep looking to the “experts” in Central Office to fix the problems they made, and their idea of fixing it is to double down. Let’s find a commercial curriculum with good results elsewhere, and go with it. I’d rather have a curriculum (any curriculum) produced by subject matter experts, that has a proven track record, than anything our Central Office staff can throw together. A commercial curriculum would provide students a reference to use at home. Moreover, it would allow parents to evaluate the curriculum for themselves. If it turns out to be a flawed curriculum, the weaknesses would be more readily exposed, rather than being hidden with parents only seeing inflated grades and receiving assurances that “MCPS is one of the best school systems in the country.”

I also agree 100% with the PP teacher about calculator dependence. Calculators usage should be saved for advanced math, well after students have mastered basic arithmetic. I was appalled when my children’s elementary started pushing calculator usage in 3rd grade, and instituted the rule that while they should use calculators as directed in the classroom, they were not allowed to use them for homework without asking for specific permission. I think I allowed them to start using their own discretion somewhere around Algebra 2 or Trig.

Eureka Math is used K-Geometry.

No, Eureka is for elementary school math. Illustrative Mathematics is the middle school curriculum.

My apologies. I accept this correction.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Math education in MCPS is a hot mess. There are kids who do well despite MCPS. But they are generally from higher income families and have the luxury of math tutors, or parents helping them at home or they are just very bright and pick up math easily. But in general, students are not picking up basic math skills. And worse, they do not understand how to manipulate numbers at the most basic level possible. High school kids have no idea how to multiply or divide without a calculator. They can’t catch any mistakes because they blindly follow problem solving steps with no understanding of what they are doing. Central Office administrators responsible for math should be given a year to come up with a strong plan to completely overhaul math instruction and if they can’t get their act together, they should be fired

The Great Courses
Khan Academy
Textbooks.

Anyone can teach their kids Maths at home if they are literate.

I think a big part of the problem is we keep looking to the “experts” in Central Office to fix the problems they made, and their idea of fixing it is to double down. Let’s find a commercial curriculum with good results elsewhere, and go with it. I’d rather have a curriculum (any curriculum) produced by subject matter experts, that has a proven track record, than anything our Central Office staff can throw together. A commercial curriculum would provide students a reference to use at home. Moreover, it would allow parents to evaluate the curriculum for themselves. If it turns out to be a flawed curriculum, the weaknesses would be more readily exposed, rather than being hidden with parents only seeing inflated grades and receiving assurances that “MCPS is one of the best school systems in the country.”

I also agree 100% with the PP teacher about calculator dependence. Calculators usage should be saved for advanced math, well after students have mastered basic arithmetic. I was appalled when my children’s elementary started pushing calculator usage in 3rd grade, and instituted the rule that while they should use calculators as directed in the classroom, they were not allowed to use them for homework without asking for specific permission. I think I allowed them to start using their own discretion somewhere around Algebra 2 or Trig.

Eureka Math is used K-Geometry.

PP you responded to

I am delighted to hear that they have implemented a standard curriculum.

- Do you know when it was implemented? I think that until the curriculum audit of 2018, MCPS was using their proprietary Curriculum 2.0. After the curriculum, my understanding was that they were going to select a curriculum and gradually roll it out, but that the rollout was disrupted by COVID. Even if they had the new curriculum in place in Fall of 2018, those Ks still wouldn’t have progressed to high school math yet.

- For those with experience with Eureka Math, what is your opinion? It seems to be fairly rigorous, from what I can glean, emphasizing both conceptual understanding and memorization of basic facts. Do those who’ve seen it feel it provides a solid mathematical foundation? Does it discourage calculator usage in early grades?

From what I can see online there seems to be concern that the math curriculum requires too much reading in the early grades, has that been the experience here?

It seems that Eureka emphasizes methods designed to promote understanding, but is there too much emphasis on learning these strategies, themselves, over learning the actual math?

I am concerned that it appears to be a spiral curriculum, which in my experience means that those who initially master a concept get bored seeing it over and over again each year, while those who don’t master it, forget most of what they did learn, only to be face more challenging levels of that concept with a muddled understanding, making it even harder to wrestle with it.

A PP indicated that MCPS has a problem with teachers who don’t understand math. Would we do better with a scripted curriculum (which Eureka does not appear to be)?

It sounds like this may be a large step in the right direction, but even so, it will take several years for it to improve the level of our graduates.

To be clear many adults generally have a problem w/superficial understanding of math. This makes it difficult to explain a concept in a different way or with different language. Eureka helps with this somewhat because it teaches multiple strategies to solve a problem. The premise being that a) one of those ways is more likely to be understandable by students, and b) as you go deeper in math certain strategies work better for solving certain problems.

Eureka does have a lot of reading in all grades, which while a concern is not in itself a problem because there are pictures and modeling that teachers can do while they read aloud a question. However, that won’t be the conditions under which students will be tested for state testing. Also, when a students literacy and/or math comprehension skills come together, particular in K-3 is not the same for all kids. This is made worse by the fact that because kids are tested every year we focus on math and literacy by removing time from the other subjects where they really are utilized which often helps kids make connection.

