Exercpt:
Program very difficult to teach
I recently retired from public school teaching after more than 40 years, and have used many math programs. Everyday Math is the most frustrating and problematic program I have ever encountered.
Don't let its clever title convince you that it is basic math for everyday living. Its methods are often so esoteric, indirect, circuitous and confusing that many experienced teachers spend lots of time figuring out each lesson for themselves before they can teach it.
And so little practice is given for new skills.
For children who quickly grasp abstract concepts (perhaps the top 25 percent in an average school) additional practice may not be necessary. But this lack of practice in a variety of applications leaves many students struggling to understand and keep up. It also leaves many parents frustrated in trying to help with homework they don't understand and stressed over the hours children spend on math homework.
Everyday Math is really "genius math," wasted on most of us who aren't in that category and don't seek that level of understanding.
-- Carolyn Harris
Read more: http://www.adn.com/2011/06/27/1939474/readers-weigh-in-on-everyday-math.html#ixzz1QfP4voc2
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Schools wrong to teach Everyday math (Anchorage)
Op-ed written by Amy Johnson. She has a child in the Anchorage school system, a masters degree in applied math and has tutored many students in math over the years.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
More complaints about EDM from parents in Alaska
exercpt:
Many parents feel strongly that Everyday Math is a mistake.
"Why is the school district even considering maintaining a curriculum that is so difficult to teach and requires continuing education for parents to help their student with homework?" asked parent Rachel Saxby.
Saxby said she voted against school bonds because she's upset about the district spending money on "misguided experiments in curricula," among other criticisms.
Saxby was one of more than 15 parents, grandparents and a teacher who sent emails to respond to a Daily News question about the math program.
"When my son was at Susitna Elementary, he brought home the book," said Mike Carrier, "The math curriculum was so crazy. It seemed to go around eight to 10 more hoops than was necessary to come up with the proper answer to what should be easy math equations."
The program teaches kids three or more ways to multiply and divide, said parent Jim Miller. "If you are a student struggling to learn just one way to multiply or divide, trying to teach you several different ways of doing it just confuses you!"
"Everyday Math is an awful educational tool and very hard to understand," said Yvette Miller, another parent. "After re-reading the instructions on some of the homework my daughter has brought home I felt as if I was unable to help my child with having a better understanding of this type of math."
She said she agrees with the thought others have voiced: "'Teach math the old way.' This is the way I've taught my children at home."
Airport Heights Elementary teacher Emily Becker is also critical of Everyday Math. "It's not a bad curriculum by any means," she wrote. "However, it is disastrous for English language learners, students who struggle with reading comprehension and students who struggle with abstract concepts."
"I dearly wish they would ditch EDM."
Read more: http://www.adn.com/2011/06/26/1937573/after-complaints-school-board.html#ixzz1QZSUtLRv
Many parents feel strongly that Everyday Math is a mistake.
"Why is the school district even considering maintaining a curriculum that is so difficult to teach and requires continuing education for parents to help their student with homework?" asked parent Rachel Saxby.
Saxby said she voted against school bonds because she's upset about the district spending money on "misguided experiments in curricula," among other criticisms.
Saxby was one of more than 15 parents, grandparents and a teacher who sent emails to respond to a Daily News question about the math program.
"When my son was at Susitna Elementary, he brought home the book," said Mike Carrier, "The math curriculum was so crazy. It seemed to go around eight to 10 more hoops than was necessary to come up with the proper answer to what should be easy math equations."
The program teaches kids three or more ways to multiply and divide, said parent Jim Miller. "If you are a student struggling to learn just one way to multiply or divide, trying to teach you several different ways of doing it just confuses you!"
"Everyday Math is an awful educational tool and very hard to understand," said Yvette Miller, another parent. "After re-reading the instructions on some of the homework my daughter has brought home I felt as if I was unable to help my child with having a better understanding of this type of math."
She said she agrees with the thought others have voiced: "'Teach math the old way.' This is the way I've taught my children at home."
Airport Heights Elementary teacher Emily Becker is also critical of Everyday Math. "It's not a bad curriculum by any means," she wrote. "However, it is disastrous for English language learners, students who struggle with reading comprehension and students who struggle with abstract concepts."
"I dearly wish they would ditch EDM."
Read more: http://www.adn.com/2011/06/26/1937573/after-complaints-school-board.html#ixzz1QZSUtLRv
Monday, June 27, 2011
ME (& NH) high schools shut out of top 500
(from http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/923789-196/nh-high-schools-shut-out-of-top.html)
Granite State high schools were shut out in a ranking of the top 500 public high schools in America published by Newsweek Magazine this week.
