(Oregon’s near-worst-in-nation education outcomes trigger a reckoning on school expenditure, Feb. 9) The story on test scores focuses on budget deficits but ignores the underlying reasons of the issue.
I’m an electrical engineer by profession. I have been a math special education teacher in an East County school district for the last four years. I tutor math for the Sun Community Schoolwinter program in addition to my normal classes. The problem I observe is that pupils are not given a strong foundation in mathematics. Teachers use educational programs that expose pupils to new ideas, but often don’t allow them much opportunity to practice those abilities before going on to new ideas. Students consequently lag further behind.
This is frustrating to teachers. because there is no explicit requirement that the student understands the material, and they are judged on how many modules they do in a given amount of time. It should come as no surprise that certain school districts receive below-average scores when you combine this approach with language obstacles.
To enable one-on-one education and lower teacher-to-student ratios, more funding should be allocated to hiring more teachers. Students require more time to memorize the math methods and more assistance in the classroom. A quick introduction and no practice are not enough to teach someone how to play an instrument. This is what we want our students to accomplish, but with mathematical ideas that build on one another from addition to calculus.
Derek Dean, Gresham
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