The Math Literacy Gap

Stay with me on this, especially you educators. 

The civil rights icon, Bob Moses -- and if you don't know a lot about him, he was the field secretary for SNCC in Mississippi in the early '60s and is as an important figure to the civil rights movement as MLK, just not so well known. Find a biography and read it -- was awarded a McArthur "Genius Grant" in 1982. He used the money to found the Algebra Project. Moses felt that "Education is still basically Jim Crow as far as the kids who are in the bottom economic strata of the country. No one knows about them, no one cares about them" (NPR's Morning Edition August 1, 2013). 

I trust that I don't have to quote the numbers indicating that not only are black students significantly behind white students nation-wide, state-wide, and LRSD-wide, but the white students aren't doing that great either.

The idea for correcting that math achievement gap -- according the Algebra Project -- is to double up on math courses in high school. And, perhaps most importantly, require all students to take Algebra I in the eighth grade. Don't let counselors (who work hard, I'm not dissing them) assign students to non-algebra math courses based on test scores or "soft expectations." There's more to it, encouraging students to talk about math in class, using ordinary, everyday language. Then, through a process called "5-step circular," teachers work with students to systematically move from observation to symbology. No doubt this requires a great deal of professional development for teachers, but if it works like it has in some schools...

The Algebra Project has a newsletter here: https://algebra.org/newsletter/

If you google "math literacy strategies" you will see too many links to articles that suggest applying the methods used to teach reading to mathematics. I would like to point out that reading scores are on par with math scores. Using the same strategies over and over and expecting something different is a waste of everybody's time.

So, educators, what is your horseback opinion of the viability of such efforts?

Here's some more stuff: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/61afa2b5ded66610900a0b97/6659f1a0beba12df4a468d40_%20BEYOND-ALGEBRA-REPORT_05312024.pdf