The Five Factor personality model, commonly known as the Big Five, occupies a central role as the most widely embraced personality theory within the scientific community. While it might not enjoy the same level of recognition among the general public as systems like the Myers-Briggs typology, it represents the most empirically robust framework for accurately…
NEW YORK (AP) — A 127-year-old water main under New York’s Times Square gave way early Tuesday, flooding midtown streets and the city’s busiest subway station.
The 20-inch (half-meter) water main gave way under 40th Street and Seventh Avenue at 3 a.m., said Rohit Aggarwala, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection.
The rushing water was only a few inches deep on the street, but videos posted on social media showed the flood cascading into the Times Square subway station down stairwells and through ventilation grates. The water turned the trenches that carry the subway tracks into mini rivers and soaked train platforms.
It took DEP crews about an hour to find the source of the leak and shut the water off, Aggarwala said.
The excavation left a big hole at the intersection of 40th Street and Seventh Avenue, where workers were digging with heavy equipment to get to the broken section of pipe.
While that intersection remained closed to car traffic, surrounding streets were open by rush hour.
Subway service, however, was suspended through much of Manhattan on the 1, 2 and 3 lines, which run directly under the broken pipe.
Aggarwala said it appeared that only two local businesses were without left without water at the start of the work day.
On a breezy July morning in South Seattle, a dozen elementary-aged students ran math relays behind an elementary school.
One by one, they raced to a table, where they scribbled answers to multiplication questions before sprinting back to high-five their teammate. These students are part of a summer program run by the nonprofit School Connect WA, designed to help them catch up on math and literacy skills lost during the pandemic. There are 25 students in the program, and all of them are one to three grades behind.
One 11-year-old boy couldn’t do two-digit subtraction. Thanks to the program and his mother, who has helped him each night, he’s caught up. Now, he says math is challenging, but he likes it.
Other kids haven’t fared so well.
Across the country, schools are scrambling to catch up students in math as post-pandemic test scores reveal the depth of missing skills. On average, students’ math knowledge is about half a school year behind where it should be, according to education analysts.
Children lost ground on reading tests, too, but the math declines were particularly striking. Experts say virtual learning complicated math instruction, making it tricky for teachers to guide students over a screen or spot weaknesses in problem-solving skills. Plus, parents were more likely to read with their children at home than practice math.
The result: Students’ math skills plummeted across the board, exacerbating racial and socioeconomic inequities in math performance. And students aren’t bouncing back as quickly as educators hoped, supercharging worries about how they will fare in high school and whether science, tech and medical fields will be available to them.
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The Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms, is documenting the math crisis facing schools and highlighting progress. Members of the Collaborative are AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.
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Students had been making incremental progress on national math tests since 1990. But over the past year, fourth and eighth grade math scores slipped to the lowest levels in about 20 years, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “Nation’s Report Card.”
“It’s a generation’s worth of progress lost,” said Andrew Ho, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.
At Moultrie Middle School in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Jennifer Matthews has seen the pandemic fallout in her eighth grade classes. Her students have shown indifference to understanding her pre-algebra and Algebra I lessons.
“They don’t allow themselves to process the material. They don’t allow themselves to think, ‘This might take a day to understand or learn,’” she said.
And recently students have been coming to her classes with gaps in their understanding of math concepts. Basic fractions, for instance, continue to stump many of them, she said.
Using federal pandemic relief money, some schools have added tutors or piloted new curriculum approaches in the name of academic recovery. But that money has a looming expiration date: The September 2024 deadline for allocating funds will arrive before many children have caught up.
Like other districts across the country, Jefferson County Schools in Birmingham, Alabama, saw students’ math skills take a nosedive from 2019 to 2021. Leveraging pandemic aid, the district placed math coaches in all of their middle schools.
The coaches help teachers learn new and better ways to teach students. About 1 in 5 public schools in the United States have a math coach, according to federal data. The efforts appear to be paying off: State testing shows math scores have started to inch back up for most of the Jefferson County middle schools.
In Pittsburgh’s school system, which serves a student population that is 53% African American, special education teacher Ebonie Lamb said it’s “emotionally exhausting” to see the inequities between student groups. But she believes those academic gaps can be closed through culturally relevant lessons, and targeting teaching to each student’s skill level.
Lamb said she typically asks students to do a “walk a mile in my shoes” project in which they design shoes and describe their lives. It’s a way she can learn more about them as individuals. Ultimately, those connections help on the academic front. Last year, she and a co-teacher taught math in a small group format that allowed students to master skills at their own pace.
“All students in the class cannot follow the same, scripted curriculum and be on the same problem all the time,” she said.
Adding to the challenge of catching kids up is debate over how math should be taught. Over the years, experts say, the pendulum has swung between procedural learning, such as teaching kids to memorize how to solve problems step-by-step, and conceptual understanding, in which students grasp underlying math relationships.
“Stereotypically, math is that class that people don’t like. … For so many adults, math was taught just as memorization,” said Kevin Dykema, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “When people start to understand what’s going on, in whatever you’re learning but especially in math, you develop a new appreciation for it.”
Teaching math should not be an either-or situation, said Sarah Powell, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who researches math instruction. A shift too far in the conceptual direction, she said, risks alienating students who haven’t mastered the foundational skills.
“We actually do have to teach, and it is less sexy and it’s not as interesting,” she said.
