PLACEMENT OF ALGEBRA IN THE EIGHTH GRADE FOR ALL STUDENTS:

In the 1990's a teacher at Memorial Parkway Junior High, decided on her own to put all the students in the eighth grade into Algebra! Ordinarily over the years there had been only two classes of Algebra in the eighth grade.

It was a mindless move by a teacher who had done other questionable (at least by me) things over the years at that school. 

The thing about making this change was that the teacher didn't consult anyone-- like the KISD math supervisor or the department chairman at Taylor High School to which MPJH fed.

Parents went bananas. The Taylor faculty was stunned. KISD's math curriculum, then as now, was pretty shaky.  Eighth grade students weren't even able to  multiply, add or subtract in their heads, they couldn't work with fractions or a decimal point, or do long division because the curriculum had stopped covering those abilities properly thanks to adherents of the NCTM math standards infiltrating the faculties at the elementary and junior high levels.

My phone rang off the wall that first day of implementation.  Parents weren't going to stand for it--finally. 

I had been questioning this teacher and her methods for years--all the way back to when my youngest had been in her class ten years prior.

The school called a meeting after George Scott and his paper, the New Katy News, wrote about the mess when I told him what had been done.

At the school meeting hundreds of parents showed up and nearly stormed the stage.  Needless to say, the school put the math program back like it was.

There are still math students, who by hook or crook, (mostly because of their parents teaching them) learn enough math to be able to take Algebra in the eighth grade.  There were at that time two classes of them.  Unfortunately by the time they became seniors, less than half of them were still around. I'm guessing that's still the case.

Katy ISD's math program is horrible when one considers that there is such potential for success with a math program, and it's all because of the fuzzy math that they throw at the students. 

What was sad for me while I was on the school board was that John Saxon, came to Katy, TX on his own nickel (he lived in Tulsa) and because George Scott asked him to come, and offered to give the District free math textbooks for a high school and a junior high just so the District could see what success they could have.  He appeared at a board meeting one night to make the offer.  The board president didn't even say "thank you for coming" much less accept his offer! 

John Saxon's textbooks are world renowned for being the best and most effective math textbooks that there are.

It's hard  to believe that the Katy school district does not want to cater to the good math students that it has.

Letter from Parent Thanking Me for Exposing the MPJH Math Program For What It Is