I don't get to read enough blogs about math education these days - for some reason I stopped doing it a while back and I'm only now catching up on some great stuff out there. One blog I have been reading more recently is Math with Bad Drawings - a funny an satirical look at math education with some wonderful pedagogical sense-making. Recently, Ben Orlin (the author) wrote a piece about the "Church of the right answer." In it, he writes about an issue facing all math teachers around the world:

Students are so often focused on what the "right answer" is that they do not emphasize the path to get there. 

This is something my department has been talking a lot about recently and trying to make sense of how the network our school is in (Expeditionary Learning) wants us to build in comprehension in our lessons. It usually involves making things a lot slower than the traditional class might look like, but the students end up with such a deeper level of knowledge it becomes worth it.

While reading Ben Orlin's post about this "church" I was reminded of an article I read in early January about "why the phrase 'math facts' is so dangerous." In it the author asserts (much like Orlin) that to memorize information is not to truly understand it and therefore it will not work in application to novel situations. The simple idea of memorizing multiplication tables is a good example. While knowing those can be useful at times, when dealing with larger numbers it breaks down, whereas if you understand place value and it's effect on operations you will be able to scale up your knowledge.

I fully support students gaining a deeper understanding and how that I can bring my own up to that level. Then maybe they'll understand the battle should really be won because "the right answer" is on one side by itself.

This started a flurry of back-and-forth commentary which I appreciated very much and wanted to expand upon here.


To understand the implication of this donation it is important to first understand the context of the School District of Philadelphia. Over the past 15 years it has gone from being a locally-run District consisting of about 200,000 students going to all District-run schools to 2015 where about 130,000 students attend District-run schools and 67,000 students attend charter schools. Obviously these numbers leave out private and parochial schools but our conversation is focused mostly on the former two categories.

Funding for the entire District has been reduced immensely over the past five years, since former PA Governor Tom Corbett removed almost $1 billion from the state education budget. Teachers have been laid off, the number of librarians has been reduced to 11 in the entire city, school budgets have been slashed, etc. My own personal story involves being pushed around between three schools in my first three years of teaching due to political and budgetary constraints. 

Funding for charter schools is even more upsetting. Their money is mandated by the state to be turned over by the local School District once the charter has been approved. The money comes in a specific formula and due to the fact that there are "stranded costs" or "fixed costs" to the District (i.e. building costs, electricity and gas bills, etc) money is easily lost in this transition. 

Fast-forward to this week when Mark Gleason, the director of PSP, offers the money. The School Reform Commission - in charge of running and maintaining the schools of the city - is in very dire financials straits. If they decide to take the money, they are agreeing to increase the amount of charter school seats in the District, potentially tipping it to become a majority-charter location. Their argument for the provision of this money is directly related to the stranded costs the District incurs with the transfer of students. 

This may sound like a good compromise until you think about the longterm implications of this funding. 

When originally proposed in the 1980s and 1990s, charter schools were supposed to be places of experiment that would be unionized but allow more flexibility and teacher leadership. Instead, over the past 10 years they have been turned into a for-profit business, sponsored by education reformers across the country (and the world). Many of the schools use "no excuses" models that push out more difficult students that are not mandated to be replaced, unlike District schools that have to fill their rolls no matter what. Over times, what this means is more students who may have higher test scores but fewer social skills and true persistence in learning. Additionally, many charter schools are proving to be corrupt enterprises with leaders embezzling money.

One might argue that these charter schools simply need more oversight, and I would agree. Unfortunately, in Philadelphia there is a staff of 3-4 people overseeing a student population that is bigger than Pittsburgh's entire school system!  That makes it very difficult to close ineffective charter schools.

I would urge all of you to listen to the 40-minute radio show wherein Donna Cooper of PCCY and Mark Gleason of PSP debate the current offer and its merits. Specifically, listen to the following time slots:

11:22 - the mention of how charter schools do not replace drop-outs.
18:45 - Mark Gleason implies charter schools had large influence on District gains over the past 10 years
21:45 - Reiteration that there are only 11 full-time librarians in a school system of 130,000 students.
26:50 - Mark Gleason trips up and says schools are a "people focused BUSINESS" (emphasis mine)

There is so much money flowing around education reforms at the moment that are unfairly influencing public systems. A new Political Action Committee is being formed to support charter schools as well.

I suppose the only solace I have at the moment is that Helen Gym, co-founder of Parents United for Public Education, is running for City Council and has already received an accolade from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. I can only hope she succeeds.