Schools altering when kids learn advanced math

New standards delay start

Some school districts are adjusting the sequence in which they offer math courses to their highest achievers because of changes under the new Common Core State Standards for middle school and high school students.

This is the last semester that the Bentonville School District will offer Algebra I to seventh-graders, said Judy Marquess, the district’s director of instruction for the seventh through 12th grades.

This fall, the district will offer only an accelerated math course for advanced seventh-graders who will then have the option of taking Algebra I as eighth-graders.

In the past two years, Fayetteville and Springdale school districts and most middle schools in the Pulaski County Special School District have eliminated seventh-grade algebra courses, school officials in the districts said.

Common Core State Standards have altered which math skills are taught in which grades and have more than doubled the skills that students must now master in Algebra I.

That has prompted discussions in districts statewide about when advanced math courses are offered beginning in middle school.

Currently, most students take algebra in the ninth grade, but some opt to take it earlier.

Advanced students, Marquess said, may be “interested in a course of study that requires [a] higher-level math, [and] they like to get started on it earlier.”

About 130 of the 1,150 seventh-graders in the Bentonville district this school year chose one of two advanced tracks the district offered in mathematics, Marquess said.

About 30 students chose the most advanced track with Algebra I in seventh grade, followed by Geometry in eighth grade, Algebra II in ninth grade, Pre-Calculus in 10th grade and up to two years of Calculus in the 11th and 12th grades.

The Bentonville School Board, in a divided decision, recently approved a recommendation by staff members to stop offering advanced seventh-graders Algebra I.

The decision delays the course until eighth grade for those students.

Students can still take two years of calculus in high school because they will no longer have to take pre-calculus first, Marquess said. They will be able to enter the first-year calculus course in 11th grade after finishing Algebra II in 10th grade.

Bentonville staff members requested to stop offering Algebra I for seventh-graders because of changes in the content of math classes under Common Core State Standards, which have been in place for two years at the district’s junior high schools and for one year at the high school, Marquess said.

In Bentonville, seventh-grade algebra packed in so many standards from seventh-grade math, eighth-grade math and Algebra I that some teachers said they did not have enough time to teach all that was required, Marquess said.

The Fayetteville district had 92 advanced students taking Algebra I in seventh grade in 2012-13, the last year the district offered the course.

The district stopped offering the course on the recommendation of developers of the Common Core math standards, said Kay Jacoby, the district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, assessment and accountability. About 160 seventh-graders this year are in the accelerated math course.

The developers advise against allowing students to skip courses, Jacoby said. The current accelerated math course encompasses seventh-grade standards and half of the eighth-grade standards.

Algebra I for eighth-graders covers the second half of eighth-grade math and all of the Algebra I standards.

The Pulaski County Special School District plans to maintain a seventh-grade algebra class at Fuller Middle School, where the district’s gifted-and-talented program is centered, but the district is discontinuing the class at its other middle schools, said Renee Dawson, a district curriculum coordinator.

A geometry course for advanced eighth-graders also is moving to Fuller only. Geometry is normally taught in 10th grade.

The other middle schools in the Pulaski County district will continue to offer advanced students an accelerated math course in seventh grade and an Algebra I course in eighth grade.

Discussions in the Pulaski County district are ongoing about whether a pre-Advanced Placement math course should continue to be offered to sixth-graders, said Lance LeVar, a district specialist in math curriculum.

Students who do well in sixth-grade math under Common Core standards will be prepared for the district’s accelerated math course for advanced seventh-graders, he said.

Dawson said students still will have time to finish two years of calculus in high school.

Before Common Core, Algebra I focused on 43 skills that students needed to master, and seventh- and eighth-grade math classes repeated some of what students had learned in previous grade levels, Marquess said.

The new math standards allow for less repetition, Marquess said.

Under Common Core, some skills and concepts taught in ninth-grade Algebra I under the Arkansas Curriculum Frameworks are now being taught in the seventh and eighth grades, Marquess said.

And, instead of teaching 43 specific skills, Algebra I courses now teach 120 skills, incorporating some of what is currently taught in Algebra II and more advanced math classes.

Under Common Core, the goal is for students to gain a better understanding of math so they can reason through and solve problems, said Renee Kash, a math specialist at Bentonville High School who supported the change.

Advanced math students at the high school level often know how to work with numbers, but they lack enough understanding to apply that knowledge, she said.

“Eighth grade is soon enough to take Algebra I. There’s no need to rush it,” Kash said. “The teachers will have time to give them problems and give them time to dig into it.”

Arkansas, Pages 10 on 04/07/2014

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