math

Thursday May 10, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 10, 2018

Killing Discovery Math

The Ontario Progressive Conservative party’s plan to scrap the province’s mathematics curriculum isn’t the answer to declining test scores among elementary school-aged children, a Toronto educator says.

September 3, 2013

“This is a very nuanced conversation and I think it gets really heated,” said Vanessa Vakharia, founder and CEO of The Math Guru, a math and science tutoring service based uptown, on Wednesday morning.

“I think it’s really easy to want to point to one thing and to place blame,” she continued, referencing PC Leader Doug Ford’s opposition to what is often called “discovery math.”

The concept, which places an emphasis on experimentation and problem solving rather than rote learning, is at the core of Ontario’s curriculum. It has come under increasing scrutiny as standardized test scores in math have steadily declined in Ontario in the last decade.

In a campaign speech on Tuesday, Ford said a PC government would develop a curriculum focused on “getting back to basics” in the areas of reading, writing and math.

“Kids used to learn math by doing things like memorizing a multiplication table, and it worked. Kathleen Wynne scrapped that. Instead, our kids are left with experimental discovery math,” he said. (Source: CBC) 

 

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Saturday June 24, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 24, 2017

Queen Park Priorities

What is going wrong with math in Grades 4 to 6 in Hamilton, Burlington and across the province?

September 3, 2013

Perhaps the hardest equation to solve right now in Ontario’s education system is why half of Grade 6 students are failing to meet the provincial standard with fewer succeeding each year. 

“I wish I had the golden answer,” said Ian VanderBurgh, the director of the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing at the University of Waterloo.

“We need to figure out why.”

In the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) a mere 42 per cent of students had the mathematics skills the Ontario curriculum expects by the end of Grade 6, according to provincial tests from 2014 to 2016. 

To compare, 74 per cent of those same students meet the benchmark in reading and 73 per cent in writing. 

Year-by-year results show the problem in Grade 6 math is only getting worse.

“It’s time to do a reset,” said Peter Sovran, executive superintendent of student achievement and school operations at the HWDSB. 

“We are not pleased and I don’t think anyone should be pleased in the province.” (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

June 23, 2016

Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has a public opinion problem at home, and elsewhere.

She scored the highest disapproval ratings among any Canadian premier in Ontario, and across Canada, in a Mainstreet Research/Postmedia poll that was released on Thursday.

In Ontario, Wynne scored a 70 per cent disapproval rating and a 19 per cent approval rating.

Her disapproval rating was close to last year’s, when she scored 71 per cent in Ontario. Her approval rating in her home province was unchanged from 2016.

Wynne scored the strongest disapproval rating nationally, hitting 48 per cent, which put her just above Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard. (Source: Global News) 

Tuesday September 3, 2013

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Tuesday August 3, 2013

Of Apps and Declining EQAO Scores

A digital revolution is on the rise at Hamilton’s inner city schools.

Starting this September, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board will be distributing hundreds of iPads to Grade 4, 5 and 6 classrooms at seven schools — Adelaide Hoodless, A.M. Cunningham, Cathy Wever, Dr. Davey, Prince of Wales, Memorial and Queen Victoria.

The program will then expand until 2016, when every student in Grades 4 through 12 at those schools, as well as the new central Hamilton high school, will be outfitted with their own, personal tablets.

“We know that many of the kids in these schools from a socioeconomic point of view face significance challenges,” said education director John Malloy. “We want them to become the leaders of the entire board.” (Source: The Hamilton Spectator)

Ontario’s education minister says elementary school teachers may need more professional development, after test results show that their students are struggling with math skills.

The Education Quality and Accountability Office released results on Wednesday that suggest almost one in five Grade 6 students do not meet the provincial math standard, even after meeting the standard in Grade 3.

Minister Liz Sandals said many elementary teachers come from an arts background and aren’t as comfortable teaching math compared to reading or writing. (Source: The London Free Press)

FEEDBACK

This cartoon was featured in a gallery of Editorial Cartoons in the Yahoo! Canada News for September 2013. Here it is on Yahoo News’ Facebook page.

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November 3, 2006

This whole Income Trust thing isn’t exactly the most sexy issue cartoonists have been given the opportunity to draw on. I don’t profess to have much knowledge in the field of finance, and when it comes to reading up on this income trust story it doesn’t take long for me to imagine myself in high school calculus class wondering when the bell’s going to ring. It definitely has to be the most complex and confusing one we’ve had to deal with in a while.

One day, my younger brother, who works in the Investment banking and asset management canyon on Bay Street might explain what Jim Flaherty’s tax on Income Trusts means in layman terms. I get the political significance of this being the Harper government’s “McGuinty moment” — it being a colossal reversal, or flip-flop on an election campaign promise. And for that I suppose the Tories need to be spanked, or, forgive the pun, be given a half-assed spank. In the meantime, it’d be nice to return to those simpler days… like when the national focus was on Peter MacKay’s dog.

The above cartoon was done in haste, cobbled out from imagery from past cartoons:

I felt the need to get something out for my syndicate the morning after the news of an Income Trust tax was announced. I had an 45 minutes to piece it together. Busy and wordy — not exactly a work of art, but I suppose it illustrates my lack of enthusiasm for the subject.

Still, getting it out of the way freed up the day ahead and for the rest of it I worked on a cartoon illustrating a story on how Canadian cities were petitioning the United States Environmental Protection Agency over lax emmission standards which is allowing American smog to blanket Canada. That story, forgive yet another bad pun, seems to have blown over, and will remain unpublished in the Spectator until an appropriate time comes… and the time will come, unlike another Income Trust cartoon.