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Saturday, September 8, 2012

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Math Rant

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Math Rant:


Math Rant

Fair warning. This is going to be a rant. Those of you who come to this blog for news and information should just do yourselves a favor and not read it.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've concluded that I need to write rants like this from time to time. I just need to keep them separate from the news - like the newspaper separates the news from the editorials - so the folks who want to read the news aren't offended by having to read an opinion from outside their bubble.

This is going to be a math rant, and they can be among the worst. So, if you want to skip the rants, stop reading now.

When Terry Bergeson was the Superintendent of Public Instruction, she said that the students should not be held accountable for failing the math WASL to graduate because it was not the students, but the adults in the system who had failed. On THAT day they should have all been fired, herself included. They are never held to any kind of accountability yet they have the greatest responsibility. Why does the accountability net catch the small fish and let the big ones go?

The greatest impediment to the kind of reform that our schools really need is not the teachers or their unions.