Solving the Math Problem: An Urban Math Classroom Proves Student Responsibility Is The Real Solution.

To state the obvious: public math education in the United States has been failing for decades. This failure has been met by a parade of novel approaches to content delivery, teacher training, textbook design and the use of technology. In this environment where the potential for improvement is so large, our lack of success suggests that most of our efforts have been badly misdirected.

We have become so focused on finding better methods to deliver content that we have missed the simple observation that many of our students are increasingly resistant to receiving that content. We develop new, more expensive textbooks and then give them to students who never open them. We develop new curricula and teaching techniques and then present them to students stealing glances at text messages. Plainly stated, the real problem in math education has been finding ways to increase student responsibility to learn the material we present. Increased student responsibility, not better content delivery, is the real solution.

Note: This is a reprint of the book “Character Gap”, updated with new content.
This is the story of how Oakland Unity High School, a small charter high school in the tough neighborhoods of Oakland, California, changed its math program and began the process of reversing the math gap. It is told by me, the algebra teacher.

When we started focusing on student responsibility, our ranking on the California Standards Test (CST) for 9th grade algebra increased from #1,078 to #11 out of 1,377 high schools.

The book is manageable to read at 21,000 words, but filled with useable, real-world solutions that brought our urban math classroom from the bottom of California high schools to the very top.