Integrated math to return to AHS

With all the successes of the upper tier of Albany High’s math program (see Math-acre at Fremont High), those who struggle are rarely recognized. The current system favors students who are more mathematically skilled, and often, those who are not are left in the dust.

This is about to change. Integrated Math may make a comeback at Albany High next year.

In integrated math, instead of covering all of one math domain in one year, students are exposed to a little bit of each area each year. During the first year, students learn the foundations of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, and each successive year they build on all three subjects.

The new system would not affect all students at Albany High; it would be a track offering for math students who would benefit from the integrated approach.

In this system, students in beginning level classes are not asked to understand the more complicated concepts within each subject area that they are often not capable of understanding at that point in time. As math department head Elisabeth Klein said, “You have to wait for the ‘ah ha’ moment,” when students are mathematically mature enough to understand what they are doing.

Albany High’s math program currently has students who repeat Algebra I several times and are never able to pass. Because Albany High and Albany Middle use the same textbook for Algebra I, students who haven’t passed Algebra I by 10th or 11th grade have used the same book for three or four years.

Said math teacher Dean Becker, “I think that it is the highest form of arrogance to think that I can teach a student in one year what they have been struggling with for two or three years already.”

A benefit of integrated math is that, unlike in Algebra I where doing well in a unit depends on understanding the previous one, a student can have a successful unit following an unsuccessful one. In Algebra, every chapter builds on the one before, so if a student does not understand a basic concept at the beginning of the year, he has no chance of passing the later chapters. In integrated math, the units are much more independent, so students can improve and are not tied down by what they haven’t gotten yet. They can learn a topic and gain confidence, which leads to success in later units and classes.

The main obstacle to offering integrated math at Albany High is the dearth of decent books. Though most of the world teaches integrated math, in the United States it is not very common. Because all high school textbooks must be approved by the state, and most schools do not offer integrated math, textbooks for integrated math are rare. Teachers have expressed discontent even with the current math books, pointing out the superfluous illustrations and “real-life application” situations presented in them.

Albany has offered integrated math in the past, but removed it from the curriculum around 2000 due to the incompatibility between the book that was being used and the influx of new teachers.

Said Klein, “The point of implementing integrated math is to try and break the failure cycle for students who have been repeating Algebra I, and to expose them to different types of math,” and “…to get kids though enough algebra so they can move on and can reasonably take tests such as the STAR and the CAHSEE.”

3 Responses

1. 12:25 PM on March 16th, 2007dont worrry about it:

   f math. were’s it gonna get me ?

2. 2:00 PM on March 17th, 2007sophie:

   math is awesome! how can you say that!?

3. 8:14 AM on March 19th, 2007Sweet Pic:

   Sweet pic dude

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