DS12 is in Algebra II Honors this year, and I can already see that we're going to have a rough time of it. It's e-school, and the online textbook (Holt, and alarmingly titled as the Common Core Edition) has already shown us two practice problems with the wrong "correct" answers. The teacher emailed him back about one of his formulas in a test problem, *asking* him if it should be something else instead, and no, it shouldn't. And that same test problem was phrased as asking for an explicit formula f(x) when it should have been asking for a-sub-n exponential one instead. This is only week 2.

And I didn't have Algebra II when I was in school, back when the world was young, so we're already out of my useful territory. I have to stay ahead of him in his class in order to have any hope of being able to help him sort these things out.

Oh, dear. Sounds dreadful.

Nautigal, can you find a plan B? Which could mean a homeschool tutor (college students work for a reasonable rate), or an in-person course, or a different e-course with functional materials?

DD used the Holt curriculum for pre-algebra in a flipped math situation (she watched 2 min. long online videos with very little actual real-life teacher instruction). I wasn't very impressed with the book or the videos and feel like we now need to re-wind and start over.

Oh dear.


I know that I have a few threads re: high school math courses taken under similar (woefully so) circumstances, Nautigal. People on the forum were VERY gracious in coming up with better supporting resources than we'd been given via the school.

Working alongside your child is about the only way that I know of that actually works well under these conditions. I'm so sorry.

Perhaps you can use Art of Problem Solving? From my DS12's experience it has been really great.

Well, fortunately (?) I already have to do that with him, just to keep him focused and working. It's just tougher, having materials I can't trust, having to figure out what's wrong with them first.

Seems I've looked at AOPS before, and it's expensive?

Oh, thanks -- I'll have to look at that and see if we can get anything useful out of the videos or Alcumus.

I've started a log of errors, since we discovered two more in yesterday's work.

We started on section 1.3 today, and BOTH of the examples in the first demonstration page on how to find the equation of a line were wrong. How do they expect kids to learn from this?

It really gets me questioning my methods, too -- I have to keep trying it over and over again to convince myself that I really am right and the book is wrong. Even when I come up with a formula and plug one of the numbers in and it comes up with the other one, I still have doubts, just because BOTH of the "solutions" they show are wrong. God knows what the KIDS are thinking!

And the teacher hasn't once come forward in a discussion post or anything to say, "oh, by the way, there's this problem with such and such, so please ignore it," so I have to think nobody's asked her about any of these things yet.

We're going to be having a serious talk soon.

I remember this very bitterly from the year that DD took algebra II-- and again for Precalc/Trig. I'm so sorry.

What we found eventually helped was purchasing older editions of a few textbooks (thanks to the community members here who recommended resources)-- and I worked a lot of problems WITH my daughter. Basically, I took the place of a classroom teacher, since there, um-- wasn't any real instruction happening.

I can't say that I think Pearson is BETTER than Holt in any meaningful sense, pedagogically. In fact, just-- no-- to that idea.

What Pearson DOES have going for it is a website that includes homework "tutorial" videos that accompany each section in their math textbooks. There are also quizzes there to check in, and mostly, at least the solutions are correct. Pearson's materials are generally less error-laden than what you've described so far.

I don't know if that helps you any or not, but that is what I would do under the circumstances. Another, better online course, naturally would be a BETTER solution-- but probably not realistic. If your online provider is anything like ours was (and I'm guessing you're with "the other one" here ) then it's simply not an option. Administration will never accept it, because they OFFER the course... yes, this is ridiculous, but it's what they'll say.

Also true that it's not really fair to expect a student to learn everything through an EPGY/AOPS course and THEN also deal with this sort of nonsense on the side. It's like teaching someone to fly a highi-performance drone successfully while a swarm of gnats follows them everywhere. {sigh}

All of that to say that I understand exactly where you're coming from, and the constraints you're up against here. Your child NEEDS this class. THIS class. And it's basically... um... well-- FUBAR, I think, is the military term.

Learning the material is obviously very very important, as this is THE foundation year for the calculus sequence as it is now taught, IMO. At the same time, I have no idea just how students are expected to learn from anything so wrong-headed and error-riddled. My suspicion is that they DO NOT.

