Category: Village of Ridgewood

>Recently, it was announced that the Paramus Municipal Pool will be closed for the upcoming season because of concerns about contaminated soil within the pool’s perimeter.

Should Village Council members negotiate an agreement that would allow a limited number of Paramus residents to join Graydon?

>Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices
By KENNETH CHANG APR. 25, 2008
NY TIMES

One train leaves Station A at 6 p.m. traveling at 40 miles per hour toward Station B. A second train leaves Station B at 7 p.m. traveling on parallel tracks at 50 m.p.h. toward Station A. The stations are 400 miles apart. When do the trains pass each other?

Entranced, perhaps, by those infamous hypothetical trains, many educators in recent years have incorporated more and more examples from the real world to teach abstract concepts. The idea is that making math more relevant makes it easier to learn.

That idea may be wrong, if researchers at Ohio State University are correct. An experiment by the researchers suggests that , in this case 40 (t + 1) = 400 – 50t, where t is the travel time in hours of the second train. (The answer is below.)
“The motivation behind this research was to examine a very widespread belief about the teaching of mathematics, namely that teaching students multiple concrete examples will benefit learning,” said Jennifer A. Kaminski, a research scientist at the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State. “It was really just that, a belief.”

Dr. Kaminski and her colleagues Vladimir M. Sloutsky and Andrew F. Heckler did something relatively rare in education research: they performed a randomized, controlled experiment. Their results appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

Though the experiment tested college students, the researchers suggested that their findings might also be true for math education in elementary through high school, the subject of decades of debates about the best teaching methods.

In the experiment, the college students learned a simple but unfamiliar mathematical system, essentially a set of rules. Some learned the system through purely abstract symbols, and others learned it through concrete examples like combining liquids in measuring cups and tennis balls in a container.
Then the students were tested on a different situation — what they were told was a children’s game — that used the same math. “We told students you can use the knowledge you just acquired to figure out these rules of the game,” Dr. Kaminski said.

The students who learned the math abstractly did well with figuring out the rules of the game. Those who had learned through examples using measuring cups or tennis balls performed little better than might be expected if they were simply guessing. Students who were presented the abstract symbols after the concrete examples did better than those who learned only through cups or balls, but not as well as those who learned only the abstract symbols.

The problem with the real-world examples, Dr. Kaminski said, was that they obscured the underlying math, and students were not able to transfer their knowledge to new problems.

“They tend to remember the superficial, the two trains passing in the night,” Dr. Kaminski said. “It’s really a problem of our attention getting pulled to superficial information.”
The researchers said they had experimental evidence showing a similar effect with 11-year-old children. The findings run counter to what Dr. Kaminski said was a “pervasive assumption” among math educators that concrete examples help more children better understand math.
But if the Ohio State findings also apply to more basic math lessons, then teaching fractions with slices of pizza or statistics by pulling marbles out of a bag might prove counterproductive. “There are reasons to think it could affect everyone, including young learners,” Dr. Kaminski said.
Dr. Kaminski said even the effectiveness of using blocks and other “manipulatives,” which have become more pervasive in preschool and kindergarten, remained untested. It has not been shown that lessons in which children learn to count by using blocks translate to a better understanding of numbers than a more abstract approach would have achieved.

The Ohio State researchers have begun new experiments with elementary school students.
Other mathematicians called the findings interesting but warned against overgeneralizing. “One size can’t fit all,” said Douglas H. Clements, a professor of learning and instruction at the University of Buffalo. “That’s not denying what these guys have found, whatsoever.”
Some children need manipulatives to learn math basics, Dr. Clements said, but only as a starting point.
“It’s a fascinating article,” said David Bressoud, a professor of mathematics at Macalester College in St. Paul and president-elect of the Mathematical Association of America. “In some respects, it’s not too surprising.”
As for the answer to the math problem at the top of this article, the two trains pass each other at 11 p.m. at the midway point between Stations A and B. Or, using the abstract approach, t = 4. ■

>Easy approaches make learning math hard
Forget real-world examples. Teaching abstract concepts works best
By Julie Steenhuysen
Reuters
updated 5:28 p.m. ET, Thurs., April. 24, 2008
CHICAGO – Frustrated math students may have a good excuse — some of the teaching methods meant to make math more relevant may in fact be making it harder to understand, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

They said students who were taught abstract math concepts fared better in experiments than those taught with real-world examples, such as story problems.

