The numbers may be the focus but don’t forget the canary in the coalmine…

While decrying the slide in test scores and the associated lack of rigor or common sense in the methodologies being used to educate children, it is good to remember the technological environment which might be referred to in TS Elliot’s terms a hollow digital wasteland. 

Though the link below’s article is not exactly on point, it is worthy because it is overseeing/reflecting the investment wave which has brought us facebook and twitter. In particular, considers the comments comparing twitter and snapchat..one can only see
huge danger signs ahead as the 2, 3 and 4 year olds of today receive interactive devices into their lives earlier and earlier…perhaps making concerns about television pall in comparison.

http://aonetwork.com/Digital-Hollywood-Combats-an-Intellectual-Wasteland/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoksq3JZKXonjHpfsX56OssX6Kg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YYCRcV0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEKSLDYRa1yt60EXg==

The real canary and probably will be ignored by the education establishment - “Founder and Retired Principal of Alberta’s top academic school, Old Scona, and former head of the Edmonton Public School Board’s social studies program

There is ample empirical evidence as to why students in North America are doing so poorly in mathematics. This readily avoidable and costly failure is the direct result of the stranglehold that the Educational Establishment (Faculties of Education, Departments of Education, Teachers’ Professional Associations, and Senior School Board Administrators) have on public schools and the public purse.  Their curricular theories and practices have been categorically and consistently exposed as nonsense over the years, by North America’s leading cognitive research scientists such as Maggie Black at McGill, and David Pesetsky and Noam Chomsky at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology….......”  http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2013/12/05/alberta-educations-new-math-curriculum-is-failing-our-students-former-top-principal-says/

An apt article of black and white to fit in within the picture of numbers. Good to see some of the educators coming out of the woodwork. Its rather refreshing, and I do hope they are staying for good, and its not a one-off.

Thank you Malkin.

Anyone who cares about Canadian children and edu-outcomes needs the graphs that you posted (data)..

At my school we have a math guru designated by the board and working at the board level and higher to support good results in EQAO testing (yup).  I had privilege of listening to this math leader - designated by the board- explaining integers to a young teacher.  It absolutely shook *my* understanding of integers—made zero sense.  The poor kids are seriously compromised when the pygmies are in charge.

pls. google pygmies revenge.

best.  Mirka

Mirka - the big troubles lies with the K to 8 math curriculum. In 2006, in the process of re-teaching and after-school home tutoring - I became a bit of an expert in the horrible math textbooks, and in the process discovered that I had deep knowledge on the basic and advanced arithmetic concepts.

The teaching of integers, and for that matter, numbers in general are being needlessly taught in such a complicated and mind blogging way,  and to the point the students are being taught wrong, that leads to misconceptions. Its leaves the high school teachers to re-teach arithmetic concepts that should have been taught in grade 6 and grade 7 but first the students have to unlearn, before they can learn integers the right way.

I remembered the day, when I reviewed the integer chapter of the horrible math textbook. Another day of tossing out the textbook, going unto the internet, paste and copy and created my three page math helper - all you need to know from counting numbers to irrational numbers - memorized dear child and you can thank me in grade 10. And you know what? My child thank me, by ranting on for 15 minutes, the grade 10 math class was taken up relearning integers the way it should have been taught but was not taught in grade 6.  She spent her time on FB, texting, and finishing off the unit chapter problems and she realized what the math teacher who had a math degree - was telling her classmates exactly the same thing that I made my child sit down and memorized in grade 6.  The essentials on counting numbers to irrational numbers. Something like this - http://www.mathsisfun.com/whole-numbers.html

And here - http://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/evolution-of-numbers.html

“Integers are like whole numbers, but they also include negative numbers ... but still no fractions allowed!”

Now tell me, how can the horrible math curriculum screw up something as simple as integers??  By teaching math in bits and pieces, and it expected the students will remember the bits and pieces as the years roll on. However students will not remember the bits and pieces and nor will they be able to put the whole concept together at some point, that is factual and correct. Ergo, high school teachers have their work cut out for them by unlearning and reteaching the math facts on what should have been taught in grade school but was not.

There is math research in the LD files, that the whole math concept must be taught, not just the bits and pieces, so it would being permanently stored in the memory banks of students. The math curriculum for the K to 8 does a very poor job in providing students a solid foundation for mathematics of the algebra kind or advanced geometry or calculus.

I got an idea - the math textbooks should be dump and Math is Fun should be the teacher’s guide. Oops, I forgot the math consultants at the school board would be very displease if a classroom teacher did just that - going off the script of -math don’t make sense.

Mirka, how could a ‘math guru’ even think of jumbling up something as simple as integers?  What is his background?  Does he have any post-secondary math courses under his belt? 
I can’t believe the stupidity of administration and trustees to allow all of this nonsense to go on.  I did recently read an article that there’s big $$ in consultating and writing texts.  If that’s the case, then the $$ speaks much louder to people responsible for delivering sound curricula than doing what’s best for our children, and of course using the utmost integrity when it comes to spending the public’s hard-earned $$.
It makes me believe that the Libertarian party has the right answer—dismantle the whole mess that we call the MOE.