There’s the old familiar Military, Tobacco, Pharmaceutical and Medical Insurance Industrial Complexes. But welcome to the new and exciting Educational Industrial Complex.
What is it and how does it work? It works very well, thank you! And it is working to supply your K-12 school district with mathematics textbooks (referred to as reform math or fuzzy math texts) that were recently characterized by Stanford Math Professor, James Milgram as:
I would suggest that the best way to think of these programs is as training for jobs at Target or MacDonald’s. For example, we simply do not see students coming from this background in any advanced mathematics classes at Stanford.
Please forgive the hyped intro, but the story that follows (which is summarized in the blue and yellow chart) is worth reading because it is being repeated in school districts across the country where choreographed ploys are used to bypass parent concerns about poor math texts.
.
.
.
This diary reports on my particular recent experiences with my school district (JCPS) in Louisville, Kentucky when they asked for parental input on K-5 math textbooks. Note that General Electric Foundation is underwriting this activity with a grant of $25M to JCPS.
My overall conclusion developed in this blog (following extensive discussion with GE Foundation and JCPS) is:
While the goals of the GE grant sound perfect for getting more kids to college and more engineers to GE, the methods selected by the GE grantees appear to be oppositely directed. It appears that GE has completely "outsourced" the execution of its grants (to 5 school districts) to groups who are entirely "invested" in reform math.
The crux of this diary (including the explanation of the chart above) is presented below in the section The Juicy Story, which you can skip to if you are already familiar with "Math Wars:" The battle between advocates for reform/fuzzy and traditional/grounded math education.
.
.
A LITTLE BACKGROUND
For some background of the problem with the textbooks from a nationwide perspective, please refer to my previous diary entry "Is Our Children Learning" Math Texts (and crosslisted here with additional interesting reader comments). Additionally this wikipedia entry has a very balanced description of the history of Math Wars going back to 2000.
Reform math (specifically the TERC program's Investigations series) was characterized this way by Harvard math Professor Wilfred Schmid:
A TERC teacher doesn't explain, and a TERC teacher doesn't teach! I don't want to be misunderstood: group learning and discovery learning are parts of the tool chest of every accomplished teacher, but it is folly to turn these techniques into an ideology. If we mathematicians had to re-discover mathematics on our own, we would not get very far! And indeed, TERC does not get very far. By the end of fifth grade, TERC students have fallen roughly two years behind where they should be.
And one of the biggest proponents of reform math, including TERC is Steve Leinwand (biography here) currently of the American Institutes for Research (AIR). His philosophy is excerpted from this report:
In a Feb. 9, 1994, article in Education Week, he [Leinwand] wrote: "It's time to recognize that, for many students, real mathematical power, on the one hand, and facility with multidigit, pencil-and-paper computational algorithms, on the other, are mutually exclusive. In fact, it's time to acknowledge that continuing to teach these skills to our students is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive and downright dangerous."
Mr. Leinwand's influential opinions are diametrically opposed to the mainstream views of practicing scientists and mathematicians, as well as the general public, but they have found fertile soil in the government's "promising" and "exemplary" curricula.
Note the bolded part, where skill in hand calculation is dangerous?! Really!! In fact the contrast he makes between math power—conceptual skills and execution skills is what is known in the spin biz as a false dichotomy. If the false dichotomy is not clear then here is an excerpt of a recent memo (forwarded to me by GE Foundation 3/13/08) from Mr. Leinwand in which he again uses the same false dichotomy:
Why Investigations 2 is such a wise choice
... those who subscribe to the views of Mathematically Correct is that the priority focus of school mathematics should be on the mastery of long division of whole numbers and "teaching" the standard "guzinta" and "bring down" algorithm for four-digit numbers divided by two-digit numbers. Despite the fact that almost no one uses pencil and paper to divide by two- and three-digit numbers anywhere in the real world, despite the fact that many 5th graders, even in the best of school systems, have not yet mastered multiplication and division facts, and despite the fact that most people are sensible enough to recognize that one size rarely fits all, the mathematically misguided turn mathematics into a series of mindless rules, devoid of any sense-making or conceptual understanding, that everyone is magically expected to master.
See how this works! The opponents of reform math only want to train our children to be mindless math automatons. Clearly there isn’t a group in the country that believes that there are math programs that only focus on drills. Also it doesn’t appear that he is actually concerned about students in 5th grade not knowing the multiplication tables, which is well below the skill levels of students in at least 25 other countries that outperform the US in math. Some additional excerpts from the same memo:
However, there is an important alternative conception that many who have always found mathematics easy to learn refuse to acknowledge or consistently disparage. It is a conception of mathematics as the development of skills and concepts that empower students to solve practical and real-world problems.
