SAXON MATH - BOTTOM UP BASICS FIRST VS TOP DOWN HIGHER STANDARDS Excellent comment on how reform has it bass-ackwards. Higher order "high standards first" then come the basics. This seems to be the whole point of progressivism. It's like how the communist countries would set these ridiculously ambitious production goals without bothering with the basics of setting up the essential industrial base first - that was "outcome based economics". You write before you read. You do statistics and algebra before you master arithmetic. You read whole stories before you comprehend single words. Yeah, right. In my community college, I'm running into the exact same problem in my Visual Basic class, they're tossing a first project that basically excercises a little bit of every section in the book, they say it's a "top down spiral approach". My students are thanking me for walking them through every little step needed to complete this project, I hope I don't get into trouble for not just throwing my students into the deep end on week 2. ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 11:33:20 -0500 To: 71524.2205@compuserve.com From: Donna Garner (by way of Fred Battey ) Subject: SAXON MATH I am certainly not an authority on math, but I do speak from much experience so far as the TEKS are concerned since I served on the English / Language Arts / Reading (ELAR) TEKS writing team. The TEKS were paid for by Goals 2000 funding; the "strings" from Washington, D. C. made sure that the performance-based philosophy is deeply imbedded in them. (Some of the TEKS subject areas have more performance-based elements imbedded in them than others. English / Language Arts / Reading is full of such elements.) Saxon and other knowledge-based curriculum will probably have a hard time aligning their materials to a document which advocates an erroneous philosophy. It is impossible to "wed" two completely different philosophies together and deliver a unified, teachable curriculum to children. Confusion results. Maybe Saxon Math could add some ancillary materials to help them meet the conforming mandate. However, I would not want to be in the unenviable position of taking an excellent proven product (Saxon Math) and aligning it with a faulty philosophy as reflected in the TEKS document. The sequencing in Saxon goes from the part to the whole which is the way all good materials should be written. I would imagine that Saxon Math was built just as a house is built -- from the bottom up. Strengthen the basement, first floor, second floor, etc. so that the roof (higher-order thinking skills) is securely positioned. The TEKS trainers with their New Standards Project (Texas paid $1.5M to this sister-branch of NCEE to pay for the training of the TEKS facilitators) training pushed the writing teams into writing the TEKS from the top to the bottom. That is why the ELAR/TEKS have poor, uneven sequencing particularly between grade cluster groups. Teachers are left to try to plug the gaps in their students' learning. Think about it. How does a child learn? Does he start at 12th grade and move down? No, he starts in kindergarten and moves up. Does he learn to run before he learns to walk? Does he learn to dance before he learns to crawl? For any curriculum to be successful, it must be groomed to fit the natural flow of a child's progression -- from the bottom to the top, from the part to the whole. That is why a child must learn phonemic awareness/decoding skills before he can learn to read informational texts. Those who advocate higher-order thinking skills upon which most performance-based projects are built are ignoring the developmental progression of children. They must master the basics first before the "house" can stand. I heartily commend you, Timothy, for trying to come up with a plan that will make Saxon Math available to our Texas children; and maybe Saxon can overcome the obstacles presented by the TEKS. I hope so. Donna Garner dggarner@swbell.net ----- Original Message ----- From: Timothy Soh To: Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2000 5:09 AM Subject: [ppie-texas] Re: Letter of endorsement > > I am > > >trying to persuade Frank Wang, the president of Saxon Math, to > publish > > >something like a Texas Supplement so that their textbook will be on > the > > >"conforming" list. I figure that will be the best way of avoiding the > > >"stigma" that less informed parents would attach to it. > > > > Now that's a good, constructive idea. To your knowledge, is that the > only > > reason it's not on the conforming list? > > > > There are topics required under TEKS that Saxon does not have a chapter > on. Like "Problem Solving," Saxon does not have chapter covering this > topic but problem solving is its core. This is one major problem with > the existing review process. Reviewers cannot exercise that kind of > discretion. > > There are some topics that Saxon does not cover at a given grade level > specified by TEKS. It is usually covered at some other grade level > because Saxon doing periodic review after each topic to ensure student > mastery. > > Saxon has a methodology that works and shows proven results and has > every reason not to tweak with the entire textbook series to meet the > minimal standards of TEKS. By publishing a Texas supplement covering > those missing topics may be the most feasible and cost beneficial > approach to lift it out of the "non-conforming" group. > > I would rather see only fuzzy math books in this category rather than > having Saxon in it too. The fact that it is in the list with the other > truly bad books lends credibility to them. This makes it somewhat > difficult to convince average parents that fuzzy math books are all > that bad. > > Given the legislative process and climate, I am not sure how long it > will take to revamp the adoption process or even if the state > legislature will allow SBOE the power. Since the "conforming" and > "non-conforming" animal is created by state legislature, chances are it > will be around for a while. > > So that is why I am trying to persuade Saxon. > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > For the fastest and easiest way to backup your files and, access them from > anywhere. 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