I'm going to echo what HowlerKarma and black at wrote. In summary, the only way you'll win here (i.e. ensure that your daughter learns the material) is to not play the game.

My daughter was given a miserable algebra book last year. You may find as time progresses that it's not just that the answers are wrong, but the material is presented in a mixed-up out-of-order way that confuses students.

In our case, I met with the school and convinced them to let me teach her out of a decent book (Brown Algebra 1 supplemented with stuff I put together and AOPS books). The school lets her watch Khan videos and do Khan problems. Khan is at least mathematically correct in its approach and the problems are rarely wrong (and they ask yountontell them if they are). Would your daughter's school be open to that? Or could you not play the game at all and blow them off?

Your daughter will likely do better with you acting as a co-learner while going through a well-thought-out curriculum than going through what you've described without really being taught anyway.

The sad reality is that students don't learn mathematics from these kinds of corporatized materials. By this, I mean that Big Ed companies hire underpaid semi-knowledgable contractors to write the books, and their ignorance, combined with deadline pressure, ends in the mess you're experiencing. I'm a math book collector, and have seen this problem again and again. It's the rule right now (hence HK's note about getting OLD books).

Have you tried a tutoring device like the Mathnasium?

My sympathies! DS, due to a double subject acceleration, is also doing an Algebra II course through our district's own e-school during his brick & mortar school hours. It's not our choice but sometimes it's better to go with the flow, at least for the time being. DS prefers that I stay out of it and frankly I am sort of afraid to look too closely at the moment! I haven't seen a textbook, online or otherwise and can't seem to get an opinion from DS - I think he wants to wait and give it some time. However, there have been issues with the computer/system preventing input of his correct answers, but it may have been the school computer. However, his e-school teacher was responsive when DS messaged her with his issues and provided him the with a file listing the questions to be re-answered, which he sent back to her with his original answers.

At least in DS' case, the course answers were correct and it was just a technical glitch. I can't imagine dealing with a course with mostly wrong solutions. That's just crazy! In the past, my kids have used online resources from major publishers at school and there had been occasional errors but they were few and far between. It's ridiculous that a major publisher like Holt would continue to provide an online course with so many errors and even worse that your DS' teacher can't spot the errors.

Although it may not help, I would definitely email your teacher and cc the adminstration once you have compiled a dozen or so major errors. Schools have been known to switch publishers easily enough or at least demand some kind of corrective supplement.

Yes, this is e-school as opposed to "an online course" -- that is, it works through a school district, the JeffCo (Jefferson County) schools in Denver, and is offered to seven counties down here in the southwest corner of the state as well.

I will be complaining about the course materials, and whether I will also be complaining about the teacher depends on what she has to say when I send her this mess. I don't think there is another teacher for this class, and if there was, it would still use the same materials.

I do still have my old algebra textbooks, which has occasionally been helpful -- at least I can look and see what that thing was called back when I took the class. It seems to still be the same algebra, but they call things by different names now.

And I've found my old college algebra teacher on Facebook, in case I need backup.

When DD was working through Prentiss Hall everyday math it was soooo bad that she was inspired to work ahead so that she could use a different math series (the high school level had a different publisher). The best thing that I found was buying the CD teacher's edition of the textbook online (Ebay). The teacher's edition was actually not bad, with learning goals for each chapter and the underlying math laid our in a semi-coherent fashion with all the "rules" explicitly stated. It was still not ideal and the order was very jumbled, but it was better. I would print out the 5-10 page "learning goals" section and DD would learn all the math from that. The teacher's edition had quizzes and tests that had answers provided and all the homework answers. This was OK for us because she was not taking these at school.

Not to hijack the thread, but we found numerous errors in all the online homework for all DD's high school STEM classes as well as unpredictable formatting requirements (Example: Maria has 6 bikes that she rents out for $4/hour. If Kim, Julio, and Kadeem rent bikes for 5 hours how much will it cost? _____ Entering 60, $60, $60.00, $60.0, 60.0, 60.00 will eventually get you the answer, but some software allows only one or 2 tries before it is counted wrong. This is after you've made the assumption that they mean the total and not per person or that Kim, Julio, and Kadeem rented all six bikes...)

Drove us round the bend.

Ok, someone please tell me I'm not crazy, here.

