Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy I just went to a spiel by Ruth Parker

She did a 90min workshop for parents, educators and business leaders called "Mathematics and Your Child's Future: The Basics and Beyond." She is very slick and persuasive but I have strong reservations about her methods. She wants to completely axe the teaching of the standard algorithms for doing arithmetic. A lot of her methods sounded really good and enriching and like they would build real understanding of math if taught by a knowledgeable teacher.

It's just that it seems like a huge "if" to me. And I don't think we should throw the standard algorithms out with the bathwater!

I think she is pushing some kind of curriculum and our district honchos seemed quite starry-eyed about her ideas.

Does anybody have experience with this kind of curriculum in the public schools? What were the results? Should I fight this trend? I have a bad feeling about it....

Sounds like reform math to me. Did she mention "Investigations" or "TERC" or "Everyday Math?" There is another but I forget the name.

Dazey

I think that article would make a good argument about why teachers object to standardized testing. It's fun and exciting to help children explore different ideas, getting the right answer isn't the important part for those teachers; it appears many teachers don't even know the right answer. But to pass standardized testing the child must learn the algorithms to get the correct answer, and that can be tedious at times.

Yes, I have googled her and read some pieces by her detractors. I asked several questions at the workshop and she seemed rather defensive, like she was expecting to be attacked.

My concern is that the decision to adopt a particular math curriculum is being made by people who have no expertise in math. They are easily led by slick presentations. I don't see anyone asking the tough questions about how we would actually implement something like this.

Our district is considering adopting Everyday Math. I have mixed feelings about it. It could be really good if the teacher knows what she's doing. It could be really bad if she doesn't...

I found this on my NYC schools website. Strictly copied, I have no knowledge on the subject:

200 mathematicians, including several Nobel laureates, have written to the US Department of Education complaining about reform mathematics. The chairmen of almost every college and university mathematics department in the New York area have written to Klein complaining that the reform programs like TERC and Everyday Mathematics are failing to educate our kids in math so that they can do college work.

The rubber stamp committee that "advised" Klein and Diana Lam (remember her?) on Everday Mathematics did not include anyone with a degree in math or engineering, nor anyone even qualified to teach high school math. Actually, Everyday Mathematics for our kids was the brainchild of the discredited Lam.

TERC and Everyday Mathematics lead students directly to math remediation classes as they enter college. Those classes are bigger than ever since the introduction of NCTM reform math programs. The decline of American mathematics education compared with the rest of the world is directly traceable to these reform programs.

These are the reasons that TERC and Everyday Mathematics are no longer permitted in the public schools of California which now leads the nation in Math education.

Well, I don't know about who is leading (I would be surprised if it were California), but I do know that Everyday Mathematics is on the textbook adoption list so it must be permitted in public schools here in California.

Cathy

Everyday math was recently removed from the Texas textbook list but only for 3rd grade so far. The teachers were commenting on how horrible it was etc but I'm not sure why the other years were not removed.

It seems like some curricula depend more heavily on the strengths of the teachers, though. I'm not sure I have that much faith in our teachers! Maybe I should give them a chance. Maybe with training they can make this work.

Everyday Math (EM) is very teacher dependent. One of the criticisms I've read is that teacher's say they don't have time to play the games and consider the games fluff. Well, the drill and cementing of concepts are in the games. Also, people tend to lump EM, TERC Investigations and the other one which I can't remember the name, all in one basket. From the critiques I've read, Em is the best of the bunch by far. I've seen the workbook for the one I can't recall the name. It was "Explain in words how you got your answer to 2+1." There was a lot of writing involved so for kids w/ writing or reading issues, math is also an issue. Our district has great test scores but I've heard that the number of kids that are math deficient are increasing. Our district does do lots of fact practice and are also teaching the standard algorithm...well at least my son's teacher is. She doesn't assign nearly as many EM worksheets as homework as the other teachers do. Hers come from somewhere else.