Adding extraneous details makes it hard for students to extract the basic mathematical concepts and apply them to new problems, they said.

“We’re really making it difficult for students because we are distracting them from the underlying math,” said Jennifer Kaminski, a research scientist at Ohio State University, whose study appears in the journal Science.

The findings cast doubt on the widely used practice among elementary and middle schools in the United States and elsewhere of using friendly, concrete examples to teach abstract math concepts.

For example, a teacher might use a bag of colored marbles to explain probability, or teach a formula about distance with the classic example of two trains departing from different cities and traveling at different speeds.

“The danger with teaching using this example is that many students only learn how to solve the problem with the trains,” Kaminski said.

To find out the best methods of teaching basic math concepts, the researchers conducted several experiments using college students in which some students were taught concepts using basic symbols, while others were taught with concrete examples.

For example, they studied different approaches at teaching the basic mathematical property of commutativity — that you can switch up the order of elements and still get the same answer, as in 3 + 2 or 2 + 3 equals 5.

Some students learned the concepts using generic symbols. Others were taught with concrete examples such as pictures of measuring cups filled with liquid, or slices of pizza or tennis balls in a container.

While all of the students were able to master these concepts easily, the students who first learned math concepts using abstract symbols were better able to transfer that learning to other problems when tested.

That is not to say story problems should disappear. Kaminski said story problems offer a good way to test whether a student has mastered the abstract concept.

“Story problems aren’t out, but they are probably not the way we want to go about introducing concepts or problem solving,” she said in a telephone interview.

“That would be best done through symbolic math.”

Copyright 2008 Reuters. Click for restrictions.
URL: https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24299980/

>New posters or readers here should keep in mind that there is a small but dedicated cadre of reform math supporters from places far from Ridgewood who take pleasure in masquerading as ‘stakeholders’ in local debates.

True ‘gadflies’, motivated by politics above all else, they are more than willing to interrupt conversations between local debate participants with stink-bomb posts designed to elicit an emotional reaction from you, for which you are then criticized as having somehow demonstrated hypocrisy (read: “check mate”).

I for one find this behavior pathetic. But to each his own. Looking on the bright side, if this is the sum total of all the support the Reform Math movement can muster on a Ridgewood-centric website, it’s probably a good thing. It tends to show that truly local supporters of that curriculum have exhausted their store of potentially persuasive arguments in support of their position, and are now running on fumes, hoping and praying that the tincture of time will relieve them of their current troubles.

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>The Board of Education has re-hired School Leadership LLC to find another new superintendent. They are using the following criteria, which they say was developed with the help of the community. We need a serious intervention or we will end up with another Brooks — cagey, duplicitous, ideologically extreme and smooth as silk. I suggest a complete retooling of these six criteria (listed below) as they are outlined in jargon, education platitudes and gobbledygook. Some suggestions might include the following:

*1. An educator with significant leadership experience, preferably as a superintendent, in a high-expectation school community–
How about: A CEO type individual with experience in business and education (not being a life-long educrat is a big plus) whom others in diverse constituencies have been willing to follow and respect, and who is resilient in the face of diminished expectations emanating from our present school board and curriculum head. A person whose services remain in demand, and for whom we must compete rather than someone who was “let go” by his or her former employer.

*2. An exceptional listener and communicator, with outstanding speaking, writing and interpersonal skills, who has built trust among all members of a school community–
How about: A person for whom honesty is the best policy. One who values forthrightness and frank discussions with parents, students, staff, consultants and the school board. The ability to be a “smooth talker” is not a requirement.

