What's a parent to do?

What should parents do?

Parents must insure the mathematics learning of their own children.

This may not be an easy responsibility to fulfill, but parents should not assume that the educational system will sufficiently provide for their children's needs, even if their children get good grades in math.

How can parents fulfill this responsibility?

• Parents can identify learning goals for their children. California has not adopted standards of learning. Other states have adopted such standards, but they may not be written in clear and objective terms. At this point, Mathematically Correct believes that the best available state guidelines are the Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools. Parents can go to this site and download the Mathematics standards (This is a fairly long document). Then, the standards for the appropriate level can be isolated and studied. This will provide a good beginning in identifying learning objectives.

• Parents can study their children's math texts. The learning objectives should be kept in mind when reviewing a textbook. Parents can think about which learning objectives can be achieved by using the textbook and which will need extra experiences.

• Parents can find ways to get the extra experiences that might be required. This may mean parents have to work with their children themselves, or encourage the teacher to provide supplemental instruction, or perhaps find a tutor. Whatever might be required, it is up to parents to take the initiative to insure that these needs are satisfied.

• Parents can promote learning at home. Students need to spend sufficient time working on mathematics at home. They need a reasonable work environment and good study skills as well. They may need supplemental materials to study in order to meet their needs.

• Parents can follow their children's progress carefully. This means more than just looking at the grades that come home from school. Parents can watch their children do math to learn what they can and cannot do. Parents can give problems to their children to evaluate their progress. Parents can remember the learning objectives and monitor progress toward these goals throughout the year.

These pages are devoted to a script presenting a dialogue among school-age students. They discuss how to pick the correct size for a container for storing phone books in connection with their recycling project. The culmination of this dialogue is the idea that they can measure the length and width of the bottom of the phone book and multiply to get the area. Then, one student asks, "... how large do our storage containers need to be? Will it work to use anything that has the same area on the bottom?" Another replies, "It really needs to have the same dimensions so that the phone books will fit inside."

No mention of the volume of the 3-dimensional phone books or the 3-dimensional containers is made or the arrangement of books within the container, let alone of the issues of the weight of the phone books and the strength of the container.

The ONLY entry in the combined glossary/index for "volume" points to page 187 where it says, "Linear, volume, temperature and weight measurements have been converted from traditional measures to metric units."

Numbered items from the Virginia Standards for grade 7 mathematics appear below. Compare the treatment of volume in the Glencoe text to the standards 7.9 and 7.13. Does the Glencoe text satisfy these standards? Will seventh grade children in a class with this text learn to work with volume? Should parents of seventh graders want them to be able to solve volume problems? Is learning to solve volume problems a reasonable learning objective for a seventh-grade student? Parents should answer such questions in their study of the education of their own children.

The following are from the Seventh Grade Standards for Mathematics from the Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools.

• Number and Number Sense

  7.1 The student will compare, order, and determine equivalent relationships between fractions, decimals, and percents, including scientific notation.

  7.2 The student will find common multiples and factors, including least common multiple and greatest common factor.

  7.3 The student will simplify expressions by using order of operations, mental mathematics, and appropriate tools. Exponents will be included.

  7.4 The student will explain orally and in writing the following properties of operations with real numbers:

  • the commutative and associative properties for addition and multiplication;
  • the distributive property;
  • the additive and multiplicative identity properties;
  • the additive and multiplicative inverse properties; and
  • the multiplicative property of zero.

• Computation and Estimation

  7.5 The student will solve consumer application problems involving tips, discounts, sales tax, and simple interest, using whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percents.

  7.6 The student will

  • solve practical problems involving basic operations with integers by formulating rules for operating with integers and using a number line to compute; and
  • explain the need for integers, using examples from real- life situations.

  7.7 The student will use proportions to solve practical problems, including scale drawings that contain whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percents.

• Measurement

  7.8 The student, given appropriate dimensions, will estimate and find the area of polygons by subdividing them into rectangles and right triangles.

  7.9 The student will investigate and solve problems involving the volume and surface area of rectangular prisms and cylinders, using concrete materials and practical situations to develop formulas.

• Geometry

  7.10 The student will compare and contrast the following quadrilaterals: a parallelogram, rectangle, square, rhombus, and trapezoid. Deductive reasoning and inference will be used to classify quadrilaterals.

  7.11 The student will identify and draw the following polygons: pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, nonagon, and decagon.

  7.12 The student will determine if geometric figures (quadrilaterals and triangles) are similar and write proportions to express the relationships between corresponding parts of similar figures.

  7.13 The student will construct a three-dimensional model using cubes, given the top, side, and/or bottom views, and determine the volume and surface area of the model.

  7.14 The student will inscribe equilateral triangles, squares, and hexagons in circles, using a compass and straightedge.

• Probability and Statistics

  7.15 The student will investigate and describe the difference between the probability of an event found through simulation versus the theoretical probability of that same event.

  7.16 The student will make a sample space for selected experiments and represent it in the form of a list, chart, picture, or tree diagram.

  7.17 The student will determine the probability of a given simple event and express that probability as a ratio, decimal, or a percent as appropriate for the given situation.

  7.18 The student will identify and describe the number of possible arrangements of several objects, using a tree diagram or the Basic Counting Principle.

  7.19 The student will create and solve problems involving the mean, median, mode, and range of a set of data.

  7.20 The student will display data, using frequency distributions, line plots, stem-and-leaf plots, box-and-whisker plots, and scattergrams.

  7.21 The student will make inferences and predictions based on the analysis of a set of data that the student(s) collect.

• Patterns, Functions, and Algebra

  7.22 The student will investigate and describe functional relationships, including the number of sides of a regular polygon and the sum of the measures of the interior angles.

  7.23 The student will write verbal expressions/sentences as algebraic expressions/equations.

  7.24 The student will use the following algebraic terms appropriately in written and/or oral expression: equation, inequality, variable, expression, term, coefficient, domain, and range.

  7.25 The student will

  • solve two-step linear equations and inequalities in one variable, using strategies involving inverse operations and integers; and
  • solve practical problems requiring the solution of a two- step linear equation.

  7.26 The student will identify and graph ordered pairs in the four quadrants of a coordinate plane.

First Release of Standards
from Mathematically Correct