Where’s The Math?

“… Locally, the Bellevue School District appears to manage its lessons the most. … Many Bellevue teachers think their district has gone too far, leaving them without the flexibility they need to teach well, says Stephen Miller, president of the district’s teachers union. This year, he says, he knows of at least 10 who resigned in part because of the issue. … In Washington [state], education leaders soon will list a handful of math textbooks that they will recommend all the state’s 296 school districts use. …”

Read more in the Seattle Times

Dear Dr. Kimball,

We appreciate the fact that you are taking measures to improve computational fluency next year. However, that is only one of several concerns we have with TERC and Connected Math. As we mentioned in our previous letters, it disturbs us enormously that students are not taught standard algorithms to mastery, and encouraged to apply them in solving a wide range of problems. Instead, much time is spent in seeking their own problem solving strategies in groups, without the basic skills that might make this worthwhile.

We know that some/many students easily lose interest and allow others to do the work. Frequently the strategies are too problem specific, and students do not develop abstract problem solving abilities that can be broadly applied or built upon. None of this leads to deeper conceptual understanding, as claimed. In fact, it is prolonging a rolling crisis in education that continues to hold our children back.

You state that research shows it’s better for students to have a consistent, guaranteed curriculum. This can only be the case if it is consistently guaranteed to advance students in overall math proficiency. A large number of parents who signed the letters we have submitted are professionals in math-intensive fields such as engineering, research and computer sciences. We know that these reform curricula are guaranteed not to give our children the math skills they need to continue their education in any math-intensive fields of study. They are blatantly flawed and deficient in ways that we have already described.

Rather than devoting the resources of our district to educating parents who are already highly educated, consider listening to us very closely. We are already doing everything we can to make up for the deficiencies of the district math programs. We have been doing this for years. Consider opening up this process and including us in solving the problems of math education that we all know are dire.

This is excerpted from a June 21 news story in The Tri-City Herald concerning immigration reform:

“It’s our top legislative priority,” said Jack Krumholtz, Microsoft’s lead lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

For the high tech industry, it’s about attracting the “best and the brightest” from overseas as the U.S. educational system struggles to produce graduates skilled in math and science.
Microsoft has 3,000 U.S. job openings that it can’t fill because it can’t find qualified people or can’t hire them from overseas because of existing immigration restrictions, Krumholtz said.
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/8947160p-8847150c.html

The outsourcing of math and science work is old news, and anyone living and working in this area knows that Microsoft and other companies hire largely from the top math-performing countries in the world. When we see the way math is taught in our district’s schools we know our children will not stand a chance of employment in these companies. We compare the district reform math curricula to those that are designed by the highest performing math country (Singapore) or to meet those standards (Saxon), and it’s clear why our children are so far behind their international peers, without the possibility of catching up unless we provide them with massive tutoring. In fact, they are not being prepared for most careers, including business, marketing, construction and retail.

You state that math will not be taught here as it was 20 years ago. We hope you are not implying that Saxon and Singapore curricula are outmoded approaches. By international standards they are far more progressive than the curricula currently in use in our district. There is no doubt that they are consistently preparing students for future study and careers in math-intensive fields that drive the global economy. On the other hand, the reform curricula are keeping our children far behind.

We understand the financial restraints on the district and your reasons for waiting for the outcome of the state review process before acquiring new curricula. However, in our first letter we suggested that the Scott Forseman books be brought back into the classroom. This would cost the district nothing, and would give teachers a way to teach standard math skills and algorithms to students who learn better with a direct approach. This is a simple solution that you have also denied.

It is disturbing to us that you are so rigidly committed to the deeply flawed reform curricula that you won’t allow teachers or students any flexibility. Teachers are now only allowed to teach in one way, and students can only learn in one way. This rules out all possible solutions to the very serious problems voiced by hundreds of parents in this district. These problems will not be solved by adding ten minutes of computational work to 50 minutes of teaching that confuses and frustrates students who would otherwise do well in math.

For the sake of our children we urge you to put the Scott Foresman books back in all classrooms this September, and allow teachers to use them at their discretion. Meanwhile we will do whatever is necessary to be sure our children receive the quality math education we want for them.

Sincerely,

LWSD Where’s the Math Parents

by Winnie Hu
” … Dr. Brooks, a superintendent on Long Island, is the latest casualty in the math wars, felled by parents who complain that their children have failed to learn basic skills in one of the top-performing school districts in New Jersey. After consulting math professors and hiring private tutors, the parents flooded the Internet — and the local newspaper, The Ridgewood News — with concerns about what is known as reform math, collecting more than 175 signatures on a petition calling for an overhaul of math instruction in six of the district’s nine schools. …”

Read More in the New York Times

Good Evening,

I’m Paul Dunham. I earned a teaching certificate a few years ago but now teach math at Cascadia Community College.

