WASL Week: Doing the Numbers Before They Do You

The Seattle Times has an interesting article about the struggles Washington kids are having with the math section of the WASL:

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Year to year, more students flunk the math segment of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning than reading or writing. Last year, more than half the state's 10th-graders failed math. And it's even worse for low-income and minority students; in 2005, only about 28 percent of low-income sophomores passed, and only about a quarter or fewer of black, Indian or Hispanic 10th-graders.

The class of 2008 is the first for which passing the WASL, or an alternative assessment, is required for graduation. The math segment of the test will be administered this week. So will science, but it won't count toward graduation until 2010.

Experts predict we'll have to change the way math is taught, and even the way we think about it, or math will continue to be a stumbling block.

What's the problem with math?

Research shows kids learn math best when they begin with a thorough grounding in mathematics fundamentals and progress in an orderly sequence, with the help of similar instructional approaches, from class to class and grade to grade.

But in Washington, many kids face bamboozling instruction that can be a mile wide and an inch deep. They endure competing approaches and instructional materials. And many textbooks aren't even in sync with the material kids will be expected to know on the WASL.

And by high school, kids have spent years marinating in a culture that disses math. Few people in this country boast about being illiterate. But it's long been a laugh line to declare "I'm not a math person." Not so in countries such as Japan and Singapore, where students are expected to conquer math — and keep trying until they do.

And in America, where are the math bees, the volunteer math tutorial corps, the math-is-fundamental public-service campaigns? As a society, we root for reading. But we expect success in math to just happen ... or not.

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They're wrong about the math contests being nonexistent. "Math is Cool!" is a big deal here in Washington; doing a Google search returns several team photos and information about the program. The Washington State Math Council sponsors a Math Olympiad every year for kids in grades 5 through 8, along with the High School math contest. Then there's our very own state Mathematics Helping Corp, which I'm sure that OSPI could have told them about.

Not that I'm arguing that math hasn't been the second cousin to reading in the state reform efforts--it surely has, though one could argue that that's not a bad thing. The efforts to make things better are ongoing, though. And frankly, it's probably science we should worry about the most.