Cambridge doesn’t write checks it can’t cash, but its officials and institutions aren’t shy about putting a pin in a calendar square and moving it when a date has come and gone without action.
School officials already acknowledged in March that the lack of a comprehensive world language program was a “broken promise” in last year’s launch of the district restructuring known as the Innovation Agenda. Parents have moved on to another incomplete part of the plan: that all eighth-graders aren’t getting Algebra I, as district policy said would happen.
“Last year we had all hoped that there would be full Algebra I available to all eighth-graders, and it didn’t happen,” School Committee member Patty Nolan said at a July meeting, and the issue was still on the agenda the next month, when member Alice Turkel urged, “I really think we have to do something immediately.”
Turkel had an added concern, though – not just that not all eighth-graders were getting algebra, but that the way some were and some weren’t seemed an awful lot like “tracking,” an educational method that splits up students based on what they’re expected to achieve academically later in life. A lack of confidence that the Innovation Agenda wouldn’t track was her reason for being the sole vote against it in 2011.
While the rules say it’s okay to group students within classes, the difficulties in teaching algebra to a wide range of kids without enough co-teachers has resulted in kids teaching themselves, including online, or traveling to the high school for instruction – but they have to get themselves to Cambridge Rindge & Latin and back, raising parents’ concerns about safety and lost teaching time. Some families have turned to tutors.
“This committee voted to have heterogenous classes, and what has been created in response … is actually so opposite,” Turkel said. “We have a hyper tracking system.”
District Deputy Superintendent Carolyn Turk suggested a plan over the summer that would last for a single year and be evaluated, and it includes a chance for students to test out of Algebra I altogether. But Nolan, who organized a math roundtable with the City Council back in 2010, noted that students across the state struggle with this test, and that only about 10 percent of district students pass it – down from 14 percent a few years ago.
The district continues to grapple with the issue, with an update from Turk due at Tuesday’s committee meeting, but the issue is clear: To give a range of students different levels of instruction and have them wind up at the same place, more teachers are needed – and the budget isn’t there.
Three new missed deadlines in Cambridge issues
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Algebra for all
School officials already acknowledged in March that the lack of a comprehensive world language program was a “broken promise” in last year’s launch of the district restructuring known as the Innovation Agenda. Parents have moved on to another incomplete part of the plan: that all eighth-graders aren’t getting Algebra I, as district policy said would happen.
“Last year we had all hoped that there would be full Algebra I available to all eighth-graders, and it didn’t happen,” School Committee member Patty Nolan said at a July meeting, and the issue was still on the agenda the next month, when member Alice Turkel urged, “I really think we have to do something immediately.”
Turkel had an added concern, though – not just that not all eighth-graders were getting algebra, but that the way some were and some weren’t seemed an awful lot like “tracking,” an educational method that splits up students based on what they’re expected to achieve academically later in life. A lack of confidence that the Innovation Agenda wouldn’t track was her reason for being the sole vote against it in 2011.
While the rules say it’s okay to group students within classes, the difficulties in teaching algebra to a wide range of kids without enough co-teachers has resulted in kids teaching themselves, including online, or traveling to the high school for instruction – but they have to get themselves to Cambridge Rindge & Latin and back, raising parents’ concerns about safety and lost teaching time. Some families have turned to tutors.
“This committee voted to have heterogenous classes, and what has been created in response … is actually so opposite,” Turkel said. “We have a hyper tracking system.”
District Deputy Superintendent Carolyn Turk suggested a plan over the summer that would last for a single year and be evaluated, and it includes a chance for students to test out of Algebra I altogether. But Nolan, who organized a math roundtable with the City Council back in 2010, noted that students across the state struggle with this test, and that only about 10 percent of district students pass it – down from 14 percent a few years ago.
The district continues to grapple with the issue, with an update from Turk due at Tuesday’s committee meeting, but the issue is clear: To give a range of students different levels of instruction and have them wind up at the same place, more teachers are needed – and the budget isn’t there.
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