Accelerated Math Adds Up To a Division Over Merits

A D.C. public school spokeswoman said that she did not know how many District students study Algebra I in eighth grade or earlier but said officials will know more next year after students begin to take final exams.

Students studying advanced math typically delve into topics related to algebra, geometry and probability at an earlier age, work more complex problems and shoulder more homework. A third-grade question might ask students to identify the next shape in a pattern of polygons, but a fifth-grade question might ask them to identify the shape and explain how they knew what it was.

Montgomery teachers break classrooms into groups by achievement, a technique that allows them to take the most advanced students up to a full year ahead. Students can then be assigned to a class a year above grade level. Those classes, in turn, can be broken into smaller groups, pushing stronger students further ahead.

Karen Cole, of Garrett Park, whose fourth-grade son is studying seventh-grade math, is glad the option is available. She said, however, that some of her friends think their children have been pushed too hard. "All of a sudden it's shameful to be taking fourth-grade math in fourth grade," she said.

Montgomery's math initiative began in the late 1990s, largely at the urging of gifted-education advocates, and was hastened by School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, who arrived in 1999 and told principals to make advanced courses open to all.

The accelerated students are now reaching high school, and some teachers contend they are ill-prepared.

"There were no controls on kids being accelerated unduly, and that's the problem," said Julie Greenberg, a recently retired Montgomery teacher who is now senior policy director at the D.C.-based National Council on Teacher Quality.

She and other teachers say the problem is worst at less-affluent schools in eastern Montgomery, while students in Bethesda and Potomac, with more resources at home, tend to thrive. Weast has encouraged principals to recruit poor and minority students into advanced study as a matter of educational equity.

At Potomac Elementary, three-quarters of fifth-graders last year completed sixth-grade math; some finished seventh-grade math. This year, every kindergartner passed an assessment of first-grade math skills.

Angela Piwowarczyk, a fifth-grade teacher, has taught sixth-grade math for three years. The first was hard, she said, because acceleration was new. This year was easier.

"By the time they get to fifth grade, they don't have the gaps anymore," she said.

One recent morning, students in a corner of the classroom flipped coins to compare theoretical and experimental probability -- to see, in other words, how often the coin came up heads in the real world, a topic from the sixth-grade curriculum.

"It seems really easy to me," said Eugene Shim, 11, between tosses. Then, turning to the rest of his coin-flipping group, he said: "Guys, don't you think this is easy?" Five heads nodded in assent.