The Sacramento Bee notes that, due to "confusion among some school districts," the algebra graduation requirement will be waived for California's high school student this year:
Thursday's decision by the state board was welcomed by some educators and attacked by others, including students, who said it sends the wrong message to young people who worked hard to meet the requirement.
Sacramento High School senior Sara Anderson passed Algebra 1 as an eighth-grader at Sutter Middle School. She reacted strongly to news that waivers could be granted.
"High schools have known for four years that the class of 2004 had to pass an algebra proficiency test or algebra altogether," she said. "The administration should have been looking out for them. And students knew they had to buckle down."
Yes, they did. Despite all the concern shown in this article for students "caught in the middle," bear in mind that those are students who completed four years of high school without ever managing to finish this basic course. Did no one notice that these students weren't moving forward in math at all?
Some districts said they were unaware of the Algebra 1 requirement even though state officials had notified local districts more than once. Others said that when the state postponed the exit exam requirement, they thought algebra also was included.
So this cluelessness is being "rewarded," by pushing kids out of high school with a diploma that will be pretty useless if they plan to pursue higher education or hold a job that requires understanding of math above the eighth-grade level. Way to go, districts.
Even districts that knew the score plan to apply for waivers, presumably because their algebra courses are ineffective enough to require two to three go-rounds:
In San Juan Unified, 4,000 seniors already have passed Algebra 1. Nearly all the seniors currently enrolled in the class are taking the course for the second or third time, school officials said.
Currently, 629 San Juan seniors in 14 comprehensive, continuation and charter schools are enrolled in Algebra 1 or 1B to meet the requirement. Of those seniors, about 150 are special education students.
In other words, 76% of those who didn't manage to master algebra in four years are not special education students. There's no rationale for giving them a pass; the San Juan director's comments about the lack of "extensive tutoring" is ridiculous. And why is everyone bending over backwards to be "fair" to the 13% of San Juan seniors who haven't passed the course, when the other 87% did their work? Is it "fair" to those who succeeded to give everyone the same diploma?
Many educators and students have stressed that most students can pass Algebra 1. "I don't understand people who are still taking algebra their senior year," Sac High's Anderson said. "They have had four years to pass it. That is four years to understand the concept of balancing equations and solving for X."
And the legislators are already trying to get involved, in hopes of making things worse:
Meanwhile, two state legislators are considering introducing legislation to postpone the algebra graduation requirement for at least one year. Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said he wants to make sure that no student is deprived of a diploma without ample notification of the algebra standard and adequate opportunity to pass the class. He said he has been discussing the matter with Sen. Charles Poochigian, R-Fresno.
Yeah, we can't have students who don't understand high-school math being "deprived" of that piece of paper that will be of such service to them. This confusion of the diploma itself with the skills behind it - as though the diploma, and not the coursework, confers understanding and mastery - never fails to astonish me.
Back on the East Coast, a Florida legislator wants to know if the FCAT was dumbed down:
Senate Minority Leader Ron Klein of Boca Raton said he has fielded many calls from teachers who believe this year's FCAT is considerably easier than last year's when thousands of third-graders failed and were retained.
''If an independent evaluation shows that this test is remarkably different and easier than last year, I'm going to claim that this is a fraud on the people of Florida. . . . I hope that's not the case,'' Klein said.
Gov. Jeb Bush called the watering-down notion incorrect, and said it was impossible that the test has been intentionally made easier...
States contract with testing companies, which create questions that are tested to determine their validity. Tests use new and repeat questions, so that they have a similar degree of difficulty each year, said Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute, which has studied standardized testing.
Anyone got any inside information on this? Certainly, a heavy reliance on repeat items jeopardizes test security; copies of old tests can be used to study for the new test, and that sort of cheating would explain the testing behavior.
Posted by kswygert at March 17, 2004 10:36 AM