November 14, 2008 · 1 Comment
We had a productive meeting at the Long Valley Middle School to get community input on our math curriculum. There was a mix of people between supporters and opponents of Every Day Math and Connected Math. There was a lot of good discussion and a few times I thought the meeting was going to derail especially during the recap of how we ended up with EM but thankfully it didn’t. Before I recap the highlights I thought my own perspective on the meeting would be appropriate especially because I surprised a few people who thought I was on my recall EM rhetoric.
I don’t favor the Every Day Math and Connected Math for reasons already list on this site. However, when I listened to parents who offered stories on how the program benefited their kids I realized that a) I don’t know how many families favored it and b) I think it is wrong for a community school to ignore the wishes of a large amount of parents, whether I personally believe it or not. The town had the chance to vote a change in April and I lost (for other reasons having nothing to do with the math). Now with the economy in the crapper and the amount of money it would take to switch out the program there is no way a 2009 budget that included new math curriculum would pass when put to the town for a vote (in Washington Township the voters approve the budget).
There I wrote it. As much as I dislike the program I’m listening to a large group of parents in town who favor it; plus fiscally we don’t have the money right now for a switch. Given that, here are my observations..
- We need more practice with basic addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication
- Kid’s need differentiation based on how they perform with the mathematics; right now we only have a Gifted-Talented and then the rest of the students.
- Lattice method should never be required learning. For some kids it is the only way for them to learn and they should get the benefit of it
- Please stop marking the kids wrong when they get the answer correct but use a different methodology
- We need to make sure our kids are prepared for High School math and algebra
- NJASK is not a diagnostic test but a test to measure proficiency for NJ’s budgeting process; I’d like to see a national test to benchmark our students with the rest of the USA
- A lot of people including myself were concerned about the thoroughness of the original recommendation, but personally I think that is water under the bridge
- Parents are even more concerned over Connected math
That’s about it for tonight. Our second meeting in next Thursday.
Eric
Categories: General
Sorry about the lack of comment approvals but during my real life I worked on Senator McCain’s campaign running his digital advertising as well as the Republican National Committee. So, I was a little busy but now I’m back. I’ll have a post tomorrow night on tonight’s 11/13 Washington Township Math Advisory Committee.
Eric
Categories: General
I found this write-up quite interesting. It seems their Board of Education and their Administration are at odds over Everyday Math (can’t say I blame them). It certainly looks like death by committee in Bridgewater when it comes to recalling Everyday Math. Enjoy the post called Bridgewater-Raritan’s Everyday Math Program.
Eric
Categories: Other NJ Towns
I haven’t visited this blog in quite a long time and have been very busy working on John McCain’s Presidential campaign (as part of an agency for the campaign I run his online advertising). My father also died at the end of June leaving me with quite a mess. So, even after school started I was focused on the campaign, elsewhere and not so much on school work. I kept the letter from Interim Superintendent John Sakala regarding the parental committees but didn’t do much about it. That is until Friday September 19.
That week I started getting phone calls and emails from parents again. Parents started realizing that they are not satisfied with the math curriculum and wanted to know what I was doing about it. So Friday I emailed and called John Sakala and joined the math committee. I also can work things from a different angle because I can, but locally the best path right now for me is this math committee.
Talk with you soon,
Eric
Categories: General
I attended the June 3rd Washington Township Board of Education meeting and I was very pleased. You should be pleased because unlike other Board of Eds in towns like Ridgewood NJ, your BOE listened to the concerned parents and are going to review our K-8 math curriculum. To recap here’s what they talked about on Tuesday:
- The Education Committee reported that they supported a review of our math curriculum to examine what’s working, what’s not, and offer improvements
- They are forming a committee in the summer to review the math curriculum
- They are writing a letter back to the community that basically will say “we heard you” and here’s what we are going to do (I’m guessing because I didn’t actually get to read the letter).
I spoke with several board members before and after the meeting and every one was very supportive of listening to our concerns and evaluating the curriculum. That also includes Interim Superintendent John Sakala who I had a one on one meeting with last Friday. I also spoke with Board President Michelle Skurchak and she was very supportive and seemed happy to help. Here’s what appeared in the May 13th minutes that hinted at board action:
Members of the public commented on the Everyday Math program; equal time should be given to science and social studies in addition to math; request for an update on the gifted and talented program; grouping of students in Middle School classes; and board member e-mail addresses and answering of e-mail in a timely manner. Mr. Sakala commented that the board hears the concerns about Everyday Math and that time is needed to look into the matter. The meeting was closed to the public at 8:37 p.m. “
I stood up and addressed the board after they outlined their plan . So I don’t bore you anymore, here’s a quick synopsis:
- I thanked the BOE for listening to the parents who raised concerns
- I handed a copy of the petition (without your emails) to Interim Superintendent John Sakala
- I volunteered to be on the evaluation committee and offered to help recruit more people
Right now perhaps some of you supporters are not satisfied with just a review and wanted an outright recall. Obviously as the person that started this noise you may be upset with me, but please don’t be. This is a great solution for our community.
