I am a professor of electrical and computer engineering in Louisville, Kentucky and a parent who has had children attending K-12 public schools here for the last 18 years. In the math texts used by the district I have seen a steady decline in content! This Fall I examined the 6th grade Connected Math text used by my district and was appalled to find few, if any, instances of the use of an equals sign.
In researching this trend in math texts I learned that Connected Math and several other math series are of the "reform math" type—an approach that has been around now for around twenty years. "Reform Math" is characterized as provoking "deep thinking" (by its proponents) but as having limited content (by its opponents). I recently learned that for some time there has been a nation-wide dispute between groups in favor of reform math versus those in favor of traditional math, which has been dubbed "Math Wars." [note 1 (at end of this diary)]
The issue I wanted to make Kos readership aware of is that if you are in favor of non-reform approaches in your school district you may find yourself steamrolled by your district. I have found that even several districts that have strongly opposed their district have lost [note 2]. Here is one way this works:
My public school district in Louisville, Kentucky is in the process of selecting a kindergarten through fifth grade math series. It will be paid for from a $25,000,000 grant from the GE Foundation’s College Bound Program. In fact General Electric Foundation has recently made over $100M in awards to five districts. While GE Foundation's stated goal of making more students ready for college sounds great, the program in my district is only considering four textbook series, all of the reform math type. The individual schools are told they can choose differently, if they want to come up with their own funds to purchase textbooks—something I doubt we will see happen at even one school.
The steamrolling I mentioned is pervasive and based on jargon, slogans and platitudes that do not seem to be provable or to hold up to scrutiny. This Illinois group’s web page provides a point-counterpoint to the type of comments I hear when I contact any of my district representatives, the teacher’s union and the GE Foundation:
Note 1:
More on the "Math Wars" can be found in this should read, this web page including this excerpt from a National Academies Press report on reform math (emphasis mine):
...there is no body of valid research literature showing that any of these programs is an improvement on any competing, "traditional", program. ... In the time of these programs numerous mathematicians have pointed out the visible absence of good mathematics contained in them, but their advocates have cited studies showing that despite the absence of content (something merely denied) the programs produce good results.
These assessments of reform math are further supported in the the final report of the National Math Advisory Panel that was published a few weeks ago by the U.S. Department of Education.
Note 2:
These clips (video 1 , video 2)from another district (about the TERC series) seem to very accurately describe this problem and my observations about the Connected Math and other Reform texts.
One more not-to-be-missed video that is truly illuminating. It is about 15 minutes but gives the basic claims in the first minute and last two minutes
This last clip puts the problem in a perspective that directly applies to universities who are hoping that incoming student competence in math would be on the rise.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: (4/1/08) Given the current election fever it is hard to get enough comments to keep this in the recent diaries for more than an hour or two. So I am now crossposting at Mother Talkers where there are some very nice comments that you may wish to read as well. I very much appreciate the comments received so far from both websites. Thank you.