Well other than that see you next Tuesday calculus teacher at Beaverbrook who almost prevented me from getting into University.
Savidant? Yeah I also didn't learn calculus well under her at all... Most of my peers seemed to do ok. Praise be to Ra for that legend Yousry Elsabrouty to clean up all the mess in first year Uni!
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Originally Posted by Biff
If the NHL ever needs an enema, Edmonton is where they'll insert it.
Well I'm talking about the immigrants coming from countries with no school system (like my parents at the time) and several thousand other kids in the public school system.
It definitely is a disadvantage.
Just from pure observation, and imho, my kids go to Catholic schools, and easily 30 to 40% are non-white / children of immigrants (as we are).
And yes, my kids, grades 5 and 9 are math geniuses
We have no complaints about the Catholic schools, great teachers and administrators.
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Catholic schools are mostly white and not the kids of immigrants so I think they have an advantage. Add that to the fact a lot of immigrants come here broke and it's no surprise school isn't immediately a priority
Is there some statistics to back that up with regard to white people?
There was two white students in my pure math classes in the Catholic system, the rest of the white people at my school were not the ones providing that "advantage" when it came to math.
If anything I would have thought that it would be the other way. The emphasis on school by the immigrants, first and second generation Canadians was clearly a priority relative to the others when I was in High School. Of course being ESL would have put anyone at an extreme disadvantage, and I would not be surprised to learn that there is more ESL in public than Catholic.
I don't have any children and so I can't speak to anything going on in the current CBE system regarding math other than what I read about in the news but I can speak to real life examples. We as a society are getting worse at some of the most basic life experiences when it comes to basic arithmetic.
1) How many people need to bust out the smartphone for the "tip calculator" app? I guess figuring out what a 10, 15 or 20% tip on a $50 bar tab is a big challenge?
2) I can't tell you how often either cashiers or customers struggle with getting change when paying cash at a store. An item turns out to be $12 and you give them $22 hoping to get a $10 bill back and all you get is a blank stare. Most people resort to what the screen tells them. What about people in line who try to be "smart" by offering up more change that only results in more coins for them?
3) How often have you gone to the bank, asked to withdraw $200 in cash from the teller and they proceed to count out 20,40,60,80,100,120....... instead of just counting out 10 bills @ $20 each? I am a banker and this drives me nuts!
4) How many people have struggles with doing a quick calculation on a sale of merchandise? How much is a 30% discount on a $75 item?
I will be the first to admit than I am not some A+ math whiz despite being in finance but some of the basic, everyday tasks in life and a lot of people are really struggling and it isn't funny. Alberta used to be one of the top math, science and engineering places in the country which reflected well in our energy sector employment and innovation.
I hate to say it but seniors who are older and came from a different time in history, when they say all this "tech stuff" is going to make us dumb, I am starting to see it myself. One of the biggest things I have noticed is my penmanship declining rapidly. I always had excellent penmanship for a male and lately I look down when I write something down the odd time and it looks to me like I just polished off a bottle of gin, trying to write down something of importance.
Sorry about the long post, rant over!
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Savidant? Yeah I also didn't learn calculus well under her at all... Most of my peers seemed to do ok. Praise be to Ra for that legend Yousry Elsabrouty to clean up all the mess in first year Uni!
Haha that's the one. So many repressed memories are flooding back, I need a stiff drink...
I don't even know why they bother teaching calculus in high school anyways. AMAT 217 was the identical curriculum but with an exponentially better teacher.
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Silly question but are kids being tested at the provincial level the same way there are being taught throughout the year?
I seem to recall a teacher venting to me about the total disconnect between provincial examinations and what was being pushed down as learning strategies. That was a couple years back, and I don't recall if it was specifically related to math though.
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I don't have any children and so I can't speak to anything going on in the current CBE system regarding math other than what I read about in the news but I can speak to real life examples. We as a society are getting worse at some of the most basic life experiences when it comes to basic arithmetic.
1) How many people need to bust out the smartphone for the "tip calculator" app? I guess figuring out what a 10, 15 or 20% tip on a $50 bar tab is a big challenge?
2) I can't tell you how often either cashiers or customers struggle with getting change when paying cash at a store. An item turns out to be $12 and you give them $22 hoping to get a $10 bill back and all you get is a blank stare. Most people resort to what the screen tells them. What about people in line who try to be "smart" by offering up more change that only results in more coins for them?
3) How often have you gone to the bank, asked to withdraw $200 in cash from the teller and they proceed to count out 20,40,60,80,100,120....... instead of just counting out 10 bills @ $20 each? I am a banker and this drives me nuts!
