Comments on: Big Community Announcement: Decatur Education Foundation Receives Record-Setting $500,000 Gift

By: At Home in Decatur

At Home in Decatur — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 21:23:17 +0000

Trust me that even college math majors struggle with helping with the current math curriculum. I believe some of it is set by the state and there’s not much that can be done about that. Theoretically, the idea has face validity–teaching the whole range of topics from math facts to algebra to geometry to trig to precalculus at a low level and then repeating the whole range again and again at higher and higher levels. But it’s not working in practice. I wonder if there’s any solid data from Georgia (vs. an ideal experimental setting or a very different state) showing that Georgia’s “integrated” approach works.

But there’s some fantastic tutors out there that are helping individual students and groups of students in CSD get up to speed on math. So it’s not a lost cause if CSD could learn from those tutors and other curricula what works. For example, Clairemont used different math materials at their Saturday Math School in the past and that seemed to help those kids more than Everyday Math did.

To be honest, I have no expertise in teaching math. I just know that me and my siblings struggled a lot less with math than today’s bright kids are. Something needs improving.

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 15:11:39 +0000

The biggest frustration with the new math curriculum is that all us parents who learned math old-skool, then went on to careers in the liberal arts, suck at helping. I typically end up reviewing a couple chapters passed before even attempting to answer my kid’s questions, and I made it up through calculus back when I was in school. #floundering!

By: Sarahph

Sarahph — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:48:56 +0000

If there’s math struggling going on at all levels.. then perhaps the math curriculum needs to be changed back to traditional math, i.e. algebra, geometry, trig, etc instead of the crazy disconnected mess of Math 1, 2, 3. …….Or the teachers need to be changed.

By: Arriba

Arriba — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 14:41:37 +0000

Ooh, an ark from Heifer would be a great thing to do with that extra cash – instead I think we settled on the rabbits this year.

I would think this would provide a great reserve for the foundation. I don’t think they do capital projects, but every non-profit who relies on the comfort of strangers needs a rainy day fund set aside to get through lean periods. If last year their income was 250k, then the could conceivably have a one-year reserve.

That frees up many charities to do ambitious projects. It’ll be interesting to see what they can up with!

By: LA

LA — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 03:26:11 +0000

Ipads for everyone!

By: 4brocks

4brocks — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 23:54:59 +0000

What a beautiful and generous thing to do.

By: Ronda

Ronda — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 19:30:35 +0000

What a noble, generous investment in the future of our kids – a million thanks to this generous donor!

By: TeeRuss

TeeRuss — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:15:04 +0000

Goosebumps!