Communities

According to a New York Sun article on an 11/20/2007, “The state of Texas has dropped a math curriculum that is mandated for use in New York City schools, saying it was leaving public school graduates unprepared for college.”

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Stanford professor Jim Milgram, in response to a parent in the Orchard, NJ, area says, “...don’t make the mistake of thinking that curricula like Investigations are harmless. They are extremely dangerous.” He continues to add that “What we’ve seen is that sometimes, though it is very rare, parental pressure has resulted in change. But what we’ve never seen is instant change. Usually, change takes so long that the original students are through the system by the time the curriculum is gone.”

Here’s the full response:

Wheresthemath.com has posted a new video featuring interviews with parents about fuzzy math and the problems it creates.

• Graphs shown in the movie: Comparison of Math Testing for Bellevue School District and Washington State
• Iowa Testing Program: Math Test Results for Washington School Districts
• TERC Investigations fractions homework example from the movie: Brownie Sharing Challenge

Henican & White – June 14, 2007
Ellis Henican and Lynne White talk about “New Math.”

WOR podcast

The New York Times article says, in part:

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.

The New York Times