The News received several letters regarding the district’s recommendation to eliminate WW-P’s Accelerated & Enriched (A&E) math program for grades 4 and 5:
I am a parent in the WW-P school district, and I have been a math professor for more than 20 years. I fully support the proposed elimination of the math A&E program for grades 4-5. It has always seemed to me to be inappropriate for children to be tracked in math at such a young age.
Children blossom at different times, and having a test a child takes in the third grade determine what courses they might or might not be able to take in high school is completely absurd. I was unaware that the gender disparity was so extreme, and this is certainly an indication of a system that is flawed. I would hope that the district would move towards providing a more enriching math curriculum for all of our students.
Karen Clark
We have three children who graduated from South with a wonderful education that prepared them for college.
With shock and dismay, we read your headlines in the September 11 issue: Midterm and Final Exams Eliminated at the high schools, and Proposed Elimination of A&E Math for Grades 4-5. Both of these steps harm students.
I called our three kids, two of whom were in A&E math in grades 4-5, and two who are now in graduate school. They said this change is weird, and bizarre. Each of them stated that students who do not take finals in high school will not be prepared for college.
Midterms and finals should be worth enough weight to impact grades. Studying for exams helps you remember what you have learned. High school students should also be required and taught how to write at least one 10-page paper to prepare them for college.
Betty Sherman was a superstar teacher who made grades 4 and 5 A&E math exciting and fun for my kids. They had an incredible time with Mrs. Sherman. This was enormously beneficial and essential for them. They had been very bored in regular math. 5 to 10 percent of the students sounds just right. These kids need A&E math just as much as some kids need remedial help.
There are multiple reasons that honors and Advanced Placement high School students are stressed out and several ways to reduce the stress. My daughters said that finals are once a year, and you are given time to study for them. The real cause of stress in high school is the six to eight hours of homework every night. Teachers should time themselves doing the homework so they realize how long it takes to complete assignments, and poll the students on how much time they are spending each day. More than one hour per subject is too much.
Another simple fix would be to always have English tests only on Mondays, math tests only on Tuesdays, history tests only on Wednesdays, science tests only on Thursdays, and foreign language tests only on Fridays. This would solve the problem of having several tests on the same day. Grading on a curve pits students against each other and assumes that someone must fail. The goal should be for every student to do well.
Unnecessary stress is also added in September by teachers who give low grades on the first assignments to intimidate students. And AP and honors teachers often put huge loads of work in the fall, when students are applying to college and taking SATs. Then in the spring, after early May, there is no work at all. This adds huge stress for students. Students respect teachers who have passion and knowledge of the subject. Work should be spread evenly throughout the year, or perhaps even be a little lighter in the fall when applications are due.
If we want to seriously reduce stress for all students, the high school day should begin at 9:30 or 10 a.m. We all know that teenagers naturally need to stay up later and sleep later. This would help a lot, and there is no reason not to change the schedule.
Meditation, breathing deeply in and out slowly four times, walking outside for a few minutes, stretching, lavender and eucalyptus scents, etc., are all relaxation techniques that students can use. Some of these could be incorporated into the school day.
Several years ago I attended a lecture by Dr. Leonard Sax at High School South. He said one way to reduce student stress is to limit social media after 9 p.m. Charging phones in the parents’ room, so the students don’t have access to their phones does this. And have them use their computers where you can see them. It’s important to avoid all screens to calm down for at least one hour before they go to sleep.
Dr. Sax said that kids sending more than 135 texts a day is a red flag, and leads to anxiety, binge drinking etc. Adolescents need to spend time figuring out who they are, and who they want to be. Appearance, Facebook, academics, and sports are a mask, not a sense of self. Facebook pages are a performance, not living, and don’t develop an authentic sense of self.
Dr. Sax said the solution is to find vacations where you do activities outdoors together (no technology). Limit video games to fewer than 40 minutes/day on school nights, and under one hour/day on weekends. Create community for your kids with other adults, such as scouting and church groups.
We question the process that resulted in eliminating mid-year and final exams, a very significant step. Why was the community not given a chance to comment? Why were South and North graduates who are in college not interviewed?
Our children were very prepared for college, and said that the work in college was more challenging, but there was no more volume of work than at South. When I looked through the school boxes, and saw the learning from K to 12, I was very impressed and grateful for the many wonderful teachers they had that taught them to write well, and understand math, history, science, languages, health, phys ed, music, art, and how to learn. Their education was deep and comprehensive.
We trusted that our schools would continue to be excellent. We absolutely moved here and pay high taxes for one reason: excellent schools, including the A&E program. I fear that these recent decisions will not really reduce students’ stress and will not prepare them for college. And that this will have a negative impact on our property values.
Carol Herts
Blackhawk Court, West Windsor
As a parent of four children who have either attended or are attending WW-P schools, I applaud the district’s decision to move to terminate the A&E math program in the upper elementary schools. No extracurricular sports are offered at Millstone or Village, so the argument that the district has a penchant for athletics over academics is simply unfounded. And given that 1) there is “no statistically significant difference” in outcomes for students who started the program in fourth grade versus those who entered the program in middle school; 2) males disproportionately make up the A&E student population; and 3) competition for program entry exacerbates children’s stress, the current structure of the program demands revision.
Since there is virtually no correlation between participating in fourth and fifth grade A&E math and final graduation outcomes, eliminating this aspect of the program seems like a no-brainer. The savings could be directed to strengthening the math skills of all students (no matter what their gifts and talents), and broadening an A&E program that begins in middle school. I for one am happy to see a narrowly construed, boutique program that caters to the “appetites” of only a few sacrificed in favor of a more inclusive educational vision.
But more importantly, by looking to eliminate the A&E program at this level, I believe the district is addressing a much larger problem in education. As a university professor with 20 years of teaching experience, I have witnessed first-hand a growing student preoccupation with test scores, “good” grades, and status, which is accompanied by a narrowing of academic goals. Sadly, those goals seem to be constituted by parents.
Such prescribed outcomes and rewards often translate into a difficult, anxiety-ridden, and unfulfilling college experience, especially when students find their professors push them “beyond the syllabus” to combine the basic knowledge they’ve mastered in class with their own interests to engage sets of problems they generate for themselves. In addition, the creative intellectual, social, and personal skills they must cultivate to seek answers outside the classroom are neither easily acquired nor clearly “assessed.” Often, engagement in the process of finding answers to questions must serve as its own reward, and satisfaction must come from within despite criticism and/or failure.
We must shift away from testing and “teaching for the test.” We must encourage students to develop the internal drive necessary to become more than passive consumers of information. We need them to become active creators of knowledge. Those are the kinds of students who will build a better world. In my view, the district’s move to eliminate A&E math in fourth and fifth grades (along with high school midterms and finals) is a welcome step in that direction.
Kathryn Kueny
Princeton Junction
The purpose of a free public school education is not to allow entitled parents to find a way to get a private school education on the taxpayer dime. The A&E math case is a perfect example of this injustice. We the taxpayers should not be a subsidy system for these students to receive preferential treatment, leaving behind the normal student who is simply trying to get a quality education without suffering from the exclusion factor.
Gifted students should seek advanced courses in the private school system, pay the going rate, and remove the A&E burden from the school budget. I applaud the school administration for this modest start in coming to the realization that our public schools are not in business to serve the entitled few on the backs of the majority.
Dennis Buchert
Plainsboro
