Parent Pundit

A parent's letter about Everyday Math

Dear Parent Pundit:

You have a great web site.  I posted a response to your January 25^th article previously. My son went through his first year of EM last year (4^th grade, Springfield Public Schools Springfield, MO) with miserable results. I got him supplemental traditional math material and worked nearly every weekday for an hour or two all summer with him just to make up for the EM mess. He currently does Saxon Math 5/6 in parallel to his EM at school. He does 3 or 4 lessons a week.

As my post says, going into 4^th grade (prior to any exposure to EM) he tested out in the top 70% nationally (above his grade level). At the end of 4^th grade he had dropped to below 40% nationally and tested out at second month 4^th grade equivalency level. After this summer working like crazy to catch up, drills etc., he is back in the top 65% and in the first week of fifth grade tested out at 6^th month 5^th grader capability. It burns me up that his accomplishment will be used as evidence EM is working great at educating our kids.

I have written letters to my local newspaper that have been published. They even interviewed me and did a front page article that was fairly balanced. On the heals of that article, however, they published another half page response that basically called me and anybody that was against EM a kook. I have pretty much given up the fight locally. With a full time job, domestic duties, and teaching my son Saxon I am worn out. Honestly it’s amazing the lack of outrage, or for that matter even interest, parents have in this community with regard to EM. Perhaps it will take five or six years before it sinks in what the damage is.

Thanks for publishing your web site. I enjoy it.

Regards,

Stewart

Everyday Math Exposed: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Reverses Course

My daughter, as most of you know reading this blog, had HUGE problems with Everyday Math, which is an "investigative" math curriculum that doesn't teach traditional algorithms.

Well, she is now in 8th grade, and guess what her math homework is for the first week of school? How to do:

• Long Division
• Short Division
• Traditional Multiplication
• Traditional Multiplication with fractions

Why? Because most students only know the lattice method (an unwieldy method that takes up lots of paper and leaves room for numerous mathematical errors) and can only do division with calculators.

Because I used the online program Aleks to help her catch up in the 6th grade, she was far ahead of most others in her class and tested into high math for 7th grade. (She is actually in "high middle" math this year due to a death in the family, my not having her do Aleks outside of class last year(she needs the traditional methods in order to excel, and her school system doesn't use them still), and more that I don't want to go into. Only one other student in her "high middle" math class also knew the traditional manner to complete equations, and, guess what, he also got bumped from high math. (My guess is that he learns like my daughter and his parents didn't make him do his Aleks either.)

There is a teacher in her school who was a civil engineer in a former life, and she alerted the 8th grade teacher that these skills needed to be taught. (It was the people who actually worked with math who were the most vocal about "fuzzy math" curricula in the first place. The  folks in the "teacher colleges" were the ones who advocated the fuzzy math, not the mathematicians.)

Kids in high math and who excel in math, if I had to place a bet, are being tutored outside of school at a rate that is unprecedented. Of course, no school district would have the guts to do a survey to find this out.

We have a lost generation of math students and tests are now showing that and the establishment is reacting.

According to the September 12 edition of the Wall Street Journal:

The nation's math teachers, on the front lines of a 17-year curriculum war, are getting some new marching orders: Make sure students learn the basics.

In a report to be released today, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which represents 100,000 educators from prekindergarten through college, will give ammunition to traditionalists who believe schools should focus heavily and early on teaching such fundamentals as multiplication tables and long division....

The report wants kids to learn long division in 5th grade and multiplication with decimals and fractions in 6th grade. Our school children are getting those things in 8th grade. Better late than never. Folks, PLEASE remember, we would have never found out about these fundamental problems without TESTS!

Infuriated parents dubbed it "fuzzy math" and launched a countermovement. The council says its earlier views had been widely misunderstood and were never intended to excuse students from learning multiplication tables and other fundamentals.

My kids never learned their multiplication tables from school. They learned them at home, once I realized, because of the state test, that there was a problem.

Furthermore, this revelation that has happened in the 7th and 8th grade may not have trickled down into the earlier grades yet. My son is told that he MUST use the lattice method for multiplication. The lattice method is USELESS except as a mental exercise. As a parent, this situation forces me to say that the school isn't always correct in what and how they teach. I really don't like to do that so early in their educational careers, but I must.

While the article talks about a Terc math program based out of MA called Investigations in Number, Data and Space, Everyday Math is also a "fuzzy math" program used in lots of other MA communities, especially the affluent communities. These affluent communities can pay for tutoring. However, a lot of the "at risk" kids have been saddled with this fuzzy math with little or no at home help from parents. The article points to one town in MA with a lot of at risk kids that does use the traditional math curriculum, Singapore Math, and the results are spectacular. Revere didn't focus on what ed schools said was best; they focused on what worked for their population. I applaud them for going against the education "groupthink" and putting the needs of the kids first.