I had the great pleasure to attend Cascadia’s commencement ceremony last Friday [6/8/07, ed.]. I saw many of my students and was able to share in the pride of their accomplishment. During the evening I received many personal “thank yous” and several hugs. I must be doing something right.

I try to emulate the best math teachers I’ve had. What made these teachers special? Well for one thing, they taught. They actually showed me how math worked, through compelling lectures and examples on the blackboard. This doesn’t seem to happen much in math classes these days.

Math teachers are no longer supposed to teach. New math teachers are trained that it is unreasonable to expect high school students to pay attention to a lecture for more than 12 minutes. They are now directed to divide students into groups, give them some vague task, turn them loose, and regard the resulting chaos as learning.

Core Plus is designed to mesh perfectly with this scenario. I’d like to read an excerpt from one of the Core Teacher Support booklets. This is what it says:

“An atmosphere where students feel free to express their thoughts without derision from classmates, are encouraged to think deeply about mathematics, and are provided the opportunity to grow intellectually is truly a challenge to create. The culture created within the classroom is crucial to the success of this curriculum. It is important to inculcate in students a sense of inquiry and responsibility for their own learning. Without this commitment, active, collaborative learning cannot be effective. The percentage of ninth-grade students who begin school in the fall with these skills is very small. The work ethic and social skills of ninth graders are not ideal in many cases, but teachers indicate that with persistence this changes. In many cases, students returning to school as tenth graders seem to have miraculously matured over the summer and actually are eager to work collaboratively with classmates.”

It’s as if the authors of Core are saying, “Don’t worry if your ninth grade classes are a total waste, a miracle will happen!”

And how do we know? We’re told that “Teachers indicate….” this. What teachers? This is just marketing, folks, this is not the result of a study. You will find no independent, peer reviewed study that supports this fanciful claim.

What planet are these people on? It must be a beautiful planet, but it isn’t ours. Dr. Theory, please get to know Mr. Reality.

And, as Dr. Bergeson said last week with regard to the latest WASL results, “A miracle did not happen in Math”. Are we waiting for a miracle? We can’t count on miracles to come along and sweep away mistakes. Our children’s futures are at stake here.

This school year is almost over. I would like to challenge each of you to go out and look behind the PowerPoint curtain to meet Mr. Reality. Get a schedule of classes where Core Plus is being used. I would expect that all of you have the authority to select and observe a class at random. It must be random! Don’t let an administrator steer you to a class that is known to be full of disciplined, well-behaved students. Peek into at least one average class and see for yourself what is going on. Does it look like learning to you?

I’ll anxiously await your results.

Math scores still lag in WASL

by Jessica Blanchard
“… More Washington high schoolers are earning passing scores on the WASL reading and writing tests, but math scores haven’t kept pace, according to preliminary figures released Friday. …”
Read more in the Seattle PI

Strong reading, writing in WASL

by Linda Shaw
“… The results in … math were a little lower than last year, with … 53.3 percent passing math. … “A miracle did not happen in math,” Bergeson said. …”
Passage rates for 10th grade math WASL for some school districts:
Auburn: 41.3%
Bellevue: 71.4%
Federal Way: 51%
Lake Washington: 73.5%
Shoreline: 55.3%
Read more in the Seattle Times

Class of 2008 makes progress in WASL

” … Of the 23,000 junior students who attempted the math test again this spring or those who failed it at least once before ¡X 5,788 passed statewide. Nearly half of this year’s sophomores who took the test for the first time this spring did not pass the math section of the test. … Under changes in state law, students who don’t pass math must take an additional year of math. …”
Read more in the Spokesman Review

Class of 2008 on track on WASL requirements

“… Students who do pass the math WASL in addition to the reading and writing portions are eligible to earn the Certificate of Academic Achievement in addition to their high school diploma. So far, 61.7 percent of next year’s seniors in the class of 2008 have met standards on the math WASL. Of those who have taken the test, 74.3 percent have passed. …”
OSPI press release

By Mary Stevens Decker, Staff Writer
Supporters of a grassroots movement called “Where’s the Math?” are speaking out against the math curricula used in Lake Washington schools, saying it fails to give students sufficient grounding in basic math concepts. At Monday’s meeting of the school district’s board of directors, critics of the district’s math programs — widely known as “Investigations,” “Reform Math” or “TERC” — read a letter signed by 300 parents and addressed to the new superintendent, Dr. Chip Kimball.

Read more in the Redmond Reporter

I became involved with Where’s the Math and Parents for Math Matters (Spokane) about 1 ½ years ago. It started when I spoke at the Lakeside High School Board Meeting. A concerned parent and teacher asked if I would speak and ask the board to consider keeping traditional math. The school was in the process of switching to Core Plus (a reformed program) in the High School after having switched to Connected Math (another reformed program) in the Middle School. Once my name got out there, I was contacted by other groups and have spoken to several school boards, senators and representatives, and administrators.
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