Sunday, June 29, 2008

Tacoma Before Saxon Math and After
Urban Legend dies

I just ran a spreadsheet of WASL data looking for the year to year change from Spring 2006 to Spring 2007 in WASL Math pass rates at grades 3,4,5,6,7

I took the Tacoma change and compared it with the state change.
If Tacoma went up 8% and the State went up 5% I recorded this as a 3% gain for Tacoma.

There seems to be a belief held by some that Saxon is difficult for minority students.
Data from California certainly suggests otherwise.

So I thought it would be interesting if the monumental Hook-Bishop-Hook study from California holds up in Tacoma.

It does. Reform math is trash for minority kids in fact almost every kid.
Why the USA continues to push this trash is beyond me. Clearly a great number of district level math curriculum folks would be loosing their jobs if this was a meritocracy. We all know it is a kakistocracy, so this is just more proof.

Here are the Changes for the last year before Saxon Math.
Spring 2005 to Spring 2006.

grade ... All ... ... Blacks ...White ..Low Income ...Hisp
4th ... -5.10% ...-0.40% ... -6.40% ... -4.50% ... -7.60%
7th ...... 0.20% ... 1.00% ... -1.20% ... -0.10% ... -3.30%

All Grade
average -2.45%.. 0.30%.. -3.80%.. -2.30%.. -5.45%

And from the Saxon Year.....

grade ... All ... ... Blacks ...White ..Low Income ...Hisp

3rd .. 6.70% .. 8.60% .. 5.30% .. 6.60% .. 8.60%
4th .. 3.50% .. 0.70% .. 3.30% .. 5.80% .. 10.20%
5th .. 4.30% .. 4.70% .. 4.20% .. 4.80% .. -2.40%
6th .. 7.50% .. 5.70% .. 7.70% .. 8.70% .. 12.60%
7th .. 4.20% .. 0.80% .. 5.60% .. 3.20% .. 5.50%


All Grade
average 5.24%.. 4.10%.. 5.22%.. 5.82%.. 6.90%

Saxon is a clear winner after year one.....
It is too bad we only have the WASL ... we need a math test.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think it was Edie Harding that made the negative comments about Saxon.

These results should not be surprising, Saxon is used all over the US and parents are satisfied students are learning something worthwhile. There are better curricula - but its not reform math.