In Spring, Texas, parent Aggie Gambino has often found herself searching YouTube for math videos. Giada, one of her twin 10-year-old daughters, has dyslexia and also struggles with math, especially word problems. Gambino says helping her daughter has proved challenging, given instructional approaches that differ from the way she was taught.
She wishes her daughter’s school would send home information on how students are being taught.
“The more parents understand how they’re being taught,” she said, “the better participant they can be in their child’s learning.”
Even at a nationally recognized magnet school, the lingering impact of the pandemic on students’ math skills is apparent. At the Townview School of Science and Engineering in Dallas, the incoming ninth graders in Lance Barasch’s summer camp course needed to relearn the meaning of words like “term” and “coefficient.”
“Then you can go back to what you’re really trying to teach,” he said.
Barasch wasn’t surprised that the teens were missing some skills after their chaotic middle school years.
The hope is that by taking a step back, students can begin to move forward.
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Claire Bryan of The Seattle Times, Trisha Powell Crain of AL.com, Maura Turcotte of The Post and Courier, and Talia Richman of The Dallas Morning News contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, were in the Arthur Ashe Stadium stands to watch Coco Gauff’s first-round victory at the U.S. Open on Monday night. Afterward, Gauff met the Obamas — and even received some advice.
“I wasn’t sure they were here or not. I saw the Secret Service. I didn’t know if it was Mr. Biden and Mrs. Biden. I knew it was somebody. Then I heard that maybe Mr. Clinton was coming. I didn’t know who exactly it was. So I didn’t know until after the match,” Gauff, a 19-year-old from Florida, said after a 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 win over Laura Siegemund that grew contentious over Siegemund’s delay tactics between points.
“I didn’t see them in the presidential box,” Gauff said about the Obamas. “I was obviously looking at that, but they weren’t, I guess, in my eyeline. But afterward, they told me they wanted to say hi.”
Initially, Gauff explained, word came that she would have some time with Michelle Obama.
“Then Mr. Obama was there in the room, too. I was like, ‘Oh, my God,” Gauff said with a big smile at her post-match news conference. “I haven’t soaked it in because I literally just walked in here. I think I’m going to never forget that moment for the rest of my life. I went from being really upset after a win to, like, being really happy. So I’m glad I got to meet them. They gave me some good advice, too.”
And the bit of wisdom that was offered?
The former first lady “said it’s good to speak up for myself. I think she was happy that I spoke up for myself today,” recounted Gauff, the 2022 French Open runner-up said, referring to a discussion with the chair umpire about the way Siegemund took extra time between points.
Michelle Obama also went to the court Monday night to participate in a tribute to Billie Jean King marking the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Open becoming the first Grand Slam tennis tournament to pay equal prize money to women.
“Billie Jean teaches us that when things lie in the balance, we all have a choice to make. We can either wait around and accept what we’re given. We can sit silently and hope someone else fights our battles. Or we can make our own stand,” Michelle Obama said during the ceremony between Gauff’s match and 23-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic’s contest that followed next in Ashe. “We can use whatever platforms we have to speak out and fight to protect the progress we’ve made, and level the playing field for all of our daughters and their daughters.”
In 1972, when King won the U.S. Open, she earned $10,000 for her title, $15,000 less than what the men’s champion made. She threatened to not play at all the next year — and added that no other women would, either.
King then helped recruit a sponsor that stepped in and helped make up the difference in 1973, so the two singles champions were paid the same amount: $25,000. It wasn’t until more than 30 years later that Wimbledon became the last major tennis tournament to pay its singles champions equally.
“Even today, there are far too many tournaments out there that still need to give equal pay to women. … Let us remember all of this is far bigger than a champion’s paycheck,” Michelle Obama said Monday. “This is about how women are seen and valued in this world.”
She also attended the U.S. Open last year, when she saw American Frances Tiafoe play during his run to the semifinals.
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First Corinthian Baptist Church and District Council 9 held their annual Hope for Harlem block party and community service event over the weekend. The groups donated thousands of groceries, hygiene products, and back-to-school supplies and offered employment opportunities and health resources to members of the local community. New York State Senator Cordell Cleare and Democratic Nominee…
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Edward A. Caban today launched a new NYPD initiative. The initiative supports and facilitates the Islamic call to public prayer at regularly prescribed times each Friday and during the holy month of Ramadan. The effort represents a historic step forward in…
State Sen. Kevin Parker hosted the 16th Annual Harvest Fest Back to School Celebration on Aug. 26. The event, held at Paerdegat Park in Brooklyn, was a resounding success, offering a day of fun-filled activities, valuable resources, and entertainment for the entire family.
The Harvest Fest Back to School Celebration proved to be a popular event with a large turnout of students, parents, educators, and community members. Attendees enjoyed an array of engaging activities, including free school supplies, informative health workshops, captivating live performances, exciting games, and a selection of delicious food options. The event provided an opportunity to celebrate the end of summer, prepared attendees for a successful academic year, and highlighted the importance of community engagement.
“Hosting the Annual Harvest Fest has been a true honor and a testament to the incredible support and engagement of our community. Seeing the smiles on the faces of students, parents, and educators as they celebrated the start of a new school year fills me with immense pride and reaffirms the importance of this event,” said Parker.
Tunu Thom, author of “An Unexpected Dream” and a vendor at the event was excited to share her experience at what she called: “An amazing event. The people I met, the energy and activities for the kids were exceptional. I really enjoyed my time. Additionally, the various community resources that were made accessible surely helped , in ensuring that families have all the necessary tools for a successful academic year.”
