Re: Prolems in Mathematics Education
- From: junoexpress <MTBrenneman@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 09:07:30 -0000
On Aug 28, 10:44 pm, Tim Norfolk <timsn...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Before I try to send these proposals to the MAA/AMS, I would greatly
appreciate
input from those here, to see if what I am observing is just
anecdotal, or a set of
trends.
I recently stepped down as the associate chair of our department. Some
of my duties
included placement of students with prerequisite issues, including
freshmen and
transfers from other universities and colleges. In that process, I
noticed some
disturbing trends, to wit:
1. A significant number of freshmen come to us with high GPA's,
including in
mathematics courses, and claim to have taken a calculus course in high
school,
yet place into our Intermediate Algebra (basically an Algebra I
course), on
several measures, including ACT, SAT, COMPASS test, and our old
department
placement test.
2. Transfers from many other universities and colleges show that the
math
requirement at a lot of schools is at the level of our remedial
Intermediate
Algebra.
3. Many other transfers come from private and public colleges and
universities
with A's in mathematics, yet immediately fail the courses in our
department.
4. Talking with some of our part-time faculty, many of whom are
retired or
moonlighting high school teachers, I have discovered that:
a) Most local students taking AP Calculus do not bother to actually
take the test,
which leads me to believe that they are simply padding their records.
b) I am informed that many Algebra/Trig (or PreCalculus) courses
offered in
high schools move quickly through all of the material in functions and
trigonometry, and then start doing the rudiments of differential
calculus,
since it sounds more advanced.
As background, I am at an open enrollment urban state university,
admitting
about 4,600 students per year. The least prepared are sent first to
our
community college. There, they are put into one of our basic math
courses,
the first being roughly 4th grade, the second about 6th grade. These
courses
enroll 3,000 to 4,000 students per year, about 50% in each. Students
who succeed
in both then go on to either our Intermediate Algebra course (1,200
per year),
or to our baby Statistics course (1,000 per year), which satisfies the
university
math requirement. This leaves only 20-30% to directly enter college-
level
math courses. These figures reflect the national trend, according to a
recent
report which found that 15% of 12th-graders are prepared for college-
level
mathematics.
The buzzword on our campus is retention, and I have attended many
meetings on
the topic. Our university college dean (Ed.D. in Administration) has
not said,
but strongly implied, that the reason for our low graduation rate (32%
after
6 years) is mathematics, despite the very real evidence that the
failing
students are failing orientation, sociology, and pretty much
everything else.
On the political front, our arts & sciences dean (Ed.D. in Counselling
Psychology) and provost (M.A. in Creative Writing, Ed.D. in
Administration), are
"concerned" about our failure rates, and claim that all the students
could pass,
with proper motivation. A previous associate provost (Ed.D. in
Statistics) stated
in public that those same rates were too high and that "no-one needs
to study
algebra". Our engineering dean's office regularly implies that we are
too hard on
their students, although the engineering faculty express the opposite
opinion. Our
business college, like several others in the country, thinks that
requiring a
College Algebra and then business calculus is too much for their
students to
handle, and have tried several times to eliminate any math for them at
all. Lastly,
but not leastly, faculty in our college of education have tried to
tell us how and
what to teach in our calculus sequence, and discrete math courses.
In order to partially address some of these problems, I propose the
following:
A. The MAA, AMS, SIAM (and, if necessary, NCTM) should put together a
process
for accrediting mathematics courses, programs and faculty, similar to
that
done by ABET in Engineering.
B. Since AP Calculus is an anachronism from the days when all college
students
started in calculus (or so I am told by the "old folks"), the same
groups
should prepare national certification exams in College Algebra and
PreCalculus,
so that universities would have some better gauge of the preparedness
of
students.
First, let me say I think your ideas are excellent. The idea of a
standardized curriculum is great, and one would think that with Bush's
penchant for "measurable" standards, it might actually have legs.
However, I see 3 big problems with your ideas. First, it ignores the
big reality that most colleges have become money-making institutions.
Although this is couched in positively spun terms (like referring to
the student as a "client" or "consumer"), the reality is the same.
Anything you do to mess with a college's bottom line (by reducing
"retention" which will produce unhappy "customers" and reducing
business), is going to make the admins unhappy.
Second, administrators are lazy and will always take the easiest path
that will produce the least friction. Reducing standards is always
easier than tightening the old academic belt. This is a huge blanket
generalization, and there are notable institutions (as in the case of
Princeton that sought to reduce grade inflation so a diploma from
Princeton still meant something) that have a serious underlying
concern for academic quality, but I think these cases are the
exceptions and not the rule. When colleges have tried to cast their
economic net so wide that now a person who wants to run a hotel has to
get a degree in hospitality management, (at the two schools I
attended, Univ of Chicago and Carnegie-Mellon, people would have
thought you were joking if you told then your major was hospitality
management) they know that math is not necessary for all of their
students. As a consequence, they will not have any real conviction to
press such reforms.
Third, you run the risk of the teachers teaching to the tests. As you
pointed out yourself, problems abound when you make a test very
important.
Now, all of this is not said to be pessimistic or discouraging, but
these are potential roadblocks I can see. If your ideas could be
enacted on a national level, then it would have a chance. Anyhow, you
have great ideas : if you could "be dictator for a day" there would be
so great improvements, no doubt. You should definitely be part of this
type of debate, and I hope you get the chance to be heard.
Good Luck,
Matt Brenneman
.
- References:
- Prolems in Mathematics Education
- From: Tim Norfolk
- Prolems in Mathematics Education
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