Fight MVP in Wake County, NC, School System
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Beginning in 2017, NC's Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) implemented "free open educational resource" common-core spawn program "Mathematics Vision Project ".
Since then, student learning has declined, and grades have plummeted despite parents of means hiring private tutors and countless hours of after-school online self-teaching.
WHY? Because ascribing to the MVP curriculum and methodology, the math teacher does not teach math - they facilitate it. The job of the facilitator is not to explain things, but to coerce and manipulate students into EXPLAINING THINGS or figuring things out for themselves. This is especially challenging in MATH, where such a large component of MATH education involves explaining and understanding concepts never before encountered. This facilitating/discovery approach is a not a one-size-fits-all solution to teaching . It may work for some, but not for most. How is this EQUITY - for teachers AND students?
FUNDING PURPOSE
Join us to fight WCPSS's MVP experiment on our children. This funding will be used to hire legal consultation to make our students' case to WCPSS, the school board, and the tax payers who are sadly funding this misguided venture. Any unused proceeds will be donated to charitable organization(s) supporting education.
BACKGROUND
In WCPSS, teachers work in an environment where honest feedback about MVP is not welcomed, and strict adoption is mandated. Supposed positive performance data of WCPSS and other MVP school systems has been debunked and/or proven in error. The cost of this "free" resource is several hundreds of thousands of dollars in teacher re-education, supplemental videos, and materials. At least one high school has published grade fluffing policies to help current students increase their grades. What about other schools? What about prior semesters' students? How is this EQUITY?
Over 500 parents in Wake County have banded together to fight for our children's right to a public school education free from experimental teaching models. Letter writing to WCPSS admin and school board, information sessions, face to face meetings, FAQs, teacher re-education, and squeaky wheel grade fluffing have done little to truly change the fact that our children's math education is at risk.
According to MVP, "The MVP classroom experience begins by confronting students with an engaging problem and then allows them to grapple with solving it. As students’ ideas emerge, take form, and are shared, the teacher orchestrates the student discussions and explorations towards a focused mathematical goal. As conjectures are made and explored, they evolve into mathematical concepts that the community of learners begins to embrace as effective strategies for analyzing and solving problems. These strategies eventually solidify into a body of practices that belong to the students because they were developed by the students as an outcome of their own creative and logical thinking. This is how students learn mathematics. They learn by doing mathematics. They learn by needing mathematics. They learn by verbalizing the way they see the mathematical ideas connect and by listening to how their peers perceived the problem. Students then own the mathematics because it is a collective body of knowledge that they have developed over time through guided exploration. This process describes the Learning Cycle and it informs how teaching should be conducted within the classroom."
Parents and friends, this is nothing but a new wave of constructivism learning theory, where our students are guinea pigs in "a worldview where learning is an active, constructive process. The learner is an information constructor. People actively construct or create their own subjective representations of objective reality. New information is linked to to prior knowledge, thus mental representations are subjective."
THIS IS NOT MATH!!! We need students to be taught math foundations BEFORE application. Students spending the majority of class-time trying to "discover" math based on "the way they see the mathematical ideas connect and by listening to how their peers perceived the problem" at the expense of the teacher teaching them the fundamentals IS NOT WORKING!
We must not allow our students to endure another semester of MVP math in Wake County!
Since then, student learning has declined, and grades have plummeted despite parents of means hiring private tutors and countless hours of after-school online self-teaching.
WHY? Because ascribing to the MVP curriculum and methodology, the math teacher does not teach math - they facilitate it. The job of the facilitator is not to explain things, but to coerce and manipulate students into EXPLAINING THINGS or figuring things out for themselves. This is especially challenging in MATH, where such a large component of MATH education involves explaining and understanding concepts never before encountered. This facilitating/discovery approach is a not a one-size-fits-all solution to teaching . It may work for some, but not for most. How is this EQUITY - for teachers AND students?
FUNDING PURPOSE
Join us to fight WCPSS's MVP experiment on our children. This funding will be used to hire legal consultation to make our students' case to WCPSS, the school board, and the tax payers who are sadly funding this misguided venture. Any unused proceeds will be donated to charitable organization(s) supporting education.
BACKGROUND
In WCPSS, teachers work in an environment where honest feedback about MVP is not welcomed, and strict adoption is mandated. Supposed positive performance data of WCPSS and other MVP school systems has been debunked and/or proven in error. The cost of this "free" resource is several hundreds of thousands of dollars in teacher re-education, supplemental videos, and materials. At least one high school has published grade fluffing policies to help current students increase their grades. What about other schools? What about prior semesters' students? How is this EQUITY?
Over 500 parents in Wake County have banded together to fight for our children's right to a public school education free from experimental teaching models. Letter writing to WCPSS admin and school board, information sessions, face to face meetings, FAQs, teacher re-education, and squeaky wheel grade fluffing have done little to truly change the fact that our children's math education is at risk.
According to MVP, "The MVP classroom experience begins by confronting students with an engaging problem and then allows them to grapple with solving it. As students’ ideas emerge, take form, and are shared, the teacher orchestrates the student discussions and explorations towards a focused mathematical goal. As conjectures are made and explored, they evolve into mathematical concepts that the community of learners begins to embrace as effective strategies for analyzing and solving problems. These strategies eventually solidify into a body of practices that belong to the students because they were developed by the students as an outcome of their own creative and logical thinking. This is how students learn mathematics. They learn by doing mathematics. They learn by needing mathematics. They learn by verbalizing the way they see the mathematical ideas connect and by listening to how their peers perceived the problem. Students then own the mathematics because it is a collective body of knowledge that they have developed over time through guided exploration. This process describes the Learning Cycle and it informs how teaching should be conducted within the classroom."
Parents and friends, this is nothing but a new wave of constructivism learning theory, where our students are guinea pigs in "a worldview where learning is an active, constructive process. The learner is an information constructor. People actively construct or create their own subjective representations of objective reality. New information is linked to to prior knowledge, thus mental representations are subjective."
THIS IS NOT MATH!!! We need students to be taught math foundations BEFORE application. Students spending the majority of class-time trying to "discover" math based on "the way they see the mathematical ideas connect and by listening to how their peers perceived the problem" at the expense of the teacher teaching them the fundamentals IS NOT WORKING!
We must not allow our students to endure another semester of MVP math in Wake County!
Organizer
Blain Dillard
Organizer
Cary, NC
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