*3. A visible instructional leader, willing to first become intimately acquainted with the Ridgewood schools and community and then share a compelling vision and plan for continued growth–
How about: A person already knowledgeable of the tenets that constituted Ridgewood’s past tradition of excellence, and one for whom that goal would be at the heart of the district’s continued growth.

*4. An administrator who empowers others to carry out the district’s goals but remains accountable for all areas of leadership, including finance and facilities–
Sorry, but an administrator is just another word for a bureaucrat. Administrators do not empower people, rather they employ the leadership survival tools of CYA. No administrator bureaucrat type need apply (see 1).

*5. A strong leader, with demonstrated success in contributing to an effective approach to governance involving the Board, the staff and the school community–
Interesting that parents and taxpayers are notably absent from this particular sentence. How about: Someone who expects to be accountable to parents and taxpayers for the direction of Ridgewood’s schools.

*6. A proven educator, flexible and caring, who will passionately advocate for the learning needs of all (their emphasis) students in the Ridgewood Public Schools–
To whom exactly must this flexible and caring person advocate? How about: A person able to display powerful knowledge of the nation’s education system, including its strengths but, more importantly, its weaknesses so that efforts can be undertaken to limit the system’s harmful byproduct to the education process. Such byproducts include efforts promoted by schools of education to implement more non-academic programs in the classroom; efforts by education publishers to advocate, promote and sell dubious and controversial product; efforts by the teachers union and its supporters to lessen instructional time and add perks to compensation agreements; and efforts to gear curriculum and assessments to merely address statewide standards for proficient student performance.

Adding a 7th:
Someone able to clean up the present inequity and overall weakness of our math program and set our curriculum selections on course to be challenging while ensuring that all students receive the proper support in school to achieve at the standards of a Ridgewood education.

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Today (8/30), the Ledger reported on the Department of Education’s latest report on school violence, vandalism, weapons and substance abuse. The report contains some very troubling news for Ridgewood. This is regardless of the fact that the reporting across districts and counties may be flawed, though not flawed enough to render the report irresponsible. It would be wise for administrators to pay close heed to these findings and consider what they have done in the past that either has not worked, or may have inadvertently exacerbated the problem. Here’s a comparative look of four districts in the report: Glen Rock, Hackensack, Ridgewood and Newark.

Glen Rock, with an enrollment of 2,471 students, reported a total number of 8 incidences of the above
Hackensack City, with an enrollment of 5,059, students reported a total number of 24 incidences
Ridgewood, with an enrollment of 5,553 students, reported a total of 95 incidences.
Newark City, with an enrollment of 41,855 students, reported a total of 414 incidences (unless you’re terc impaired, you know that that would extrapolate to more incidences by percentage in Ridgewood).

Could it be that Glen Rock, Hackensack and Newark are drastically underreporting or does Ridgewood have more than a Starbucks’s problem? Regardless, our administrators owe Ridgewood parents and taxpayers a revealing discussion of this issue rather than the usual explaining away of what the numbers mean. The full report is available at:

