Last July, the California state Board of Education voted to require Algebra 1 testing for all eighth-graders beginning in 2011. Currently, Algebra I is a requirement to graduate from high school. Proponents believe the algebra mandate will raise student achievement while critics maintain this policy will set kids up for failure and contribute to increased [...]

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For my son’s math homework tonight, he needed “dot paper,” not “graph paper” (as he repeated since I am getting dafter everyday… just ask him!).
I used http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/ where I could specify the scale, color and a few other attributes and then download my custom pdf file to print at home.

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I came across Better Explained, a blog that takes a straight forward approach to explaining a few math and programming problems. The math sections are great! There are just a handful of topics covered, but it is refreshing to see some gnarly problems explained simply and directly.
Studying probability & statistics? Or perhaps [...]

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If your child comes to you with help on math you can help… even if you’re not confident about your own math abilities. Figure This! has a terrific list of questions you can use to guide your student. Here are some of them:

What is the problem you’re working on?
What do the directions say?
What [...]

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Working with students who have proven to be resistant, San Jose teacher John Hagen uses fantasy football to teach math concepts (story in the San Jose Mercury News).

Like many high schoolers, John Hagen’s algebra students worry about passing.
But they also worry about rushing. And receiving. And scoring.
They’ve become miniature NFL coaches, tracking the performance of [...]

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Did you know that California’s state math standards are the best in the nation? Only three states scored an ‘A’ and another three a ‘B.’ This information coming from a Fordham Foundation study published January of 2005. While not qualifying as news, I came across this only today.
California’s standards are excellent in every respect. The [...]

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Do you believe your daughter is not as capable at math as your son? If so, you’re part of the reason. In a study of the effects of stereotyping on the performance of women in math reported in Science, researchers concluded there is a significant negative effect with negative stereotyping.
In other words, when [...]

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Via EdNews.org, comes a pointer to Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee writing about changes in math instruction proposed by the National Council of Mathematics Teachers. In essence, the national organization is adopting changes already in place in California; changes that emphasize a back-to-basics approach.
We Americans used to understand the concept of educational progression [...]

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BusinessWeek’s Stephen Wildstrom reviews Casio’s ClassPad math calculator which you may want to consider for your high school or college student. The exec summary: $150 graphical calculator with a touch-sensitive screen that lets you get a hands-on feel for geometry and algebra. The downside: Texas Instruments dominates this segment and there are entire [...]

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