Finding Information on the New Life Project

When we started the New Life Project (AMATYC Developmental Mathematics Committee) almost 10 years ago, we shared information at conferences — which helped those who had the option of attending an AMATYC conference.  In order to provide access to similar information, we launched a wiki called “dm-live” (via wikispaces).  For almost 8 years, the dm-live wiki got steady traffic.

With the closure of wikispaces, we lost that resource.  Therefore, I have been putting quite a few of the dm-live items on the page for New Life New Life Project (AMATYC, et al)

You can find, on that page, the most recent learning outcomes & goals for Math Literacy and Algebraic Literacy; the curricular vision map; and a variety of short videos (which are somewhat dated, but still applicable).  I have a few more items to add, such as the journal articles on New Life (MathAMATYC Educator).  If you are aware of a specific resource that you would like included on that page, let me  know — I may (possibly) be able to post that info.

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College Algebra Must Die!

Sadly, many people look at situations with such a strong bias, born of history, that obvious problems are hidden.  Such is the case with the American “college algebra” course.  College Algebra is a glacier which has trapped college mathematics faculty for decades, causing harm to students and society.

College Algebra must die!

In support of this assertion, let’s begin with the origins of “college algebra”.  Based on the research of Jeff Suzuki (see https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxqZWZmc3V6dWtpcHJvamVjdHxneDo2MWI5YWE4YzU2MDM1MmY3) our contemporary college algebra course is a descendant of the original ‘math for liberal arts’ course in the 19th century.  Certainly, the content has changed since the 19th century — we now cover factoring and graphing, which were not so much in the original.  However, the topics in a college algebra course indicate a ‘survey’ course orientation — not a focused preparation for success in mathematics.

This college algebra course was created before any standardized high school mathematics existed.  If we created such a course today, we would classify it is remedial — the content is primarily a subset of Common Core objectives.  Even if we live in a state or region not ‘implementing Common Core’, the local K-12 districts have an intended curriculum with similar objectives and goals.

Any effective preparation for calculus, coming from college algebra, is a coincidence of epic proportions.

Many of us combine a college algebra course with a trigonometry course as the prerequisite to calculus I.  Since this trig work — identities and memorization emphasized — is the most recent mathematics students experience before calculus, it is no wonder that our pre-calculus courses often harm the students they are supposed to help.  See the fascinating study by Sonnert & Sadler (https://www2.calstate.edu/csu-system/why-the-csu-matters/graduation-initiative-2025/academic-preparation/Documents/IJMEST-Sonnert-Sadler-Precalculus.pdf)

The other central reason for the assertion that “College Algebra Must Die” is based on the current best thoughts of both preparation for calculus as well as the improvements in calculus content.  Both of these sets of perspectives are based on long-term work of MAA and AMATYC, and have been articulated fairly consistently over the past 20 years.

Take a look at the MAA “Calculus Readiness” instrument (https://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/maa-focus/maa-updates-its-test-for-calculus-readiness) and some research on the CR (https://math.la.asu.edu/~carlson/…/CCR-Carlson,%20Madison%20&%20West.pdf).  Our college algebra courses have little to do with these outcomes and goals, even we use the politically correct title of “pre-calculus”.

You might also want to look at the current MAA CUPM report on calculus (https://www.maa.org/programs/faculty-and-departments/curriculum-department-guidelines-recommendations/cupm/2015-cupm-curriculum-guide).  College Algebra is an antiquated non-preparation course for an out-of-date calculus sequence.

Many people and institutions (my own included) have worked hard to make a college algebra course a more reasonable general education course, which is ironic given the history of this course.  The result is usually a ‘modeling and functions’ course, clearly not rigorous.  Although these modeling and functions courses are very valuable, they are no longer college algebra courses.

We need to develop potential precalculus courses which have the content validity to justify an expectation that they will be effective preparation for calculus.  Much is known and understood of the basic design issues for such courses; before we can do this work, we need to escape from the College Algebra Glacier that we have been trapped within.

College Algebra Must Die!

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College Algebra is Still Not Pre-Calculus :(

My colleagues at the college are having discussions about what the nature of a good precalculus course is; their discussions are interesting, though little consensus seems to be emerging.  I’ve posted on this before College Algebra is Not Pre-Calculus, and Neither is Pre-calc, so I am not going to repeat much of that.

