National Mathematics Advisory Panel FINAL REPORT

Original Article

Summary goes here!

Just read the key finding section of the report. I have to say there are good ideas against the current practice in US. The sad thing is that it takes a presidential panel to point out some of the obvious.

Here's my opinion about this topic:
1. Emphasis on responsibility - Teacher is to teach, student is to learn. Teacher present the material and demonstrate the application of it, student is to read the material and do the assignment. Students also responsible for asking for clarifications. In my opinion, teaching responsibility is the most important thing in education. Parents are a major part of this. Parents need to take parts in ensuring assignments get done and in setting priorities.
2. Forget about the smart or not smart. This simply give student excuses of not putting in the efforts. Forget about identifying gifted students by IQ test - let's based it on achievement.
3. Set an aggressive curriculum. When I grew up, I was done with arithmetic by grade 6 and had done geometry, trigonometry and all basic algebra by grade 9. These are the standard of 30 years ago. I would like to see my kids learning more than I did when they reach the 9th grade.
4. Forget about the expensive hard covered books. Producing paper covered text books so students can carry them home for studying and reference. This also give parent chances to work with students, or, learn with them.
5.

Community College and education

Ill-prepared students flood Iowa community colleges
Call for Equity for Community Colleges

Working draft

In today's higher education environment, community colleges were asked to provide more and more services. Part of the reason is the lack of well defined goal for community colleges. The broad mission of supporting the community is leaving the details to be interpreted what ever way you wanted. Without those details been defined, community colleges will be asked to take case of the never-ending responsibilities without been compensated appropriately by the public fund.

Community colleges are supported by public money and is, therefore, respond to public's needs. We, however, must understand that responding to public's need does not necessarily mean to take care of ALL the public's needs. It is, therefore, community's job in defining the mission of a community college and provide appropriate support for it. In the process, remember that there is no such thing as free lunch. Public or the community must decide if assigning a particular mission to a community college server the best interest of the community.

For example, should we assign community college the mission of teaching remedial courses to cover up for the failing of the K12 system? And how should this be funded? Is this the best use of public resources?

At this point in time, a lot of community colleges take on the job of teaching remedial courses without community's direction and specific fundings. Problems created are many. For one, this blur the responsibility line between K12 and higher education.



In order to analyze the problem at community colleges, it is necessary to find better defined

We have to agree that community colleges are in hot spot. Reports on poorly educated K12 graduates are plenty. There are plenty of proposals in how to fix this problem. The thing that is lacking in these proposal is the responsibility piece.

The most important piece in education is to teach students to be responsible. To lead by example, this means that we all have to be responsible - whether you are a parent, a teacher or an institution.

At this point in time, we have an education system that largely ignore the importance of responsibility. For example, parents do not put emphasis on school works, there is no good checks on high school graduates, fund raising become a big events in K12 and there is this open enrollment messages.

We, the American, are way too nice in taking other people's problem in our own hand. Which is nice but does not help addressing the root of the problem. For the community college, with today's environment, I really like to see the community colleges went out and emphases to students and parents that if a students is not doing well in K12, they will be paying for remedial courses that are not to be considered as college works.

The message is that it is parent and students' responsibility to be prepared for the college work. They can pay the fee to take the remedial courses or to go and pound on the K12 system to provide adequate education.

Concerning the funding for community colleges, I see no reason that public should share the cost for the remedial courses. Or maybe, those cost should be provided through the K12 system. The result of enforcing this policy is that the K12 system will have to address the problem by providing proofs that they did the right thing in providing adequate instructions. Please noted that I say 'instructions'! Students and parents are responsible for working out the assignment and asking for help.

The bottom line: We simply have to build a responsible education system.

Beyond the responsibility, we have to understand that all human beings are different and, with the best education system we can have, we can only wish that every student will have a Doctor degree.

Basically, community college's duty is to full-fill society's higher education needs that do not meet the mission of traditional 4 year institutions. Traditional 4 year institutions, in general, are geared toward providing general/humanity education in addition to specialized training.



At this point in time, the mission of community college is not well defined.

The mission of community college is either not well defined or is dynamically defined. It serves the purpose of re-education and bridging the K12 and 4 year college. It also serves the career oriented students. Or serve as a bare bone substitution for 4 year courses. The big problem is to dynamically relocate resources. It is hard to know the need of students and that is what make managing community college challenge. You need to know the community well and it will be hard for community to install fixed assets/durable goods because the dynamic nature of the business.

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The biggest problem in education is teaching students the responsibility. Of cause, to lead by example, this means the responsibility are a prerequisite of parents and teachers.

Community colleges are, in general, open enrollment. However, as it is clear by now, this send a wrong message to the general public - you can always have college education as long as you can afford it. Besides, Uncle Sam is going to help you.

I am coming from a different society, in which, if people can't pass the college entrance exam, they are on their own. They are responsible to find a way to finance themselves to prepare for the exam. Today's community colleges fulfill this part of the duty for American citizens - which is a good thing. However, the message is muddled and not clear: You are not here to get your college education! You are here to make up what you missed in higher school and this will cost you! This message should be send loud and clear to parents and students: You got yourself a bargon to the free K12 education. If you screwed up, you will have to pay for yourself.

We should all understand by now, duty free welfare is not the way to go. You can build a society without everyone take their share of the duty. This is the only way to keep the working ethic alive. Just look the reaction of the middle class, they are crying for their share of education cost too. We simply have to build society on a fare ground. This lead to the question of the funding of community colleges.

‘Chic Geek’: Computer Science Major Rebounds

Original Article

Summary goes here!

The bottom line is that the IT job is off-shoring. The reason is, of cause, cheap labor.

However, we need to ask ourself: Is it OK to support/compensate our own labor if people in other country can do the job cheaper? We have to realize that this is no different from buying toys or consumer electronics from other country. We need to ask ourselves, why can't we make it cheaper here in the United State? The answer could point to our social needs. Like we want a better society where employee are protected from employer. These are good causes and sooner or later those other countries will follow the same path and their cost of producing goods will rise.

All of these, however, did not change the fact that our labor is more expensive. We can keep arguing that our IT work force is just as good as those in other countries. But that would not help. We need our engineer/IT to be better than those in other country. And, why shouldn't we expect that? We have spent much more money in our education.

Let's look at other US high tech industry like the fighter jets and the space program. They are the best in the world. We need


========== My comment on InsideHigherEd.com ========
I appreciate the links provided by Scrawed. The bottom line is that the IT job is off-shoring. The reason is, of cause, cheap labor.

However, we need to ask ourself: Is it OK to support/compensate our own labor if people in other countries can do the job cheaper? We have to realize that this is no different from buying toys or consumer electronics from other countries. We need to ask ourselves, why can't we make it cheaper here in the United State? The answer could point to our social needs. Like we want a better society where employee are protected from employer. These are good causes and sooner or later those other countries will facing the same situation and it will cause their products to cost more. The point is this: If we are doing the same thing those people can do, I don't see how can we get paid more. We simply have to do things that they just can't do yet. For example, the Space program - yes, I know they are catching up too.

Anyway, we simply need to do better. We shouldn't even set our goal at the same level as those countries are and we shouldn't! We spent much more money in education than they are.

In the case of IT, we should understand that unless we are talking about highly academic/mathematical programming (pattern recognition, compression, encryption), a lot of them are simply labor intensive jobs. So. How many of us can do those? I think those are the training our work force needs - a REALLY good understanding of math. Same applied to other knowledge.

Sure, it's hard. But don't we think we have the best education system?