Yes there is spiraling in Eureka which can be beneficial in that if kids missed something or haven’t seen it in awhile they get practice, which keeps the skill fresh and gives kids more repetition which helps to cement said skill. Also, if everyone is solid in that skill teachers could skip it. That’s essentially what compacted and accelerated math classes do. They teach a skill at a higher level the first time thereby removing some of the spiraling and lesson build up.

Eureka doesn’t emphasize learning the strategies over learning the math. We as society create that condition. If I give you 20+ random kids with 3-4 vary levels and 2-3 languages and 1-2 with learning disabilities and weeks dedicated to testing and limited time for moving around what are the odds that all the students will be at some pre-defined point by the end of a SY.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Math education in MCPS is a hot mess. There are kids who do well despite MCPS. But they are generally from higher income families and have the luxury of math tutors, or parents helping them at home or they are just very bright and pick up math easily. But in general, students are not picking up basic math skills. And worse, they do not understand how to manipulate numbers at the most basic level possible. High school kids have no idea how to multiply or divide without a calculator. They can’t catch any mistakes because they blindly follow problem solving steps with no understanding of what they are doing. Central Office administrators responsible for math should be given a year to come up with a strong plan to completely overhaul math instruction and if they can’t get their act together, they should be fired

The Great Courses
Khan Academy
Textbooks.

Anyone can teach their kids Maths at home if they are literate.

I think a big part of the problem is we keep looking to the “experts” in Central Office to fix the problems they made, and their idea of fixing it is to double down. Let’s find a commercial curriculum with good results elsewhere, and go with it. I’d rather have a curriculum (any curriculum) produced by subject matter experts, that has a proven track record, than anything our Central Office staff can throw together. A commercial curriculum would provide students a reference to use at home. Moreover, it would allow parents to evaluate the curriculum for themselves. If it turns out to be a flawed curriculum, the weaknesses would be more readily exposed, rather than being hidden with parents only seeing inflated grades and receiving assurances that “MCPS is one of the best school systems in the country.”

I also agree 100% with the PP teacher about calculator dependence. Calculators usage should be saved for advanced math, well after students have mastered basic arithmetic. I was appalled when my children’s elementary started pushing calculator usage in 3rd grade, and instituted the rule that while they should use calculators as directed in the classroom, they were not allowed to use them for homework without asking for specific permission. I think I allowed them to start using their own discretion somewhere around Algebra 2 or Trig.

Eureka Math is used K-Geometry.

No, Eureka is for elementary school math. Illustrative Mathematics is the middle school curriculum.

I don't think it should be called grade inflation. The issue is the curriculum, lack of classwork, and homework. They need to bring back old-style math with textbooks, classwork, and homework. Teachers need to teach a lesson, assign work, go over the work and test. We've only had one teacher in pre cal teach that way and it was wonderful.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Math education in MCPS is a hot mess. There are kids who do well despite MCPS. But they are generally from higher income families and have the luxury of math tutors, or parents helping them at home or they are just very bright and pick up math easily. But in general, students are not picking up basic math skills. And worse, they do not understand how to manipulate numbers at the most basic level possible. High school kids have no idea how to multiply or divide without a calculator. They can’t catch any mistakes because they blindly follow problem solving steps with no understanding of what they are doing. Central Office administrators responsible for math should be given a year to come up with a strong plan to completely overhaul math instruction and if they can’t get their act together, they should be fired

There is no overhauling math in a year for a public school district with 160k students. Especially without a huge influx of resources. Especially since the first overhaul would have to start with Teachers, many of whom don’t understand math. Just because you learned something doesn’t mean you have a firm enough grasp and mastery of the subject material to be great at teaching it to others. It’s the same reason why parents are struggling to help their kid with the homework. Folks keep saying, “we didn’t learn it this way.” True, but the reality is that if you understood the math it shouldn’t take you a long time to understand a different math strategy. Second, you would need more people available in schools and outside of school to provide intervention support for students and coaching/PD for staff. There are only 12 math coaches(8 at the ES level and 4 at the MS level). There’s 134 ES.

MCPS has overhauled math education TWICE since my kids started K. Curriculum 2.0 / Common Core, and then the switch to Eureka / Illustrated. (Eureka /Illustrated might even count as two more, since they switched from one to another for some grades.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Math education in MCPS is a hot mess. There are kids who do well despite MCPS. But they are generally from higher income families and have the luxury of math tutors, or parents helping them at home or they are just very bright and pick up math easily. But in general, students are not picking up basic math skills. And worse, they do not understand how to manipulate numbers at the most basic level possible. High school kids have no idea how to multiply or divide without a calculator. They can’t catch any mistakes because they blindly follow problem solving steps with no understanding of what they are doing. Central Office administrators responsible for math should be given a year to come up with a strong plan to completely overhaul math instruction and if they can’t get their act together, they should be fired

The Great Courses
Khan Academy
Textbooks.

Anyone can teach their kids Maths at home if they are literate.

What an ignorant comment. You must not have any children, and if you do, oh boy.

If these kids are learning math that the parents and school board members don't understand, maybe MCPS isn't doing so bad after all?