What should be in 8th Grade Maths ?

Judy Perry jperryl at ecs.fullerton.edu
Sun Aug 13 20:00:31 EDT 2006


Unfortunately, parts of the US, and especially Los Angeles Unified School
District (California) are more interested in screwing things up via the
"Math Wars" than in increasing test scores:

http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/krantz.html

"The extent to which the California math standards
will be taken seriously by school districts is
difficult to predict.  The superintendent of the Los
Angeles Unified School District, the second largest
school district in the U.S., admonished LAUSD
personnel to take no action to implement the new
standards, arguing instead that the already existing
LAUSD standards were superior. "

http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/krantz.html

"Other Reformers with national stature echoed the
outrage.  Luther Williams, the National Science
Foundation's Assistant Director for Education and
Human Resources,  wrote a retaliatory letter to the
California Board of Education widely interpreted as
threatening to cut off funding of NSF projects in
California.  The lead story in the February 1998 News
Bulletin of the NCTM, ``New California Standards
Disappoint Many,'' ...

http://mathematicallycorrect.com/riley.htm

I just did a little contract research work on this and was disheartened by
what I found.

Think in terms of Tom Lehrer's "New Math":

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/SongUnid/EE27EF26A4F581BE48256A7D002575E1

Judy

On Sun, 13 Aug 2006, Richmond Mathewson wrote:

> Re a recent posting by Dar Scott:
<snip>

> So, as school systems everywhere (well at least in the US, the UK and
> Bulgaria) are a bit slack with the maths, has anybody any idea about
> what Basic Maths is needed to guarantee a bright child (and most of
> them are bright, given the right sort of encouragement and stimulus) is
> not going to come a cropper just when they are getting all excited
> when they find they can do real things with RR (watching a 6 year-old
> produce a simple program is sheer joy).
>
> Plainly: A MATHS CORE for PROGRAMMING SKILLS.




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