Alex Spurrier, Wayzata High School grad and blogger at The Bellowing Bantam, says:
In the report you mentioned, it cites the Math League titles won by WHS students the past 2 years. Many of the more talented students like those on math teams did not go through the integrated program and instead went to the U through the University of Minnesota Talented Youth Mathematics Program (UMPTYMP), and only took the non-integrated AP calc and stats courses at WHS. Just an important little fact the report neglects to inform you of.
(Dr. Lawrence Gray informed us that the acronym UMPTYMP is pronounced "ump-tee-ump.")
The Star Tribune ran this story yesterday on page W2 of this week's west metro section: "Wayzata Math League=very impressive." And in case you missed the story, it ran this blurb at the bottom of page W3: "Wayzata: Math 'three peat.'" And in case you are one of those people who don't read the paper from front to back, this story ran on page W9: "Wayzata wins state math league tourney."
Did we mention that Wayzata won last week's annual Minnesota State High School Math League state tournament for the third straight year?
The Strib article (the one on page W2, not to be confused with the one on pages W3 or W9) featured Wayzata junior Hwa-Sheng Chang, who "led the team in scoring at the state meet and finished third overall in individual scoring." Chang told the Star Tribune, "I want to be in electrical engineering or computer science." The talented 11th grader should go far in either program in college, thanks to Wayzata math teachers like Tom Kilkelly, who also coaches the Math League team, and presumably a family that highly values education, but apparently no thanks to integrated math. According to the article:
"[Chang] took Algebra I in seventh grade, Algebra II and Geometry in eighth grade, Pre-calculus and Trigonometry in ninth grade, AP Calculus in 10th grade, and he's been working on Number Theory with Kilkelly in the 11th grade."
EDUCATION