EM is actually very Rightstart-ish. HSers often have trouble w/ RS as well b/c they fail to play the games. As great as Singapore Math is, HSers often post how it didn't work for them, her kid hit a wall etc but then someone will ask the question of whether the kid learned to do math the SM way (ie like the thought bubbles) and the answer is "no, i just handed the kid the workbook and they worked the problems." Even great curriculums are bad in the hands of the wrong teacher due to lack of training or the wrong kid (wrong style of learning).

The problem is that in areas where test scores are rising since EM and TERC were introduced, Kumon and the like have sky-rocketed. So you can't attribute the success to the curriculum. I read a newspaper article from upstate NY where the district asked the parents not to afterschool math for 2 years so they could test the effect of EM. the parents refused...they didn't want to gamble w/ their kids.

The one criticism i hear over and over from my teacher friends is that EM is not good for the low end. The topics change too quickly before they fully grasp it and move on to something else.

Also, in a district that uses EM and the students seem to do well, the teachers use pre-testing to test out of a unit. Supposedly, the pre-tests come w/ the teacher's manuals. I asked about pretesting at DS's school and teacher looked at my like I had 3 heads.

Hmmm... I guess I'll have to wait and see what happens next year. They are going to pilot Everyday Math and one other text (not a reform math text.)

I talked to some teachers this afternoon to find out what they thought of Dr. Parker. A few were really taken with her ideas but most seemed to think that good teachers already use these techniques when they teach the regular curriculum. I think most are inclined to use her methods as an enrichment or in addition to teaching the regular methods. That makes me feel a bit better.

Most teachers don't feel like they have much say in which curriculum is chosen--even the ones on the textbook adoption committee!

I hope California isn't leading the nation in math education. This page has a few sample questions from the exam; note that numerical answers are not required for each question:



Sample questions on CA exit exam

My kids are at a private school that uses Everyday Mathematics(EM). I've analyzed the program pretty carefully. EM is part of a new overall wave in education that aims to teach concepts before details. This wave is beginning to make its way into colleges, which I think is dangerous.

The idea of teaching concepts first is seductive, but I think it ultimately fails. For example, EM works hard to avoid traditional algorithmic approaches to learning how to manipulate numbers.

Instead, EM uses concept-based approaches. One is "Rule-in, Rule-out." The EM book gives a rule (input: "+2") and the kids give the answer (output: add 2 to some numbers they provide). From what I can figure, EM is trying to teach the concept of functions/domains/ranges here. This is seductive because the program can claim to be teaching high level "critical thinking skills."

Thing is, to me, it all seems a bit abstract for a first grader. Many of these kids are still learning what addition and subtraction are. How can they be expected to abstract the idea of functions what they still don't fully understand ideas about simple mathematical operations? To me, this is a case of trying to get a kid to figure out what a forest is before he really knows what trees and animals are.

And even if a 6-year-old is ready to understand what a function is, I think it's better to be explicit about it and then use examples. I taught my eldest about exponents by providing a definition ("It's a fast way of multiplying. The little number up high tells you how many times to multiply the other number by itself") and then examples. Then we did square roots by working backwards from there.

But of course, the vast, vast majority of 6-year-olds are not ready to understand f(x), its domain, and its range.

This is one reason why I think EM and similar approaches fail and leave American students clueless about mathematics.

Val

I guess a lot of this is a moot point since whatever they use it will be quite a bit below my DS' level. I was looking at DD's third grade book (Harcourt) and I was not happy about how they introduced long division. I think that we need to teach the standard algorithms, but the books we have teach them so poorly that people think there's something wrong with teaching algorithms!

DS school uses TERC, Everyday Math. He is completely unengaged by it and it is so terribly slow moving. They only got to multiplication (or should I say, multiplication concepts?) in March and have not yet covered long division. School ends 6/26 so I guess they won't be learning it this year.

The worst for him, with handwriting issues, is when he has to write a sentence explaining how he got his answer and why it worked, for such simple concepts that seem far too obvious to write about. A typical answer: "I got four. Because you needed to add two and two." So enlightening!

bk1 - I keep thinking Burger King

LOL-- Code name explained in PM!