Math support is helping students to build confidence in their skills
The pace moves slower than the typical souped-up high school math class for juniors so when a cheerleader flails her arms in distress, the teacher comes quickly.
“Somebody help! I’m dying here,” said Brielle McQuay, a remedial math student at Marietta High School.
The focus is on mastery -- teaching and re-teaching -- not drilling standards by exam deadlines.
In Math III Support classes, thousands of juniors across the state who barely passed freshman and sophomore math or failed their finals have a second chance to succeed. It is one of the ways schools help teens falling behind get back on track for graduation.
In the support class, general and special education students expected to work at the same level learn how to survive Math III, which has been accelerated to include advanced algebra , trigonometry and statistics under the Georgia Performance Standards curriculum.
And teachers have more leisure time to make lessons stick.
This fall, the state Board of Education upgraded the elective to core credit status for struggling juniors after telling final exam results -- only 52 percent passed their Math II End of Course Tests in May. (About 80,000 teens statewide failed final exams in Math I and Math II last spring.) The state is allowing the remedial course to count as a full year of math toward the four needed for graduation. The upgrade will last for the next two years.
“I think that this intervention was exactly what we needed,” said Sandi Woodall, state mathematics program coordinator. “It has been a fantastic opportunity for students. High schools are making wide use of the opportunity.”
The state also offers a free online course through Georgia Virtual School to help students review Math I, II and III. Mathematics ExPreSS Online is available for free and features sample questions to prepare the Class of 2012 for the new Georgia High School Graduation Test. Parents can also use it to help their kids understand math homework.
Hall County Schools Math III support teachers use the online course to supplement their lessons and track student progress as they teach the 20 standards on the new high school graduation test. Some of the lessons preview Math III skills. "A regular Math III course cannot devote as much time for graduation test review as the Math III Support class," said Melissa Stewart, a Hall math teacher on special administrative assignment who helped to design the state's online course. The district has 17 Math III Support classes.
Math III Support students spend class time reviewing freshman and sophomore math so that when they can enter Math III ready for the rigor. Beginning with the class of 2012, every student must pass four years of math to receive a college prep diploma even if he or she plans to attend a technical school or enter the work force after graduation.
On Friday at Marietta High, juniors and those a few credits shy of the 11th grade reviewed a statistics lesson first taught freshman year. The students had to guess the probability of picking colored marbles from a jar. Teacher Amanda Wicks coached them through the problems. “Keep working at it,” she said. “I’m here every day after school.”
Yesica Garcia, who fell behind in Math I, hit a mental roadblock. “Probability is complicated,” she said. “I’m a visual person, I need to see some marbles.’’
After some help, Garcia called out the right steps to finding the solution. Wicks nodded in approval.
The work in the remedial classes is far more rigorous than many current seniors mastered under the old math curriculum. Most of the math on the old graduation test is what students now cover in middle school.
Said Wicks: “Under the old curriculum, I would teach students for six weeks how to solve a linear equation. These kids came to me in August not only solving linear equations, they can multiply binomials. Their level of understanding math is three-fold.”
In Cobb County Schools, 950 students are taking Math III Support, which is offered at every high school. Most Forsyth and Fulton county public schools offer the support class. At Atlanta Public Schools only Douglass High, Washington High and South Atlanta Health offer the full course, but other campuses will come on line second semester, said district spokesman Keith Bromery.
Gwinnett County Schools students do not take the remedial course alone for full-credit, said Sloan Roach, district spokeswoman. It is still offered only as a companion course for Math III.
About 180 Marietta High students take Math III Support along with Math II or Math III to earn double credits toward graduation. By May, many of the struggling students will have completed all four years of math, said Marietta secondary school math coach Carla Bidwell. "We will strongly encourage them to take another year of math and offer lots of options,” she said. "The class also takes some of the pressure off of those who are behind so they can catch up."
Kelly Ryan, 16, says the course is making her feel more confident about succeeding in Math III and on the graduation test. “In Math I and II they were trying to jam every single thing in such a small period of time and then we would have a test,” she said. “You didn’t have time to grasp every concept … This is so much slower.”
