Montgomery College classes "filled" with MCPS students who need remedial math

With little regard for whether or not they are ready, MCPS students are being almost universally pushed into algebra, and a Montgomery College math professor reports that excessive acceleration is backfiring.

From today's Gazette:

"Our goal is to get … 80 percent of our students to be college-ready by 2014," schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said at the time. "It's an ambitious, but very reachable, goal as long as our students know the pathway that it will take to get there."

But the pace could be too fast, said Dina Yagodich, an adjunct math professor at Montgomery College's Germantown campus with three children in county schools. While she is not against acceleration, some students can't handle the advanced pace, she said.

Her pre-algebra classes at the college are "filled" with students who graduated from the school system, she noted.

[...]

"I am concerned for the push to get 80 percent of students a full grade level ahead when 26.8 percent of them aren't even at the eighth-grade level," Yagodich said. "The push for acceleration has concerned me, and although it is good for many students, I worry that many students are pushed beyond their abilities and are never able to catch back up."