I agree CathyA. They make a false dichotomy. But as in everything, it has to be polarized...there is never a middle ground. Well, some schools have found it by modifying EM. A friend's school does that and that district has had great results w/ EM and the kids love it. OUr district modifies it (well at least his teacher did, I didn't find other teachers who did what she did) so there was only the standard algorithms in 2nd grade anyway.
The problem I've seen w/ EM is that they are using mental math algorithms used in Asian countries for written work. It's just plain incorrect. Many of the algorithms in EM are the basis for mental math in RightStart and Singapore Math but they are for mental math, not written math.
Example:
56+32 - mentally you'd do 56+30=86, 86+2=88
EM algorithm:
56
+32
______
80
8
______
88
That makes no sense to me. Rather than giving kids a strong foundation in place value, I think it's confusing after you've just spent a year looking at:
6
+2
----
8
so now the kids see:
6
+2
---
0
Here's a link to the EM algorithms.
http://www.math.nyu.edu/~braams/links/em-arith.html
