Voyages math has been quite controversial and has supporters and detractors. I would like to have a conversation about Voyages and need input from parents with Voyages experience and teachers in the district who have taught Voyages.
Read some articles here, here, here, and here.
Thoughts? Pro and con...post your opinions here.
9 comments:
From what I remember, Voyages was so confusing to teachers and children that nobody could figure out how to give really good, meaningful homework. It mainly served as a "weed-out" cirriculum to separate the math-letes from everyone else, which (to my mind) is stupidly elitist. It's the job of the math teacher (and everyone who supposedly supports him or her) to turn every kid in the class into a math-lete as far as they can.
If the district had stayed on block scheduling, this might have been possible with Voyages. But since Mary Ellen got a bug up her rear end and decided to switch to 6/7, kids have fifty minutes of class plus six other classes' worth of homework to worry about. They don't have time to do the practice problems and homework problems that it will take to cement their understanding of the material, especially when it's as badly presented as it is in Voyages.
I knew Al Soriano (the man who I understand largely developed Voyages). He came from USF's College of Education, so it's not a real surprise that a USF professor would give the thumbs-up to a cirriculum developed by a USF alumnus using research traditions in vogue at USF College of Education. Doesn't anybody in the school district do any homework when picking experts?
Dump it.
I have two children that struggled for two years in high school math due to the way the program is structured.
We were not alone. We met with the school staff many times and they also complained about the program but told us there was nothing they could do.
Look at the data. Compare the grades from middle to high school and you'll see what I mean.
And...my favorite comment from my son's 9th grade math teacher. "I'm not a teacher, I'm a facilitator."
Admittedly my knowledge and experience comes from teachers and parents that both like and dislike Voyages.
I would ask an INDEPENDENT board of education professionals to evaluate exactly what skills, concepts, background knowledge and experience Voyages requires of a successful student.
Piaget's studies lead him to conclude that children needed to be developed enough before they could learn something. (Learning being a change in/of behavior.)
I believe presentation, etc. is secondary to the students "development". Experience has made me a believer. We owe it to our students (big and small) to make sure they are ready (capable) to learn what we expect of them.
There is a reason for JV sports.
Let those with purity of motive and without vested interest present their findings.
I agree with suzie creamcheese-there has been no evaluation of Voyages by anyone with purity of motive and no vested interest. Like with most things in this district, they only want to hear from stakeholders if what they have to say agrees with what the district has already decided on. I understand that they did do a teacher survey, but are they really listening to what our teachers are saying?? Of course not. Our teachers have to function in an environment equivalent to a dictatorship. Don't speak unless spoken to, don't have an opinion, don't do what you think is right for your students if it differs from what we've told you to do. And above all else, DON'T listen to those annoying parents. This district has lost site of what its primary responsibility is - to educate kids. If they were doing their job, this program would have been gone a long time ago because this program is doing more harm than good. And if the board were doing its job, it would investigate further instead of accepting the district's "spin". Has anyone considered surveying the middle school math teachers - anonymously?? In case you haven't noticed, the threat of retribution and the coercive atmosphere in this district keeps EVERYONE from speaking the truth.
Dump Voyages and now.
The district wants us to continue to use this ineffective and incoherent program for three more years as it waits for Florida's the new math standards to take effect and the contracts with the publisher to expire (hmm … could it be royalties or a minimum purchase agreement?). That’s three more years of a severely flawed curriculum to be force fed to elementary students. Teachers spoke out more than a year ago in an anonymous survey, and the vast majority had negative comments about their experience with Voyages (and they never approved adoption). The August 2007 review of Voyages, by a less than independent group of education (not mathematic) professors, is also decidedly negative: using terms such as “weak”, “we questioned”, “does not provide guidance”, “lessons fail”, “does not provide context for problem solving”, “curriculum does not adequately present opportunities for students to reason” , “..in many instances (grade level expectations) the coverage is at the minimum level”, “(Voyages posits but) fails to address (the learning needs of all children)”. However, unless you actually read the evaluation (check out the district's website), you would never know this because one of the evaluators, the USF professor, in her presentation to the school board, conveniently left out the negative findings in the report. Instead any flaws in Voyages were attributed, once again, to untrained and inexperienced teachers, regardless of the fact that the district has been performing Voyages training for at least five years. The district needs to stop dancing around the Voyages problem, admit they made a major mistake, and buy an excellent math program for our children.
I could not agree more that "the district needs to stop dancing around the Voyages problem, admit they made a major mistake, and buy an excellent math program for our children."
I have three children in elementary school in Hillsborough County and have had GREAT difficulties with the math homework all three have been assigned. Specifically, the instructions on multiple, multiple excercises leave our entire family bewildered on a weekly basis.
What really troubles me is that frequently I am having difficulties interpreting the vague and confusing directions, let alone asking an elementary school student to decifer their meanings. While I may not quite have my PhD in mathematics, I have multiple post-graduate degrees and I enjoyed college Calculus and even Multivariable Calculus.
That political (and likely financial) concerns are keeping our children from being adequately prepared in mathematics is a disgrace. Furthermore, without the proper FOUNDATION in the basics of mathematics, I fear my/our children will be hindered for many decades to come.
End this experimental "Voyage" in lunacy, and restore our county to a proven, established standard!!!
Wow. Clearly there is some kind of vendetta here. Number one, there is no royalties to be had by the county. Number two, there is not another "quality" textbook in the country which meets the state standards in mathematics. Number three, to the VERY concerned father, if the instructions are being relayed to you through your student this is probably not the appropriate homework for your student. Most likely this is from the Excursions book which is clearly marked to be used in a classroom setting, not for homework. I am a teacher of mathematics in Hillsborough County, and now I can see the clear bias of this text in the media. Whoever is writing these responses clearly have no idea how to use the program.
And I would like to point out that Voyages and the switch from block scheduling have nothing to do with anything because Voyages is only an elementary text, not high school.
Find a better text, and then come on here and post your smack talk! And by the way, curriculum is the state standads, not the textbook!
Love Anchors. The fact is that a lot of our teachers cannot pass the math certification test due unsufficient subject matter preparation.So they struggle with the instruction, and they wish for a book that it will substitute their explicit instruction...
Parents are not experts, it takes years of college preparation and experience to become one.Parents in the position of customers and teachers as customer service - it is degrading for our profession. Don't you feel how pedagogue its been pushed away, almost as is illegal, and superficially charged activities are taking its place ?
I have two children in elementary school. I find the Voyages curriculum confusing and disjointed. It seems to me that this curriculum is introducing concepts that may be to difficult for the elementary student to grasp. I don't know what could be used to replace Voyages. However I would think that the district could find a better elementary math curricula than this.
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