No Trail - Algebra Victory!
No Trail:
Lack of a trail up Algebra Mountain prevents the Middle 80% from learning algebra.
Many Attempts to Resolve the Math Education Crisis Have Failed.
Over the past half century, the educational establishment has expended enormous sums of money developing numerous and varied methods to teach algebra. Hundreds of textbooks have been written. Training programs have been created for teachers. Tens of thousands of dedicated teachers have worked very hard to be effective at teaching algebra. And they do succeed at teaching algebra to the Math-Smart 10%.
But the Middle 80% languish because they can’t climb up Algebra Mountain. They try to learn but don’t know what to do. They listen in class, but they don’t understand what the teacher is saying, writing or doing. They sit down to study but get stuck. They open the book and try to read, but it’s gibberish to them. When test day arrives, they panic—and they get a bad grade. Soon, they become frustrated and start tuning out. Their algebra experience becomes a downward spiral, because the material keeps building and building, and they get more and more lost! Do YOU know anyone who experienced this?
Most math teachers genuinely desire to teach algebra effectively to all of their students, but THEY DON’T KNOW HOW. And when students fail, many teachers tend to blame the student: “You didn’t pay attention in class”; “You didn’t do your homework”; “You didn’t read the book”; “You’re not smart enough”; etc.
For fifty years, “pre-algebra” has been an epic failure.
In the 1970s when educators inserted a “pre-algebra” into the math curriculum, they did so on the basis of a FALSE hypothesis, widely but mistakenly believed by math teachers, that the reason kids have so much difficulty in algebra is because they are not yet “ready” for algebra.
No. Algebra “readiness” was NOT and is NOT the problem.
Educators failed to consider the REAL problem, to wit: algebra was being inadequately and poorly taught! Kids who were perfectly “ready” for algebra were crashing into the Algebra Mountain Triple Whammy, and educators were offering no trail up the mountain. There was not and is not any pedagogical or academic need for a course in “pre-algebra.”
Since nothing was done to solve the REAL problem, “pre-algebra” has done absolutely nothing at all to get the Middle 80% up Algebra Mountain! Hence, the Math Education Crisis still exists today.
“Pre-algebra” is an epic fail on which hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and centuries of collective student time (plus decades of parent time) have been squandered over the past 50 years. Algebra Mountain stands just as tall today as it did before educators invented “pre-algebra.”
AlgebraVictory! Trail resolves the Crisis!
AlgebraVictory! eliminates “pre-algebra” from the curriculum: students go directly from BASIC arithmetic into algebra and begin their hike up Algebra Mountain, learning and growing tremendously in the process.
AlgebraVictory! resolves the Math Education Crisis by providing a powerful, sophisticated learning trail up Algebra Mountain.