There are plenty of parents who believe that Everyday Math works for their kids and are happy with the program. There are obviously a lot of you that want it removed. We could all just dig our heels in and have this town become a casualty in the math wars like Ridgewood or we can all work together and come up with the best solution that is right for our town.
Right now our Board of Education did they right thing and it is my hope that changes will be made to the curriculum. I have some ideas that I’d like to see implemented, but until then the best thing you can do is raise your hand and volunteer for the committee when our Board of Education is ready.
Thanks again for your support. It meant a lot to me to know that there were/are so many supporters out there. As one board member said to me, “it isn’t easy to be a lightning rod” and he is correct. However, running into you at baseball games, restaurants, town events, and etc provided me with a huge boost to keep going. Please don’t stop now, because we still have some work to do.
Peace,
Eric
Categories: Everyday Math · Washington Twp
A blog reader sent me this link this morning and I found it very interesting. It seems in Oswego Illinois the Board of Education is set to adopt Everyday Math over the objections of parents (probably because the administrators are clairvoyant for the needs of our children 20 years from now). You can read the article yourself, but for me here are the key take aways:
After lots of reflection, elementary schools here are expected to adopt an updated version of the same math program that triggered parent concerns this past fall.
David Van Boekel, the father of three children in Oswego schools, said he would have preferred a program with “more emphasis on fact mastery (and) less reliance on calculators and games.
Mother Susan Beyer said she felt during the committee’s deliberation process “that the whole deck was stacked against everything else but Everyday Math from the beginning.”
Did you ever have the feeling that McGraw Hill has an Everyday Math play book that they use to sell this junk? It seems that the whole thing plays out like this school district after school district. Parent get upset for the same reasons, board of eds implement it but it is a forgone conclusion, and McGraw Hill makes another sale. I wonder (and I really know) there is a play book for getting rid of this junk.
Eric
Categories: Everyday Math
Tagged: Everyday Math, oswego illinois
The table below is reprinted from the Morris County Clerk’s office website:
http://www.morriselectionresults.org/school_board.htm
|
Washington Twp Board of Ed
|
|
3/3 100.00%
|
|
Under Votes
|
1828
|
|
|
Over Votes
|
0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Vote Count
|
Percent
|
|
- Eric Frenchman
|
922
|
17.50%
|
|
- Gregory J. Antonelle
|
1,119
|
21.24%
|
|
- David Chance Healy
|
1,127
|
21.39%
|
|
- Bill Roehrich
|
1,155
|
21.92%
|
|
- Peter Graziano
|
915
|
17.37%
|
|
Write-In
|
31
|
0.59%
|
|
Total
|
5,269
|
100.00%
|
Reviewing vote total when each voter can make three choices can be confusing. Here is my analysis:
Adding tallied votes and under votes: 5269+1828=7097 total votes. (7097 is not divisible by 3, but maybe they added with everyday math. We’ll use a rounded answer.)
Each voter was supposed to vote for three candidates, therefore, 7097/3 = 2,366 people came in to vote for the school board on April 15. I broke down the vote total into percentages of the number of people who voted:
Frenchman 922/2366 = 39.0 %
Antonelle 1119/2366 = 47.3 %
Healy 1127/2366 = 47.6%
Roehrich 1155/2366 = 48.8%
Graziano 915/2366 = 38.6%
Note that none of the candidates received the support of 50% of the people who went in to vote. Frenchman campaigned on the sole issue of everyday math. By this, it seems that almost 40% of the town is against everyday math. Roehrich seemed to come out at the last minute as against everyday math and he received close to 50% of the voters.
It seems to me that with little publicity, at least 40% of the voters against everyday math. This is a very signifacant number. This indicates the issue demands further investigation by parents and the school board.
Joseph Benigno
Categories: Everyday Math
In this week’s Observer Tribune there is a nice article called Everyday Math furor heats up and there are a few interesting points that I’d like to comment on. All and all I thought it was a very fair and informative article.
First up are comments from Board President Michelle Skurchak. “In the three years that I’ve served, there has not been any prior indication that we have a programmatic problem. I would have expected we would have know about it.” According to the article, but not in quotes, Skurchak said politics plays a role in the expressions of public concern.
Hmmm….Well, there have been problems and I don’t know why the Board doesn’t know about them. Besides the obvious problems with the kids struggling with the first year on Connected Math (the 7th grade has about 100 signatures on their own petition) many parents have told me stories about discussions with teachers and administrators when kids had problems marked wrong because they did it the older way. There are plenty of comments on our petition page but here’s just one example from a parent:
When I initially started questioning and, yes, complaining, about Everyday Math I was given a PROMOTIONAL VIDEO by the math department (distributed, apparently, by the company that sells the program !) and was told it would “answer any questions” I had re the program. No, it did not. Upon further questioning/ complaining I was offered a “parental study class” that would teach ME the program so I could help my child with the Everyday Math homework!! Excuse me….I already “passed” 4th grade math…and still have the “times” tables memorized. It seems that the way I was taught math (and which helped me get an MBA) was “confusing” my little student and making her ’stress out’ over homework!
