Often we want the best for our children and sometimes we have to stop and take a look at the standards that we are setting for them. Are our standards for students too high? Are the standards not high enough? The District 34 middle school students were found to have too high of a placement standard in order to take an accelerated class in math.
It’s important to have reasonable standards for math education.
Who’s to thank for this change in the school? Well the students can thank the parents that pushed the district to reevaluate the standards. Once the school district had reevaluated their standards they were able to find that corrections could be made. While the tests will continue to be used to advance the students into other classes in math, the standard has been modified.
Students were previously placed into math classes based on a comparison of their test scores against the average score of students in the accelerated math classes, Tsoumas said in an email. Under the new placement system, their scores will now be used to project future performance on tests that will be compared against test scores nationwide.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Key takeaways
- The Glenview school district has changed its math placement standard after determining that it was originally set too high, allowing more students to take advanced math.
- The change comes after a year of parent complaints and concerns over math placement, including a petition with almost 500 signatures.
- The new standard still takes test scores into account, but has changed how those scores are used to determine placement and is more flexible than the previous system.
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