The following is the email that I sent to Laura Yuen in the aftermath of the publication of her misguided “The kids are doing ‘new math,’ and maybe that’s a good thing” (Star Tribune, Sunday, 7 April 2023). My response reviews the ineptitude and intellectual corruption of mathematics education professors, campus embarrassments even worse than education professors in general who have ruined generations of teachers whom they have ill-trained and who are therefore responsible for the student mathematic proficiency rates given in my communication.
April 11, 2023
Laura---
Attached to this email is a copy of my 562-page book on the Minneapolis Public Schools (Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Conditions, Future Prospect) the result of nine years of research into the functioning of this particular iteration of the locally centralized school district.
The book is structured in three parts: Part One, Facts (approximately 300 single-spaced pages, objectively covering every facet of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS); Part Two, Analysis (approximately 100 single-spaced pages, analyzing the data from Part One and all manner of component parts of the education establishment at the national, state, and local levels); and Part Three (approximately 100 single-spaced pages, giving a concisely comprehensive overview of the history and philosophy of public education in the United States.
I do not as a rule find journalists to be very responsible with regard to those matters about which they write that require extensive reading and research before presentation to the public as articles, columns, editorials, or opinion pieces. I write this note to you in the hope that you are one of the exceptions and will in the course of such reading and research come to understand the philosophical and historical context in which the material that you presented in your Star Tribune article of 9 April 2023, “The kids are doing ‘new math,’ and maybe that’s a good thing,” should be understood.
I have been a teacher of students at the urban core for 52 years and currently undo on a daily basis the damage the education professors of done with their anti-knowledge ideology and their irresponsible approaches to reading and mathematics instruction.
Young people move from grade 5 with little subject area (history, geography, economics, natural science) knowledge, very little grasp of mathematics fundamentals, and lacking the broad knowledge and sophistication of vocabulary necessary to be good readers in middle and high school. Middle school is not much better, and in high school the only hope is to take Advanced Placement courses and hope beyond hope that teachers are actually knowledgeable enough to teach material at that level of rigor. Most students walk across the stage at graduation to collect a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only. One-third of graduates who go on to matriculate at a four-year college or a university are so ill-prepared that they must take remedial courses.
Education professors are objectionable generally and mathematics education professors are objectionable particularly.
Both have ruined generations of students with their putatively “progressive” approaches to education, an outrageous misnomer to which I, as a leftist, take great umbrage, inasmuch as these campus embarrassments have espoused dogmas that have had disastrous consequences for poor children living at the urban core.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
In the New Salem Education Initiative, a North Minneapolis college preparatory that I established 30 years ago, I daily am called upon by parents to undo the damage that education professors and their public education teacher and administrator acolytes have done.
With regard specifically to mathematics, students into high school frequently do not know their multiplication facts, cannot do division (either the “partial sums” variety you described in your article or the more direct approach to which you also referred), cannot reduce or simplify fractions, and have little grasp of decimals, percentages, ratios, or proportions. This seriously inhibits ability to master either the concrete or abstract concepts necessary to thrive in algebra I, geometry, algebra II, FST (functions, statistics, and trigonometry), and calculus--- all of which I teach, getting students through a recovery period and onto a viable track for success in high school and university mathematics.
I am a great believer in the public schools but never trusted the public schools to give my son his education. He attended public school for socialization and a modicum of education, but he got most of his education from me. He was reading both Shakespeare and August Wilson; and performing simultaneous equations (advanced algebraic operations); by the time he was in the third grade.
Ryan (my son) and I always noted how little there is of mathematics to learn, and thus how lamentable the fear and ineptitude that attend instruction and student comprehension.
The necessary sequence is addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions, simple probability, tables and graphs; on that foundation, a student proceeds to algebra I, geometry, algebra II, trigonometry, statistics, and calculus. Students should move through the preparatory stage of the first sequence as efficiently and rapidly as possible, then progress to the more abstract courses in high school upon a strong foundation of fundamentals.
Many mathematics education (as opposed to mathematics) professors are not themselves adept mathematicians. They pretend to be grand philosophers developing deep-think, metacognitive abilities in students. But notice that they do so only at the level of very rudimentary math, arithmetic mostly; the reality is that mathematics education professors never exercise their pretenses upon students taking algebra I, geometry, algebra II, trigonometry, statistics, and calculus:
This would be both unadvisable and beyond their ability.
………………………………………………………………………………
Please consider the damage that mathematics professors have done, as
told in the results from Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) from the
academic years ending in 2018 through 2022.
Then please give me a call or send me an email to agree on a time for you to come to New Salem to discuss with me the results and implications of my research.
I am struck at the lack of intellectual curiosity and desire for accuracy on the part of writers at the Star Tribune, and the reticence to go beyond interviews with public education establishment figures who have given us the results that we witness year after year.
Perhaps you will be the exception.
Perpend >>>>>
Minneapolis Public Schools
(Ed Graff, Superintendent [July
2016-June 2022])
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 45.1% 46.9%
------- 45.9% 34.8%
Mathematics 42.3%
32.0% ------- 35.5%
33.1%
Science 34.3% 36.6%
------- 36.5% 33.4%
St. Paul Public Schools
(Joe Gothard, Superintendent)
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 38.4% 39.5%
------- 33.3% 34.8%
Mathematics 32.8%
32.0% ------- 21.4%
25.2%
Science 29.8% 29.1%
------- 23.7% 25.1%
Anoka-Hennepin Public Schools
(David Law, Superintendent
[through June 2022)
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 65.4% 65.1%
------- 55.5% 54.9%
Mathematics 64.6%
63.5% ------- 48.8%
52.4%
Science 61.4% 60.0%
------- 47.1% 43.2%
Osseo Public Schools
(Corey McIntyre, Superintendent)
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 56.2% 55.0%
------- 50.7% 49.5%
Mathematics 52.6%
49.3% ------- 41.9%
41.7%
Science 43.4% 40.9%
------- 38.8% 34.5%
Fridley Public Schools
(Kim Hiel, Superintendent)
2018 2019
2020 2021 2022
(N/A)
Reading 44.8% 44.3%
------- 34.6% 32.5%
Mathematics 41.8%
37.8% ------- 27.3%
21.5%
Science 30.4% 24.0%
------- 19.4% 17.1%
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Be
well—
With best regards---
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Educational
Initiative
2507 Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis MN 55411
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Gary Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem
Educational Initiative, second edition, 2023)
Foundations of an Excellent
Liberal Arts Education (New Salem Educational Initiative, 2022)
A Concise History of African
America (Seaburn,
2004)
The State of African Americans
in Minnesota 2004 (Minneapolis Urban League, 2004)
The State of African Americans
in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2008)
A Short History of Taiwan:
The Case for Independence (Praeger, 2003)
Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
Greenwood, 1998)
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