I have also posted previously about some great data reported by David Bressoud, namely “The Pitfalls of Precalculus” (http://launchings.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-pitfalls-of-precalculus.html).  The basic message of that report is that precalculus does not help the students who really needed it, and actually caused harm to students who had little need.  This data, in fact, is less positive than the reviews of remedial mathematics.

The mess and dysfunctional curriculum in STEM mathematics seems to continue due to:

• The acceptance of a procedurally-bound preparation course or courses (college algebra, pre-calculus), without any design basis or data to support this arrangement.
• The rigidity of the calculus curriculum itself, which as resisted modernization for 3 decades (see http://launchings.blogspot.com/2017/05/re-imagining-calculus-curriculum-i.html)

Sure, we have made some progress in pedagogy; the recent MAA “Instructional Practices” guide outlines a bit of the progress (though without much consensus on ‘best’ practices); see https://www.maa.org/programs-and-communities/curriculum%20resources/instructional-practices-guide. The content — that which justifies the existence of a course — is horribly out of date, with a focus on symbolic manipulation and memorization that has caused our courses to not have respect within our partner disciplines.

My colleagues discussion does not generally include what to teach in calculus; that content is taken as a given, like a poorly written play for which our troupe must still put on a show.  No, the discussions generally turns on whether pre-calculus needs to serve the preparation needs for all calculus courses in the sequence or to focus on the first course in calculus.  I am hoping that the conversation will evolve to include the fundamental questions that determine whether calculus courses are STEM-encouraging or merely obstacles the ablest students need to overcome.

One of my colleagues refers to our pre-calculus course as “death by algebra”; I would put it a bit differently:

The precalculus content is a mixture of excessive algebraic procedure combined with a dysfunctional obsession with trigonometric formulae and identities; those who survive algebra are likely to meet their doom in the trig.

Our curriculum is all about serving the important goals.  We want more students to pursue STEM paths and dreams, and for most of them to be successful if they are willing to work.  Our current precalculus and calculus curriculum is an anthropological artifact worthy of study to help people understand how bad stuff can continue for decades; other than that, this curriculum is not worthy of any additional effort.  We need to create a better curriculum — SOON — so that we stop doing damage to the very students who could achieve success in STEM programs.

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Case Closed … Mind Closed?

We are again being bombarded with ‘information’ about co-requisite remediation working.  The “we” in that statement would be everybody involved with college remediation — practitioners, administrators, policy makers, and boards.  One of the recent notes from Complete College America begins with “Case Closed on Traditional Remediation”.  Good propaganda … bad education.

The most basic issue before us is NOT “should we have stand-alone developmental math courses”.  No, the core issue is:

What ‘mathematics’ do students need to ‘know’ for various educational goals?

Non-mathematicians have considerable difficulty understanding this question, because of the two words in quotes — ‘mathematics’ and ‘know’.  For many, mathematics consists of arithmetic and algebraic procedures with some memorization of geometric formulae; ‘knowing’ consists of being able to recall barely enough of those procedures to pass a college math course.  In other words, non-experts tend to see mathematics as training in skills, and they tend to view our courses as barriers to an education.

We certainly can agree, at some level, that the mathematics being taught in basic courses (whether remedial or college algebra) is both badly out of date and not well suited to the educational needs of our students.  Therefore, when the primary evidence for co-requisite remediation comes from comparisons between the experimental treatment and ‘traditional’, the results have meaning mostly for people who do not understand the problem space.  So what if 70% of students in the treatment succeed compared to 54% of those in the traditional classes!  Neither group is getting good mathematics (most likely).

My message continues to be:

Design NEW courses with modern content designed to meet the educational needs of our students.

For some students, this will mean that they take a college statistics course with extra support (co-requisite).  For other students, this means that they will take one pre-college course which provides strong understanding of concepts and relationships with good fluency in being able to deal with quantitative problems in both symbolic and numeric methods.  For a few students, this means that they will need to take two pre-college courses.  And, for some students (half?), they can start in the college mathematics course because their recent Common Core mathematics experience has provided them sufficient fluency.

A declaration that the “case [is] closed” reflects the bias of the speaker, not the factual situation.  The speaker is hoping that we will have a closed mind to other interpretations (especially if we are leaders or policy makers).  The worst thing about Complete College America is the message that a problem has been solved and there is nothing further to understand.   We see closed minds in education, but the results are never good.  I can only hope that most of us will keep an open mind, and consider the basic problem so that we can work on real solutions for our students.

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