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Thursday, January 25, 2007
Cox: Math Is The Problem And Solution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
How’s this for a conversation starter? State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox says a history of “math tracking” has been “a death sentence” for Georgia’s students.
Cox, who calls herself a “data geek,” launched into an energetic Power Point presentation at the education reporting conference I attended last week, showing why she thinks the way math has been taught in Georgia has been holding students back.
“What I’m going to show you isn’t pretty, but it’s the truth,” she said, before demonstrating how math skills for all students worsen after fifth grade, and that disparities between student groups (white, black, and Latino) grow over time. “This is what is so incredibly unacceptable.”
A former social studies teacher, Cox blamed years of “low expectations” for some students and a poor math curriculum that allowed pupils to get away with taking dumbed-down classes for the state’s low scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the SAT.
“We’re not doing something right and what that has to do with are a lot of low expectations,” she said.
The new math curriculum, which is being phased in now, will address some of that by requiring sixth-graders to begin learning algebra and finish middle school with some geometry skills. The other part of the equation, Cox said, will be new high school graduation requirements, which a state committee is currently developing.
Those new diploma standards are expected to require all kids to take a minimum of algebra II before they graduate. Right now, the superintendent said, only about 20 percent of Georgia’s graduates do.
If that plan sounds ambitious, consider Cox’s concluding remark: “This is probably the single most important thing I believe we are doing for the future of Georgia.”