4) How many people have struggles with doing a quick calculation on a sale of merchandise? How much is a 30% discount on a $75 item?
The funny thing is that all those people that need their tip calculator and can't figure out their change learned in the "traditional way", but here we are poo-pooing any new/different method of teaching.
The traditional ways worked best!
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I think a reason for the difference is a lot of CBE students are the kids of immigrants and don't get a head start at home and don't get their parents helping them at home. I know when I started gong to school it was impossible to get help from my parents.
I know that's not the only reason because my immigrant dad turned out smarter than me and when he came here he didn't know a lick of English.
Catholic schools are mostly white and not the kids of immigrants so I think they have an advantage. Add that to the fact a lot of immigrants come here broke and it's no surprise school isn't immediately a priority.
I know not all CBE schools fall into that category and not painting everyone with the same brush but the several dozen schools in the NE have a large make up of brown kids with immigrant parents.
Again, I know several people who I went to school with who turned out very successful so not saying it's impossible.
But the majority of my friends are in trades like myself or doing another labour job
Catholic schools have a high portion of immigrants as well. There are large Phillipino, Latin and Eastern European contingents many with ESL needs. I would suspect non white numbers are relatively equal.
I'd be interesting in seeing the stats. The article points out that CCSDs has been less enthusiastic about pursuing the alternative math.
There are some questionable things in the report when you go through the data and not just the executive summary though. Like the one report has a more detailed chart showing schools in NE Calgary (which appears to be the major difference) and first of all, the overwhelming majority are below average. The other thing is that they aren't "almost at an average level" sort of thing; they're off by over 20% in a number of cases. I can't tell from the graph, but some of these schools weren't even in the prior years, yet they draw a conclusion that the grades are declining. Maybe they aren't though? We can't tell from that because if you didn't have data from Bob Edwards for the past 5 years, how do you know what the trend at that school was?
But my issue with the report itself is that it seems to try to make this sound drastic. Instead of just saying that the difference between the two systems is a failure rate of 21% in the CBE and 13% in CCSD, they have a graph saying its a 56% increase. But there are a pile of issues. How large are these sample sizes? For example, I have no idea of how many Grade 6 students are in French immersion at Bob Edwards, but if its one class of say 25 kids, then to weigh that overall result the same as another school with 6 Grade 6 classes and use that data to say there is a big problem is just plain questionable.
I don't know anything about Kids Come First, but I just read that report and came out with a lot of questions.
And just for the record, I've long been a proponent of combining the two boards. I think that education needs a significant upgrade here. But surely just the fact that 15-20% of kids aren't learning what we need them to is enough and we don't need spurious data to tell us this?
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Personally I think the way the data from the report is being presented is very misleading. As you point out, most of the difference is in the NE, which happens to be home to a large number of recent immigrants where English language skills are minimal. My wife teaches in a school in that area and only has two students in her class that aren't ELL (most are from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan - not regions that are going to be sending a lot of kids to Catholic schools). They may be quite smart, but not being able to understand the test questions is certainly going to impact their performance on standardized tests. Maybe there are differences between the boards but you'd need to adjust for many factors outside of the boards themselves to find it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
There are some questionable things in the report when you go through the data and not just the executive summary though. Like the one report has a more detailed chart showing schools in NE Calgary (which appears to be the major difference) and first of all, the overwhelming majority are below average. The other thing is that they aren't "almost at an average level" sort of thing; they're off by over 20% in a number of cases.
There are some questionable things in the report when you go through the data and not just the executive summary though. Like the one report has a more detailed chart showing schools in NE Calgary (which appears to be the major difference) and first of all, the overwhelming majority are below average.
And just for the record, I've long been a proponent of combining the two boards. I think that education needs a significant upgrade here. But surely just the fact that 15-20% of kids aren't learning what we need them to is enough and we don't need spurious data to tell us this?
Someone's been studying.....
In my opinion the biggest issue facing school performance in the N.E. is the combination of English not being the first language, lower incomes, and lower parent involvement.
The three combined really make it difficult for kids to learn. Regardless of how much funding you have per student, if there are language barriers and minimal to zero support at home, that kid doesn't have much of a chance.
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Why is there a Catholic School board again? Oh right, so they can indoctrinate children into their freakish belief system.
Higher math scores. Believes in magic zombies.
LOL. 30 minutes 2 times a week learning about Catholic, Christian, and world religions in a non judgmental style. It's like Waco up in those schools.
That said I do remember a junior high teacher at Whelihan back in the 80's taking his class to a pro life protest as a field trip. He was canned the next day.
I am a horiable Catholic but wish we had a CCSB school nearby. They are great schools for elementary and junior high.
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