BOTH SCHOOL BOARDS IN WATERLOO REGION ARE SCREWING UP

Today's Waterloo Region Record carrys Luisa D'Amato's Opinion article titled "It doesn't add up: the "math education experts" have failed our children". The Record's Jeff Outhit did an analysis of Grade 3 and Grade 6 math scores from the EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office) which show not only falling math scores across Ontario but show that Waterloo Region are leading the drop. This includes both our Catholic and Public school Boards although the Catholic Board started off in a better place than the public board.

Jeff Outhit's statistics are all in yesterday's Record and Luisa gives her analysis in today's paper. In a nutshell the so called "discovery based" teaching methods seem to be intellectually challenged. In parent talk that means they are a crock. "Direct Instruction" puts the students through their paces and insists on a serious grounding in the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This grounding means memorizing times tables and the like and it works.