The Ultimate crazy administrators comments - Gifted Issues Discussion Forum

From today's meeting with the asst. super of learning and the director of math and science.

The director of math is very firm on beliefs that children are not ready to learn complicated math. He thinks ds has no real understanding of math. That he has memorized his math facts and can't explain how he got to that point. He kept referring back to common core. He also said that a first grader should not be working on multiplication and division... developmentally they aren't capable of learning these concepts.

Sad and very frustrated

I'm trying to explain how the square root of five works to my first grade son. Apparently our current hobby is square roots.

This is the same boy who seems to have no interest in learning how to read.

Originally Posted by frannieandejsmom

The director of math is very firm on beliefs that children are not ready to learn complicated math. He thinks ds has no real understanding of math. That he has memorized his math facts and can't explain how he got to that point. He kept referring back to common core. He also said that a first grader should not be working on multiplication and division... developmentally they aren't capable of learning these concepts.

Pffft. (sigh)

(that was all I was going to write, but I feel compelled to add: WHAT A DORK)

Sorry you had to deal with that.

I'm very, very angry at the moment, for similar reasons. Let's just say I've had a LOVELY, LOVELY day with the "public school typicals" who can't handle my kid's 2e/ADHD. They can bite me.

(Sorry, were we talking about math? oh yeah. In first grade he could multiply and divide and manipulate negative numbers and fractions... he could have taken a number line and tied all the crazy administrators up with it)

Not capable MY A**.

When my ds was in Gr 9 and getting A's in AP Calculus AB, I asked for a meeting of the counselor, teachers and director to decide what he should do for the remaining 3 years since the new director of the private school we were paying tuition to had announced they were going to cut the high level courses. In the meeting, the director told me I shouldn't let my ds do advanced math because the Unabomber was also a genius.

Huh???!

I just left the meeting speechless. In the end, I paid for Stanford college level online courses and asked the school to excuse him from math class so he could do his work on his own in the library.

"7 year olds do not have sufficient metacognitition to learn math any faster than they do in this curriculum."

This came from an admin who had never met my child.

Yuck. I guess in one way it's nice that he made his position very clear, so you need not waste any time trying to educate him or convince him he is mistaken. (We have spent a huge amount of time and effort trying to convince people like this to change things, only to finally realize it was futile--so really, it's good to have that step out of the way here.) The question then is how you get around this person, or get what you need without any help from him. Unfortunate, but maybe if you succeed he will eventually realize the error of his ways and the next kid to come along won't have to deal with this particular problem. Good luck!

Originally Posted by tazi19

In the end, I paid for Stanford college level online courses and asked the school to excuse him from math class so he could do his work on his own in the library.

What was his experience with these courses, may I ask? My 5th grader has exhausted the EPGY curriculum that can be accessed through open enrollment (going up to Algebra I) and we are now thinking of paying for the tutored courses.

At a meeting introducing parents to the Investigations curriculum several years ago, the head of the district math department stated that it was dangerous to accelerate a child more than one year in math. He said that math would "fall apart" for them in college for they would lack true number sense if they didn't go through the spiraling curriculum that Investigations offered in elementary. He then went on to comment that they also would run out of things to do in high school. [Gag].

I am concerned that your principal seems to be seeing Common Core as a ceiling, rather than a floor. If your child already knows and understands the first grade content dictated by Common Core, what is the argument for making him repeat it?

Gifted coordinator to DH regarding DS's private assessment:

"IQ tests before third grade are meaningless and besides you are going to want it to drop a lot because if his IQ stays that high he'll have a really hard time in school"

OMG, KJP. What do you even do with that?! "because he'll have a hard time in school".. Well, any other possible solutions besides "dumbing down"?! <

DD's pre-K teacher yesterday responded to my request to send in math workbooks for the quiet time that drives her nuts with 'she just wants to do math workbooks because her big brother does'. Right. Because a pre-K child that wants to do math couldn't possibly really want to do math and we should never encourage it. Even when it's grade 2 geometry and she's getting it right. Especially when it's grade 2 geometry and she's getting it right. And that was just the start of the conversation. Apparently counters that visually represent 3+2 are the extent of appropriate math for pre-K children...Who knew.

Originally Posted by KJP

Gifted coordinator to DH regarding DS's private assessment:

"IQ tests before third grade are meaningless and besides you are going to want it to drop a lot because if his IQ stays that high he'll have a really hard time in school"

I think my response to that statement would have been, "So, are you suggesting that we lobotomize him?"

Originally Posted by knute974

they would lack true number sense if they didn't go through the spiraling curriculum that Investigations offered in elementary.

Heh. He's lucky there wasn't a smart-alec like me in the audience. I would have raised my hand and asked, "Can you cite the research that show that?"

Don't worry, MegMeg. The companies that sell the curricula sponsor their own research teams that conduct valuable research on the validity of the curricula. I'm sure it's all on the up and up.

Sigh.

DeeDee

Originally Posted by DeeDee

Don't worry, MegMeg. The companies that sell the curricula sponsor their own research teams that conduct valuable research on the validity of the curricula. I'm sure it's all on the up and up.

It's worse than that. The research is often poorly designed by the people who developed the curriculum. Oh, the bogus studies I have read. Common mistakes include assumptions that our method is better (and no control group), an improper control group, and improper use of statistics. Not to mention drawing sweeping conclusions from poor-quality data.

The authors are not necessarily mathematicians, engineers, or scientists, either. For example, peruse the author lists for Everyday Mathematics. I went through the authors listed for the Grade 2 books. There were biographies for 8; four were educators, two were neither educators or STEM professionals, and two were mathematicians (no engineers or scientists listed). BUT one of these two stayed in the education field for his entire 31 year career.

I couldn't find anything about the other two --- including no citations on Google Scholar outside of EM. Doesn't fill me with confidence.

Love that your DD is into geometry! My son is surpassing her teacher's limit at 16 months. Where do they find these people?!