Teachers in general, and elementary teachers in particular, should have more than a minimum level of numeracy. In my first year of blogging I asked How Much Math Should A College Graduate (Teacher) Know? The conclusions I reached in that post of almost 14 years ago still ring true today.
The Canadian province of Ontario may be taking such ideas too far:
The Ontario government is considering implementing mandatory annual math testing for all teachers in the province.
Teachers would be required to pass the test in order to continue teaching. It would apply to teachers of both primary and secondary school, even if they do not primarily teach mathematics, senior government sources told The Canadian Press.
I don't think a high school English teacher should be tested on math, and I doubt that high school math and science teachers should be. But elementary teachers are, in the aggregate, notorious for not knowing much math. Liping Ma's book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics should not only be required reading in every elementary teacher credentialing program in the country, the people who teach those elementary teachers math should be math teachers.
The consideration of the annual test for all teachers comes after the government passed legislation Wednesday that will require all aspiring teachers in Ontario to pass a math test before receiving their licence to teach...Do we know that teachers can't? Do we know which teachers can't?
"How can we expect our students to do the math when our teachers can't?" a government source said.
Testing isn't a bad idea, depending on how much math knowledge is expected, but annual tests are probably a bit too much. Will the Canadians be able to keep this testing requirement limited in scope? Only time will tell!
6 comments:
Agreed that most elementary teachers don't, in the aggregate, know much math.
However, we're faced with the reality that elementary teachers,despite their lack of knowledge, get far higher percentages of kids to basic skill level than high school teachers do. NAEP scores consistently show higher proficiency in 4th and 8th grade in all races and incomes.
That is, they might not know much math, but they apparently do an adequate job of teaching elementary school math.
This is, obviously, because high school math is fricking hard, and we're required to teach math much more difficult than at least half of our students can handle, but the fact remains that teacher subject matter knowledge doesn't seem nearly as important as the subject to be taught and the student ability to learn the subject.
As a retired elementary teacher I can vouch for this. They are even worse at science. Many of the elementary teachers I worked with were more concerned with a child's self-esteem. Nice caring folks but definitely deficient in knowledge of math and science.
I'm not sure it's mostly high school *teachers* who are the issue. When my 9th graders can't multiply, there's no way I'm going to teach them algebra. How is it that they got to high school not knowing how to multiply, not knowing how to calculate even simple percentages, not knowing how to calculate with positive and negative numbers, and not knowing how to manipulate fractions?
Yes, the problem is *that* serious.
Anonymous, please read
https://rightontheleftcoast.blogspot.com/2007/11/superteacher.html
about my 3rd grade teacher.
Darren...Nice post. I never said they weren't good people and many were good teachers just not when it came to math and science. And the standardized test results consistently bore this out.
I didn't mean to imply that these teachers aren't good people, just that they're not doing the "old school" job like Mrs. Barton did.
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