https://www.state.nj.us/education/schools/vandv/0506/appende1.pdf

>1. One find day a Travell teacher attended a program or seminar or something headlined by an expert education entity;
2. The teacher is treated to a marketing campaign (masqueraded, of course, as unbiased, expert information) on the wonders of the new, new math a/k/a terc with all the buzz words thrown in for emphasis;
3. The teacher is completely sold and comes back to Travell extolling the wonders and virtues of reform math and, especially, terc;
4. The principal is eager show leadership skills by bringing an innovative program to his school–not unlike the way Orchard’s principal brought the teacher’s college reading/writing program to the district after first putting it in place at his school. Principals get lots of kudos for stuff like this;
5. At Travell, the principal gets other teachers on board and training begins. Soon, terc is implemented with little supplementation of real math because the “belief” quotient is still high;
6. Meanwhile, back at Cottage Place, Botsford is looking for a way to make math in the district less of a patchwork quilt and is a reform babe herself. She loves terc and looks for the next school that will take it on–given our penchant for school-based management, it’s one school at a time;
7. Orchard is the perfect fit because it has long been used as the experimentation school as a result of its small size and very compliant HSA;
8. Orchard’s principal is a mathematician and feels that he can handle any program, even one he must mitigate since he has the expertise to diminish the negative by product of terc. He signs on, gaining friends in high places. This is the second phase of a plan to next roll out terc to Somerville, then Ridge, Hawes and Willard. At the middle school level, BF gets a go and GW is soon to follow, before wrapping everything up implementing reform math at the high school. Hallelulia, Botsford sees the seeds of success in her main task just around the horizon;
9. Parents at Travell begin to see some of their once bright children, starting to struggle and complain about the stupid math that’s not like math at all. These parents begin to raise the issue within their school;
10. The principal, knowing that he is a key part of a far grander scheme, is not receptive to a “few” parents wanting to alter his exceptional math experiment. The teachers are still extolling the virtues of terc and the Cottage Place administrators–blinded because they are not on the front lines–have invested very high levels of “belief” in the program;
11. Travell’s scores are not improving. In fact, they are getting worse;
12. Administrators respond by stepping on the terc gas to increase the teacher training and bury the kids in reform math propaganda. “Belief” is winning out over common sense and the long range plan to have reform math as the district-wide curricula for math;
13. Parents, suffused with research, charts and expert opinion from high end mathematicians, bring their concerns out to the public-at-large and to the BOE.
14. The BOE turns to its administrators to explain its wonderful plan and “better communicate” the terc beliefs to parents, who obviously missed it. Parents, however, are not falling for platitudes, nor for the sales pitch on the package;
15. The BOE tries to appease parents by showing how well students are meeting the state standards–hoping to defend against parents claiming that a bad program has failed numerous grades of children–even their own child. The BOE has a plan to strengthen its forces with a superintendent steeped in reform math and, therefore, better able to protect board members from the growing wrath of parents, since Botsford is not adept at the task;
16. Made aware of the math fight, the superintendent gets cold feet and decides not to come. BOE members are shattered that they must now defend themselves without their incoming general. Unable to acknowledge that terc is bad (because it would be an admittance that kids who had it, paid the ultimate price for their bad judgment), they plan to fight on with their state standards strategy;
17. The strategy backfires as parents recognize and point out publicly that the state standards are abysmal in NJ. The BOE and its administrators have no other plan and the district-wide rollout of reform math stops dead in its tracks;
18. New interim principal is hired and he has to clean up the mess. He recognizes (and is able to admit) that reform math won’t serve ALL children in high school. This also undermines the claim of administrators that this math was for ALL children;
19. Since it’s not yet at the high school, reform math is dead on arrival there. That effectively eliminates the need to preach its virtues for the middle schools and, it will follow, at the elementary schools;
20. Look for reform math to slowly fade out of Travell and Orchard, where it never realy ruled the day. Look for CMP2 to slowly slide back to real math at the middle schools;
21. Don’t look for the BOE to ever admit that it made a mistake. The board could never begin to pay the price for those children it messed up with their well meaning but devastating terc experiment.

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>These are some of the most ridiculous and selfish comments I have read on this blog. I am continually amazed by the arrogance and selfishness of people in Ridgewood, who tout the character of our town and demand the highest standards of service and resources, yet are unwilling to pay for them. Whether a it is a new field, a new service or a new building, how many times have we heard something like, “it wasn’t like that in the 1950’s, so we don’t need it now”.

That is an absurd rationale and illustrates a fundamental lack of understanding and appreciation of civic planning, municipal management and community responsibility.Any rational and thoughtful Ridgewood resident wants a local hospital that can offer the best medical care possible. There may be situations that require patients to seek specialists in NYC or elsewhere. But, that shouldn’t mean we force Valley to make due with antiquated and inappropriate zoning and require all Ridgewood residents to live with the consequences of long-term declining services. I hope my family never needs Valley’s services. But, I want to know that it is there if we need it and I certainly don’t want to “have to go” to Hackensack or NYC to get the best care, if my family has a medical emergency.