We have a sequence, first five terms are -2, 1, 4, 7, 10. We are directed to find an explicit rule A-sub-n =

DS put A-sub-n = 3(n-1)-2, which appears to work just fine. We are also directed to find the 100th term, which comes out to 295. A-sub-100 = 3(99)-2 which equals 295. This was graded as correct.

The teacher took off one point on the question, with the comment not to forget the A-sub-n-minus-1 in the equation, and "don't we want to subtract 5?" So she wants it to be A-sub-n = 3(A-sub-n-minus-1) -5.

Am I not correct in thinking that this would require us to actually go through 100 of these terms to find out what the 99th term was, before getting to the 100th one? And it wouldn't come up with 295, either. A-sub-2 = 3(-2)-5 would equal -11, not 1. Unless I'm crazy.

A-sub-n-minus-1 is used for recursive formulas, right? An explicit formula works off the term number, not the actual term? And in a recursive formula, you first define the first term, and then work the formula off of that, where each A-sub-n-minus-1 means the previous term, not the term numbers. The question doesn't seem to be phrased as asking for a recursive formula, either in the statement (find an explicit formula) or in the part you fill in, which includes A-sub-n= and then the line for filling in the blank. And they can't possibly want us (or him, lol) to work out 100 of these to get the answer.

Help?

I'm confused. Not by your son's initial answer, which is obviously correct, but by the teacher's. However, it is late and I am sick with a cold right now.

Here is my suggestion: get him to ask or email the teacher with the simple question, "I don't understand. Can you explain? I checked my answer and I know it's right and you marked it correct, and I don't understand why I should do this additional step" (or whatever it is; cold-addled brain not functioning).

That way, she'll have to show her reasoning. If it doesn't work, she, err, won't be able to. Email won't put her on the spot (though she might ignore it). There is always a risk that she'll get angry if a student finds that she made a mistake. But my brain is addled right now. Maybe someone else will understand this better than I can at this point.

(Waiting for decongestant to take effect; how pathetic)

Maybe she was thinking [(3)(100)] - 5 = 295.

This is your brain on cold meds (well, mine anyway).

I think she may just want him to write 3n-5, instead of 3(n-1)-2.

Which - of course - are mathematically the same. This is so painful to see. Was it like this when we were kids and we just didn't realize it?

Well, yes, but I can't say I ever felt oppressed by being require to simplify expressions. There were plenty of things in school that I thought were unfair, but losing a point for failing to write it in its simplest form wasn't one of them.

Fair point!

Hmm. If she had meant, "Use the distributive property to simplify," I would be inclined to agree. But she wrote:


If this comment has been conveyed accurately, the expression would be:

3(99)-5, as it wants you to subtract one from A. This would give 292, not 295.

Again, my brain isn't functioning at full capacity right now; am I wrong? If I am wrong, I will stop contributing to this thread.

Well... my math teachers wanted things written in simplest form, so they would have wanted this equation written with n instead of n-1. It may seem silly at this level of math, but it gets to be helpful as you move into more complicated equations.

Did the teacher take points off for it or just point out that it wasn't in simplest form? And did the instructions ask for it in simplest form? (you don't have to actually answer those questions - just pointing out that this example doesn't sound like an issue that I'd lose any sleep over).

Best wishes,

polarbear

No, she wants the A-sub-n-minus-1 in the equation, which seems to let out the simplification of the thing he wrote -- I think. We're going to work out a plea for clarification in suitable diplomatic form and see what falls out.

I am trying to teach the boy diplomacy, so this class may at least be good for that.

Well, it is correct to write this series as

An = 3n - 5

or

An = An-1 + 3; A1 = -2

The statement that An = 3 An-1 - 5 is just wrong. If that were correct, then given that we know that A1 = -2, then A2 would be 3(-2) - 5 = -11, and A3 would be 3(-11) - 5 = -38, etc.

Good deal -- we'll see if we can get a clarification from her, and see if she meant anything like that. I hope so, for the sake of the class.

So far they've only been dealing with n-1 and A-sub-n-minus-1 constructions, so I'm pretty sure she wasn't thinking of the 3n-5. If so, then she's thinking ahead of where they are and that would be a good thing, too!