New Hampshire didn’t have a single high school crack the list, which was based on a formula that used the following factors: graduation rate (25 percent); college matriculation rate (25 percent); AP tests taken per graduate (25 percent); the average SAT/ACT scores (10 percent); the average AP/IB/AICE scores (10 percent); and AP courses offered (5 percent).
Maine, Vermont and Rhode Island were the other New England States not to have a school make the list. Massachusetts had 11 schools, including Boston Latin School, which was ranked at 63 and has a 99 percent graduation rate and college-bound rate. It also had an average SAT score of 1911.
Connecticut had 12 schools on the list. Two Dallas magnet schools – School of Science and Engineering and School for the Talented and Gifted – topped the list, respectively.
Last year, Hollis-Brookline High School was ranked 1,155 in a field of 1,600 top high schools by Newsweek. It was the fourth year in a row Hollis/Brookline had made the top 1,600 list.
Newsweek changed its methodology this year. In the past, schools had only been ranked by AP tests per graduate. But the formula was changed this year, the development of which included several education experts.
To view the list and more on how schools were selected, visit www.newsweek.com/feature/2011/americas-best-high-schools.html
Granite State high schools were shut out in a ranking of the top 500 public high schools in America published by Newsweek Magazine this week.
New Hampshire didn’t have a single high school crack the list, which was based on a formula that used the following factors: graduation rate (25 percent); college matriculation rate (25 percent); AP tests taken per graduate (25 percent); the average SAT/ACT scores (10 percent); the average AP/IB/AICE scores (10 percent); and AP courses offered (5 percent).
Maine, Vermont and Rhode Island were the other New England States not to have a school make the list. Massachusetts had 11 schools, including Boston Latin School, which was ranked at 63 and has a 99 percent graduation rate and college-bound rate. It also had an average SAT score of 1911.
Connecticut had 12 schools on the list. Two Dallas magnet schools – School of Science and Engineering and School for the Talented and Gifted – topped the list, respectively.
Last year, Hollis-Brookline High School was ranked 1,155 in a field of 1,600 top high schools by Newsweek. It was the fourth year in a row Hollis/Brookline had made the top 1,600 list.
Newsweek changed its methodology this year. In the past, schools had only been ranked by AP tests per graduate. But the formula was changed this year, the development of which included several education experts.
To view the list and more on how schools were selected, visit www.newsweek.com/feature/2011/americas-best-high-schools.html
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
EDM in Alaska - Report Suggest improvements
If you assumed this was Alpine School District in Utah, it’s not, but it’s the same old story. We’ve just saved $26,000 by not having the study done. This news report is about Anchorage School District in Alaska which has jumped into constructivist math with the “Everyday Math” program (named thus because it was designed to frustrate parents and children every day). The “A-ha” moment of this article is right here. In all my years of studying this issue, I never saw this insidious angle.
Both Comeau and Nees say that they’ve heard complaints about the “Everyday Math” program from parents, who say that the method is so different from what they learned in school, that some parents aren’t able to help their children with their homework.
“When you have [the traditional method] on the board, and [the "everyday math" method] on the board, and the parent’s trying to do it the traditional way, [the student] is going to stop listening to Mom and Dad, and Mom and Dad can’t help them,” Nees said.
“Mom and Dad don’t know how to do it this way, so I will only listen to my teachers from now on.” Hmmm, where have I heard something like that before? Oh, that’s right, BYU’s Education department national consultant, John Goodlad.
“Public education has served as a check on the power of parents, and this is another powerful reason for maintaining it.”
- John Goodlad, Developing Democratic Character in the Young, pg. 165
“Most youth still hold the same values of their parents… if we do not alter this pattern, if we don’t resocialize, our system will decay.”
– John Goodlad, Schooling for the Future, Issue #9, 1971
“Parents do not own their children. They have no ‘natural right’ to control their education fully.”
– John Goodlad / Developing Democratic Character in the Young, pg. 164
It is a very real possibility that Mr. Goodlad and all these other educators have embraced constructivist math not only for the social engineering aspects, but because it’s another barrier between parent and child. Parents don’t know how to do this method of math, so they may figure that it will serve to separate the parents a little further from their children and get children to believe that their teacher at school is the source of knowledge they should turn to. Why? Here’s what other prominent national educators have taught.
“Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future.”
-Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Harvard Professor of Education and Psychiatry, in an address to the Childhood International Education Seminar in 1973
“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished …”
-Bertrand Russell, quoting Gottlieb Fichte the head of psychology that influenced Hegel and others.
I have never before understood this issue in this way. If you are new to fuzzy math, or even for a quick refresher, I strongly encourage you to watch these videos and read my comments below.
http://www.ktuu.com/news/ktuu-report-suggests-improvements-for-anchorage-school-district-math-program-20110620,0,7214623.story
One final note, when the lady in the video above says that when students learn this way studies show they do better, that is utterly false. There are no studies that support constructivist math as a superior method of teaching. To the contrary, they have been shown as failures.
Here’s meteorologist M.J. McDermott to explain this bizarre lattice method along with a stinging rebuke of Everyday math and Investigations math (the parental-separator of choice for Alpine School District). This video is 15 minutes, but she explains the lattice method after a couple minutes. I strongly encourage you to keep watching though, as she will explain fuzzy division, and then share an astounding quote at the 10 minute mark from the Everyday Math textbook telling teachers that mastery isn’t important.
At the end she holds up a couple of Singapore math workbooks to help your children learn math and I also endorse the Singapore Primary math workbooks which you can get at www.SingaporeMath.com.
Both Comeau and Nees say that they’ve heard complaints about the “Everyday Math” program from parents, who say that the method is so different from what they learned in school, that some parents aren’t able to help their children with their homework.
“When you have [the traditional method] on the board, and [the "everyday math" method] on the board, and the parent’s trying to do it the traditional way, [the student] is going to stop listening to Mom and Dad, and Mom and Dad can’t help them,” Nees said.
“Mom and Dad don’t know how to do it this way, so I will only listen to my teachers from now on.” Hmmm, where have I heard something like that before? Oh, that’s right, BYU’s Education department national consultant, John Goodlad.
“Public education has served as a check on the power of parents, and this is another powerful reason for maintaining it.”
- John Goodlad, Developing Democratic Character in the Young, pg. 165
“Most youth still hold the same values of their parents… if we do not alter this pattern, if we don’t resocialize, our system will decay.”
– John Goodlad, Schooling for the Future, Issue #9, 1971
“Parents do not own their children. They have no ‘natural right’ to control their education fully.”
– John Goodlad / Developing Democratic Character in the Young, pg. 164
It is a very real possibility that Mr. Goodlad and all these other educators have embraced constructivist math not only for the social engineering aspects, but because it’s another barrier between parent and child. Parents don’t know how to do this method of math, so they may figure that it will serve to separate the parents a little further from their children and get children to believe that their teacher at school is the source of knowledge they should turn to. Why? Here’s what other prominent national educators have taught.
“Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future.”
-Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Harvard Professor of Education and Psychiatry, in an address to the Childhood International Education Seminar in 1973
“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished …”
-Bertrand Russell, quoting Gottlieb Fichte the head of psychology that influenced Hegel and others.
I have never before understood this issue in this way. If you are new to fuzzy math, or even for a quick refresher, I strongly encourage you to watch these videos and read my comments below.
http://www.ktuu.com/news/ktuu-report-suggests-improvements-for-anchorage-school-district-math-program-20110620,0,7214623.story
One final note, when the lady in the video above says that when students learn this way studies show they do better, that is utterly false. There are no studies that support constructivist math as a superior method of teaching. To the contrary, they have been shown as failures.
Here’s meteorologist M.J. McDermott to explain this bizarre lattice method along with a stinging rebuke of Everyday math and Investigations math (the parental-separator of choice for Alpine School District). This video is 15 minutes, but she explains the lattice method after a couple minutes. I strongly encourage you to keep watching though, as she will explain fuzzy division, and then share an astounding quote at the 10 minute mark from the Everyday Math textbook telling teachers that mastery isn’t important.
At the end she holds up a couple of Singapore math workbooks to help your children learn math and I also endorse the Singapore Primary math workbooks which you can get at www.SingaporeMath.com.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Math Education Reform: Does It Add Up?
Video interview of Elizabeth Carson, Co-founder and Executive Director, NYC HOLD NATIONAL, Professors Fred Greenleaf and Sylvain Cappell, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU. Carson, Greenleaf and Cappell discuss different school math programs (i.e. Everyday Math).
April, 2011.
April, 2011.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
The “Delphi Technique” And How It Robs Parents of Control Over Their Child’s Education
Has this happened to you???
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