I live near RHS and the campus buildings, which overshadow our homes (and from some views have a very “institutional” look) have not diminished our neighborhood. Nor will Valley’s plans diminish the neighborhoods around the hospital compared to today’s appearance. It will certainly not diminish the view from BF field. The eye sore there is the back side of the school, BF’s parking lot, dumpsters and broken fences, not Valley Hospital. In fact, the trees that shield the field from Valley Hospital may be the most attractive view from the field.Like our school system, Valley Hospital is a valuable asset that enhances the quality of life in the community and distinguishes Ridgewood from less desirable neighboring communities. Also like our school system, it requires periodic improvements and upgrades and deserves our support for well planned fiscally responsible change.

>Dr. Brennan will be discussing and updating the K-8 MATH RESPONSIVENESS PLAN at this Monday’s BOE meeting. In addition, Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida, facilitator, will provide an update to the Board on the progress of this same plan. All interested parties should plan on attending and speak during public comment. The more voices heard, the better!

>I know this is the wrong place to ask this, but is that above comment correct? Did the town really give this church $10,000 to tear down the house? I called Village Hall today, asked the question, and I got transferred for 20 minutes… engineering, zoning, parks dept, etc. No one would comment.

Not sure of the answer. The word I got was that the Church was paying just over $20K for the job. However, the Church was not obligated to fill in the hole left behind, nor to do other site work in preparation for the property being turned into a park ,perhaps the $10K covers that work; i.e., filling in the hole, leveling the land, and removing the fence.

>Valley Hospital is seeking to change the Village’s Master Plan and the H-Zone ordinances to allow them to increase the size of the structures on their 15.4 acre Ridgewood campus.

The two stage, multi-year, $750 million proposal is to increase the total Gross Floor area by 71%; reduce the building setbacks to 40 feet on all four sides of the property (from the present effective 144 ft); increase on-site parking by 400 spaces and to increase building heights to 80 feet (56 ft + 24 ft of mechanicals).

After examining the proposal, over 400 residents formed a group called the Concerned Residents of Ridgewood to fight the proposal. They have a website www.stopvalley.com. The group believes in quality healthcare, but not at the expense of the village. They believe that, if the proposal is allowed to pass without amendment, the unique character of Village will be destroyed and Ridgewood will become just another “hospital town”.

A major concern is the permanent nature of the proposed changes to the Master Plan and Ordinances. If the H-Zone ordinance changes are allowed to pass, the hospital will be able to continue building beyond their current proposal without the needing to gain variance approval at the public Board Meetings – only site plan approval.

If the Master Plan changes are approved, any future variance changes beyond what is requested by the Hospital today will be harder to oppose as the proposed changes to the Master Plan will render the Village “Hospital expansion friendly”.

The specific issues are:

Proposed changes to the Master Plan and H-Zone ordinances that will change the Character of the Village
The number of licensed beds will increase by 3, but the size of the hospital will be 374,333 sq feet at a cost of $750 million – will the health insurance companies pay the resulting higher fees?
-There will be more buildings and less open space.
-A reduction in house values of the surrounding neighborhoods
-Possible road widening creating safety and traffic issues
-Ben Franklin Middle School is right next to the hospital, Travell Elementary School only one block away and students transverse Van Dien to RHS. There are significant safety and quality of -life issues for those students during the 3+ years of proposed construction.

>Geez! I was an HSA President at Travell when TERC was brought in. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. As President and a member of Travell’s HSA, we didn’t have the luxury of “voting” for TERC. It was handed to us on a silver platter with many promises of how “life changing” it would be for our kids. It wasn’t an option that we could say yes or no to as I recall. I worked hard as President all the while registering my complaints that we shouldn’t have to pay for air conditioning and even voting “No” to the budget…which by the way I have never voted for. During my tenure it was true the Superintendent’s office gave me a letter to distribute to all parents after I signed it but it did not say to vote “FOR” the budget it just said “TO” vote. Anyone who came to my meetings should have been very clear about where I stood on the budget (which I spoke against at Federated meetings – much to the chagrin of Dr. Porter)and other expenses the parents were expected to pick up because the budget couldn’t support them. I feel really badly that some parents may have felt excluded by the “clique” of the HSA that was never MY intention as President. I was always grateful for the support (financial or otherwise) of all of our parents. I am very disappointed that so many parents feel this way, I’m sorry for that. Please don’t let any of that discourage you from supporting the Math Moms with their hardwork in getting TERC taken out of the district or getting involved in any way you feel comfortable. This system will only change if people are willing to speak up and change it.

