Education, Math, and More with Mr. Allison

 They're not necessarily ghost towns, but maybe a modern day version of ghost towns. Rural America is dotted with near-dead towns and communities. Once bustling town squares are now a ragtag collection of vape shops, tobacco stores, and second-hand thrift stores. The ruins of buildings that once housed successful small businesses stand dilapidated next to the new bright shiny Dollar General. Next to nothing is produced here. Most of what is consumed comes from miles away. Small towns that decades ago were almost fully self-supporting are barely surviving on a an IV of government handouts.  It's not a new phenomenon, but one that has been getting worse and worse for decades. Towns close enough to metro areas became bedroom communities for their large neighbors, but opportunity eludes those communities more distant. Rural America has been dying for a long time, kept on life support by a dwindling few who refused to leave. Those few commute long distances to make enough money to ...

*Today I received an email from the Association of American Educators seeking input on the nationwide problem of chronic absenteeism. I wrote what follows. Before reading, understand my criticism is directed at the entire education system, not my own district. Even the anecdotes described are not intended to criticize my district, as the issues described were essentially prescribed by politicians and policymakers far above the school district level.  ********************************************************************************* It's a serious problem, perhaps the most serious problem we face in education today. How can we teach students who don't show up? Who don't make up missed work? Who don't take advantage of the vast resources available to help them learn when they aren't in class? Because that's where we are. Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing more than 10% of class days, is making it virtually impossible to educate this post-Covid generation.  We ...

Here's an interesting study by some Alabama college professors that claims the typical math sequence of American high schools isn't meeting students' needs. Their conclusion is that most kids need less algebra, trig, and calculus, but more statistics and data analysis. I agree, and have said for years, that Statistics is probably the "math" class we teach in high school that is most useful to most students for their future. But I don't think the problem is the typical math sequence in high school. Our problem is we (the math education professional community) have largely lost sight of WHY the math sequence is what it is. It was never implemented because everyone needs to know the sine of 30 degrees, or because everyone needs to know the quadratic formula, or that everyone needs to know the end behavior of a polynomial function. The reason for the sequence is to grow and train PROBLEM SOLVERS. Taught correctly, the math conventional math sequence from 1st grad...

Since I started in education 18 years ago, I've seen wave after wave of reform measures. At that time, No Child Left Behind was gasping for air. Common Core shot to the fore but crashed and burned like an early Spacex rocket. CC was rebranded and repackaged as Race to the Top almost immediately. Every new reform measure to hit the streets was marketed as "research-based" measures as if that moniker meant it was sure to work. Then, a few years ago we stopped hearing the phrase "research-based" when it was replaced with the words "evidence-based." It was like someone high up on the education policy setting food chain suddenly realized that research on reform measures didn't necessarily imply those reform measures worked. But this epiphany didn't make things any better.  So here we are, now in the third decade of the 21st century, with education in America still floundering. According to Michael Seelig in the Stanford Social Innovation Review , 20...

 Math is hard! Even when you're good at it, if you keep learning more math, there comes a point when it's not easy. It takes work and effort and (gasp!!!) thinking. Because it's hard, a lot of kids give up. A lot of parents don't fight too hard when their kids give up because it was hard for them too. Eventually, most students reach a point where taking more math classes is no longer required. Many schools require every student to take an English class every year, but once a student earns four math credits, they don't have to take any more. At that point, why should students take more math? That's the question I want to answer here today. Some do go on and earn five or more math credits. Most of these know their desired career field will require it. Some are pushed by their parents because their parents recognize the benefits of taking more math. A few, very few, have that exceedingly rare quality of enjoying a challenge. Sadly though, most who reach that qualif...

 If you're a teacher, you've heard it. "When am I ever going to use this?" Or, "I am never going to use this!" The older the kids you teach, the more I think you hear it. I teach mostly 11th and 12th graders and I know I hear it plenty.  The truth is very few kids think they're ever going to need to know that Washington crossed the Delaware, the difference between an indirect and a direct object, the acceleration constant due to gravity, or the Pythagorean Theorem. Not all complain, but many do. Every time you try to teach them something! I'm sure I was probably just like them at their age, convinced that nothing I was learning in school would be useful after graduation. Boy was I wrong! When we built our chicken house, I staked out the 650 foot long pad on my own. When the dozer guy came out he couldn't believe how accurate it was. That was the geometry I learned in high school, because I hadn't been to college at the time. Figuring material...

 I've made no secret that I'm a firm believer in the value of the Advanced Placement (AP) program from the College Board. For years, I've advocated to expand the program in my school and others. One argument I hear against schools developing AP programs is that it is difficult to earn a passing score on an AP Exam. This argument suggests that student success is completely determined by scoring well enough on the AP Exam to earn college credit for the course. I posit that a student can find success in an AP course, even if their AP Exam score misses the mark to earn college credit. The AP curriculum is more rigorous than any other high school curriculum I've seen. AP exams are administered worldwide, with qualifying scores earning the student credit for comparable college courses at most universities and colleges. In this world where so many students leave high school with super high GPAs, but are required to take remedial (not-for-credit) courses in college, the mere ex...