Another false dichotomy (like "Some say ...") In other words, "Oh, the misguided mathematically competent are so insensitive to those who have trouble with math!"
.
.
THE JUICY STORY: INTRO
So here’s where the story gets really, really interesting. My wife and I have been writing and calling JCPS administration, GE grant team leaders, teachers, PTA, the School Board, and the district teachers union who are all involved in the grant. Each time we hear back from any one of these people we hear words of praise for Steve Leinwand and AIR. Note we never heard his name before. They keep raising the issue. We also repeatedly hear the slogan "we don’t want drill-and-kill" as if we’re training the next cadre of math terrorists.
Then when GE Foundation replied to my letter of concern, which had the same information as in my last diary on this subject. I received a long response from GE Foundation that cited studies that support reform math, but which did not address any of the issues raised in my letter.
But to my great surprise there was also an attached memorandum (Why Investigations 2 is such a wise choice, which was quoted from above) from none other than the omnipresent Steve Leinwand! Given his appearance at every turn I tend to believe he also prepared the GE Foundation letter to me. Since his attached memo was not addressed to me and additionally his concluding paragraph from the same:
My plea is that JCPS continue look to the future, not to the past. District policy should be based on a broader conception of mathematics, and ensuring the kind of support – via curriculum, professional development, technology and high quality assessments – that serves students, their teachers, and the business community.
I assume that he also provided this memo to JCPS leading to their selection of Investigations 2 Math (which is written by the TERC organization and published by Scott Foresman/Pearson Solutions/Prentice-Hall.)
.
.
THE BIG FINISH/THE PAYOFF
So why does Leinwand’s name pop up everywhere? Looking through GE’s College Bound Program web site and JCPS’s web site on the GE Foundation grant led to my discovering this amazing set of non-accidental coincidences or congruences (which are graphically presented in the chart at the top of this diary):
The American Institutes for Research (AIR) is funded by GE to measure the progress resulting from JCPS math curriculum changes.
Steve Leinwand as a consultant to JCPS recommended Investigations 2 (TERC), Scott Foresman publisher as the best choice for JCPS. (See portions of his memo above.)
Steve Leinwand is an author of another Scott Foresman math series. (As listed in his biography)
Steve Leinwand works for AIR.
AIR is a donor to TERC.
Scott Foresman (Pearson Achievement Solutions) and Steve Leinwand helped develop the new world class standards for JCPS. {From the JCPS world class mathematics standards working document.}
TERC recommends the purchase of the Steve Leinwand’s book "Sensible Math: A Guide for School Leaders." The book provides advice on how school administrators can get their preferred math program adopted into their school.
Every inquiry made about this program that I’m aware has made some reference to Steve Leinwand of AIR. (as described above.)
Is there no lack of a conflict of interest at any one portion of the process? Is there more than a little opportunity to game the system? You tell me. Here is what was typed on the instruction form given to my wife when she went down to review the texts in response to JCPS’s request for community input on the math texts. The form included a column of what the review was (in one column) and what it was not (in the other). The other column is most instructive:
This is not a vote on which materials will be chosen. This is not an opportunity for teachers to choose the materials they like. This is not a process on solely choosing a textbook.
Add to this that no books other than the reform math type were offered for public consideration.
Finally, while all schools can choose any math series they want, GE only pays for the series that is selected through this process. Therefore, (given that few schools consider the alternative of paying for things themselves) they have short circuited the true public involvement that is usually involved in text book selection.
A similar story of school districts gaming the system in selecting reform math in the Bellevue School District is summarized here.
Following from my overall conclusion above, I am hoping that the GE Foundation will wake up and put some teeth into their College Bound Program before they make their next $25M grant.
.
.
AFTERTHOUGHT
In a wider sense this gaming the system is entering many other public decision making venues, for instance consider the true story in High Stakes: Big Time Sports and Downtown Redevelopment
Unlike so many other cities around the country, Columbus citizens gave a firm ‘no’ to the proposal that public money be used to build an arena .... Yet, both structures are now a permanent part of Columbus’s landscape. High Stakes is the inside story of how a coalition of the city’s movers and shakers successfully did an end-run around the electorate to build these sports complexes.
.
.