>I am a teacher of mathematics in a metropolitan school district. I have witnessed over the years the down spiral in quality of curricular resource materials for mathematics. I have found it increasingly necessary to enhance, augment, and compensate (for) the materials with which I have been expected to teach. The politics by which inferior resource materials have been foisted on math teachers (and therby students and parents) is insidious and anti-educational. State, district, school, and corporate administrators (attempt to) pressure, misdirect, and manipulate teachers to buy into the math flavor fad of the day. Teacher input is all but ignored unless (of course) it reinforces what the powers-that-be wish to be heard and/or publicized.

Administrative media access so highly filters the information which is output to the public that the quite intelligent and well-meaning parents, who want only to advocate what is best for their children, are often undertandably confused by the discrepancy between administrative lip-service and academic results (e.g. WASL). Being that the math WASL has been all but diefied (unjustifiably) as an academic measure, parental angst becomes preyed upon by smooth talking demagogues offering a reformist concoction of snake oil and mediocrity to remedy a near-disaster of their creation. The apple of mediocrity will always be mediocrity regardless of how well is polished or spiffed up by the minions of fuzzy mathematics. Each year the number of students arriving to my classroom without basic and essential arithmetic skills in place
increases. Many students cannot do simple arithmetic operations without a calculator.

Basic multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, fraction, decimal, exponent, and percent facts are often just not in place… the simple stuff! Often, students are recommended from middle school into high school courses for which they are either less than adequately prepared or for which they are not prepared at all. TERC & CMP exposure and/or induced calculator “dependency” (in elementary and middle school are the usual culprits. Those students who arrive and are indeed ready to advance must then patiently endure the requisite review process in order to bring as many of their classmates up to speed as possible. The math reality… it is insufficient that a student can merely perform calculations on a calculator. Unless an inculcated arithmetic process is operative (consciously or unconsciously) in the student’s reasoning, use of the calculator becomes little better than a crap shoot. It is just as important to have a sense of when an answer is not in the ballpark as when it is. Without a developed sense of knowing the difference, one answer might often be just as well as any other answer.

If I had a Lotto ticket for each time I heard a student remark that an answer was correct because “that’s what the calculator says”, I would have won the lottery long ago.Calculators do not speak. Calculators do not have an opinion. Calculators calculate. (A hammer does not suggest where to place the nail. That is the carpenter’s job.)Good “basic math skills” supply the basis for good mathematical reasoning. Calculators cannot reason. Reasoning is the student’s job. CMP, TERC, IMP, CPM, Core Plus, Everyday Math, etc,… all fail the student. The fundamental cognitive tools of mathematical reasoning (basic skills) are abandoned by these curricula. Rather, these curricula nurture a handicap… a dependence upon the superficial and uninsightful non-reasoning tool, the calculator.Calculators do have their uses. But those uses first need to be tempered by experience… the experience of an acquired comprehensive body of knowledge and interpretive skill. As an educator, I do my best to guide my students through the process of acquiring that mathematical experience. Such experience will surely serve them qualitatively far better (than mere calculator “dependence”) as they progress through their education and, insofar as choices are made, through their lives.

The advocates and purveyors of fluffy math curricula do not seem to be genuinely concerned with the academic and future well-being of students. Such advocates and purveyors seem only to be concerned with the promotion of their ideological agenda(s). I believe that the next step forward should start with one (or more) step(s) backward. Fluffy math texts (and corporate interference) should be scrapped regardless of administrative or governmental pressures. The true educators (parents and teachers) should take back the educational system and do what is right for the kids. Thank you.

NOTE: My point of view tends to get me into hot water with school and district administrators. It is a small price to pay.