There are many other examples like that, so to answer Michelle’s comment I know there are problems, but perhaps they never percolated up to the Board or perhaps people didn’t feel empowered to speak up. I don’t know why Michelle didn’t hear about this outside of an election, but the 170 signatures we have right now say it is time for a change and we have a problem. As for the unquoted comments regarding politics, this is about as apolitical as you can get. I’m not running for any public office in town and nobody has asked me or cared about by national party affiliation.
Later on, Ruth McCurdy says this in response to NJ math proficiency scores of 97 and 98, “I don’t know how else you can better scores that much.”
I think I know how how you can better scores especially on tests that have been made easier over the years and rank near the bottom of standard tests in the country. What? Tell me you never questioned if NJASK are appropriate tests for measuring math proficiency. Tell me you never wondered if the tests were easy or not. What are you going to do if your child is highly proficient on these “tests” but later on can’t compete at higher level maths. Well I wondered these questions and so did another parent who sent me this link with a few quick summary points below: www.fordhamfoundation.org/doc/The_Proficiency_Illusion.pdf
- We found that New Jersey’s definitions of proficiency in reading and mathematics are less difficult than the cur scores set by the majority of the other 26 states in this study, at least in the lower grades
- In other words, New Jersey’s test are generally below average in terms of difficulty
- The level of difficulty changed from 2005 to 2006….while the mathematics are now easier to pass, although not for all grades
- This finding is consistent with the recent National Center for Education Statistics report which also found New Jersey’s standards to be in the bottom half of the state distributions for the earlier grades.
Do you really think Everyday Math is helping our kids to be proficient? I don’t. Sign the petition to help us get rid of it. Join your other brave neighbors who have signed the petition.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/EveryDayMathWT/index.html
Eric
Categories: Everyday Math · National Math
Tagged: Everyday Math, fordham foundation
Wow, I leave to go to DC for two days and we got a nice bump in signings. Maybe I should spend more time away from Long Valley!!
You know what I find very interesting? It’s that so many parents have similar complaints about the math program and these are not the points I stress (lack of drilling of the standard algorithms, calculator use, spiraling, and the absurd lattice method), so clearly this isn’t just me feeding people information. Please, please keep it up. I’d like to get this to at least 200 signatures by the next board meeting. Here’s the link again: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/EveryDayMathWT/ and some comments to get you going:
- My daughter is a first grade teacher in Rockaway township and they tried Everyday Math. Needless to say, they are no longer using this program.
- Horrible program…these children do not understand math and have no recall of their mathematical facts…times tables are non existent and therefore it takes the children forever to calculate in their heads (that is if they don’t have a calculator in their hands)
- Are you sure we did ALL of our homework before implementing this program??
- I have been very displeased with the overall education of my daughter. She rarely if ever gets assigned homework and the concept of children working in groups/teams during class time to learn math is alarming (to say the least). I will be happy to also show up and support you in your efforts. (not just in the math area).
- My daughter misses doing real math! She says the new math is really language arts. The kids have lost a whole year of math! It’s ridiculous and a shame!
Keep them coming people….
Eric
Categories: petition
Tagged: Everyday Math, math petition
I get very fired up when ever I think of any child learning the lattice of multiplication. In one of my my more memorable board of ed campaign posts called Do You Know What Algorithms Your Kids Are Learning? I provided a pretty good example of what’s wrong with Everyday Math. It isn’t that everything about Everyday Math is a waste, but one of their marketing gimmicks in it is when they introduce methods like this piece of garbage that actually lengthens your kid’s work time besides making them seem utterly ridiculous for using arts and crafts to solve a multiplication problem. The lattice method is impossible to do in your head and does nothing more than hamper your kid’s ability to compete in the work place.
According to Wikipedia it was introduced in Europe in 1202. Hmmm 1202? That sounds like a long time ago right? I wonder why people that invented the computer didn’t use it? Did Albert Einstein use it? How about Larry and Sergey? Why didn’t they use it when they invented Google? How about getting a man on the moon? Didn’t NASA use the lattice method? Obviously not. The same wikipedia article writes that computers that use a base 2 number system use the standard multiplication method.
Imagine tomorrow you are in a meeting and you need to multiply two numbers together. You and your colleagues don’t have laptops or calculators on you; you have your cell phone but you don’t want to pull it out. All you have is pencil and paper and you need to multiply 345×12. You could
- Multiply it using the standard algorithm which you learned in elementary school
- Multiply in your head 345×10, 345×2, and then add the results together
- or draw pictures that look like this:
While you are still drawing your boxes and lines your co-workers will have figured out the right answer and had enough time to laugh you out of the office.
The lattice method is a perfect example of what’s wrong with Everyday Math. It is a gimmick that has been around for over 800 years and we don’t need it. The tried and true standard method works every time and is far more efficient. If Everyday Math is such a good curriculum than why don’t they go ahead and teach the most efficient method and give kids a choice? Why should a child have to learn this long method of using arts and crafts to figure out a simple math problem? They should NEVER have to learn the lattice method of multiplication but Everyday Math needs gimmicks to sell books. The Lattice Method should be Exhibit A as to why this needs to be recalled from our schools.
Eric
Categories: Everyday Math · multiplication
Tagged: Everyday Math, lattice method of multiplication
