THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Garbage In, Garbage Out: Part II: USA Today reports that since the mid-1990s schools nationwide have been pushing more middle-school students to take algebra and geometry (“algebra for everyone”), but a new Brookings Institution study finds that the lowest-performing middle-schoolers “are in way over their heads,” because they have not mastered multiplication, division and problem-solving with fractions and other basic math skills.
[R]esearcher Tom Loveless looked at the skills of eighth-graders taking advanced math, he found something startling: Between 2000 and 2005, the percentage of very low-performing students in advanced math classes more than tripled.
Using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, he found that among the lowest-scoring 10% of kids, nearly 29% were taking advanced math, despite having very low skills.
How low? On par with a typical second-grader's, Loveless says. They lack a solid foundation in multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, rounding or place value. Yet they were tackling fairly sophisticated math.
"It's hard to teach a real algebra class if you have kids who don't know arithmetic," he says. …
"It's really counterfeit equity," he says, noting that the mismatch inordinately affects black, Hispanic and poor kids in urban schools.
Nonetheless, University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Adam Gamoran, a proponent of pushing low-achieving high schoolers into algebra classes, insists there is value in challenging such students to do harder math, but conceded the execution of the concept is less than ideal. He wants algebra concepts “introduced earlier in students' mathematical studies - it's not like there should be no algebra and then, in eighth grade, all algebra.”
† Is Kozinski The Victim Of A Vendetta?: After Alex Kozinski recused himself from a federal obscenity trial against film producer Ira Isaacs the case ended in mistrial. U.S. District Judge George King, who was then assigned to the case, has brushed aside double jeopardy objections, and ruled that Isaacs can be retried, reports The National Law Journal.
† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Some Questions Are Best Not Asked): The CA Supreme Court denied a request by UCLA law professor Richard Sander for an order compelling the State Bar to provide him with historical data - including race and academic credentials - on students who took bar exams, reports The Recorder. Sanders wants to examine whether race-based policies allowed academically unprepared minority students to attend elite law schools, only to flunk out. Sanders argues that there would be many more black lawyers in practice today had they attended less prestigious schools where they could have done well. Sander’s attorney will refile the request in a state superior court.
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