MATH REVOLT!

Interesting times at the American School of Doha! High School kids had semester exams in late January. To say the kids did not do well is an understatement (in Grant's Honor Algebra 2 class the exam average was a C- his class was one of the high scorers). I asked Grant to show me the exam but he wasn't allowed to bring it home because they use the same exam every year. Parents started talking, the Adminstration stonewalled (I e-mailed Grant's teacher who, after 2 e-mails, shared that C- average and told me that both he and the Department Head felt the exam was appropriate) and a revolt occured.

In a nutshell, after parents realized it wasn't just their kid who did poorly the Administration brought in an expert to review the curriculum and the exams. Parents talked about this issue at a PTA meeting, then mobbed (standing room only) a School Board meeting. The Administration promised immediate action. Last Thursday at a High School Parent Advisory meeting the Admin presented their corrective action plan - briefly: 1) from this point on inquiry based math at HS level is out - will go back to direct teaching, 2) will conduct a complete review of Math curicculum PreK - 12 (elem still using inquiry based math - but that is another post), 3) there will be mandatory tutoring sessions for all High School math students - schedule will be posted on Monday (which was yesterday, and it wasn't), 4) semester exams will be sent home for review, 5) all students will retake the semester exam (new exam, of course) at the end of March and the better of the 2 grades will be used - will go back and recalculate grades, 6) optional math tutoring sessions offered during spring break, 7) the Honor Alg teacher will be replaced by the Dept. Head.
Side issues abound here: one algebra teacher is an engineer - never trained as teacher and is apparently lousy at it, one teacher doesn't like calculators (he is in his 70's - the slide rule era), kids are grading each other's homework and cheating, standardized math test scores are dropping from Elem - HS, middle and high school curiculums are not coordinated - placement in 9th grade is not as easy as it should be, etc;
Like said above, the first step that was to happen yesterday did not happen - will give it one more day before grabbing my broom.