Additional posts here:

• If your school has Everyday Math (first post on math)
• More on How to Help Kids with Math: Math Tutoring (second post)
• More on Math... Math Sense: Stage 3 Help (third post)
• More Parents Find Out About EveryDay Math (fourth post)

Now, I want to make a few things clear. First, tests should be used to improve things and not bash things -- but to improve things you need to go back to the kids who don't have the basic skills needed and do some remediation. Second, of course curriculum should have open ended questions, but these should be after they learn the basics. You shouldn't expect kids to come up with "how to multiply" on their own.

Oh, and the same thing is happening with grammar in the schools. They don't teach it. Furthermore, they teach spelling in the most helter skelter manner when there are programs like this around, Word Web Vocabulary, that is based on learning the roots of words, the "rules" that can then be extended, kind of like phonics versus sight reading, or traditional math versus "fuzzy math."

More Parents Find Out About Everyday Math

Great article about Everyday Math.

Stanford math Professor R. James Milgram although less critical, said the district is "taking a huge risk" with EM. Among whole math programs, EM is the best, he said, but teaching the program correctly would demand someone who’s majored in math at a top university.

"It just doesn’t work for typical teachers," he said.

According to Milgram, the root of the problem is that universities, which produce the nations’ teachers, generally are disconnected from professional mathematicians and scientists.

"They don’t listen to us because we’re not the ones they’re educated by," he said.

But the U.S. government is listening, because the stakes in this math war are high. The nation’s economic future hangs in the balance: the U.S. is producing less of the world’s technology and innovative products when compared to other developed countries, Milgram said. He’s part of a newly formed national board that advises Congress on such matters and supervises the Institute of Education Sciences, which provides information to the Department of Education on the effectiveness of programs and practices that improve academic achievement.

"There’s concern in Washington that we’re just not matching up," said Milgram.

As for the department calling EM "promising," Milgram said that label was withdrawn a couple of years ago.

"District after district, the outcome is abysmal," he said of math programs such as EM.

Recently, Cobasko sent Milgram a video of EM being taught in a CVUSD classroom. "From looking at the video," Milgram said, "the teachers in your district are not qualified to teach EM."

Please read the whole thing!

Here are a series of posts on math:

If your school has Everyday Math (first post on math)

More on How to Help Kids with Math: Math Tutoring (second post)

More on Math... Math Sense: Stage 3 Help (third post)

this is the fourth post

Everyday Math Exposed: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Reverses Course (fifth post)

More on Everyday Math and How to Get Help

Wow, I just came across a great resource for math help. It is called Kitchen Table Math and was started by two moms concerned about their childrens' math achievement because of the town's adoption of the Everyday Math curriculum. They have taken to using the Saxon Math curriculum at home -- a far greater personal commitment than what I am currently making with my daughter by using Aleks. Please check it out.

BTW, I'll be writing more about this, but my daughter made it into the "accelerated" math class for next year based on three things: her test score, her grades, and her teacher's recommendation. What a difference working with a traditional curriculum makes! Of course, her success will be attributed to the Everyday Math curriculum.  But helping my daughter is much more important than "proving" a curriculum is broken for a lot of kids.

For background, read this If Your School Has Everyday Math -- especially if you don't have the time to devote to the problem or the knowledge of math that the Kitchen Table moms do.

However, I plan to read Kitchen Table Math every day -- and also get my hands on those drill work sheets, including the fraction worksheets and the fraction square manipulatives that they talk about.

More on Math... Math Sense: Stage 3 Help

So far, I have covered math in the following posts:

If your school has Everyday Math (first post)

More on How to Help Kids with Math: Math Tutoring (second post)

this is the third post

More Parents Find Out About EveryDay Math (fourth post)

Everyday Math Exposed: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Reverses Course (fifth post)

I have found that, despite the claims of the Everyday Math curriculum, my daughter doesn't have a "math sense" because she isn't required to practice mental math with numbers often enough.

The resources that I describe in my Math Tutoring post require very little input from parents. The drills at funbrain will help them -- let's call this first stage help in terms of parent involvement -- but it is only one part, albeit the one part that is usually missing from school for reasons described in the post. The learning at aleks will help deepen and broaden their knowlege of math concepts and help cement those concepts -- let's call this second stage help in terms of the parental time needed in order to see an improvement.

If you don't have a lot of time to devote to math at home, the first two interventions will help if your child is struggling with math. They will also help your accelerated math student. Parental input consists of going up to the computer, reading an explanation of the concept if they have trouble with it, and walking them through it. However, neither solution necessarily makes the bridge to "math sense."  Does the answer fit the problem?

To get to this point, more parental intervention and interaction is required, or stage 3 help. I would recommend taking 5 minutes at breakfast or 5 minutes at dinner on a daily basis. The stategy that I am advocating comes from Five Easy Steps to a Balanced Math Program, and it is from the chapter: Math Review, Computational Skills, and Mental Math describing mental math and the authors explain in the excerpt:

The purpose of Mental Math is to provide students with mental practice in computing basic number facts and combining mathematical operations. The teacher dictates a string of numbers and operations that students compute mentally to determine the final answer.

For example, the teacher calls out the number string, “2 x 4 + 8 – 6 ÷ 2,” pausing briefly after each operational step, so that it sounds something like this: “Two times four…plus eight…minus six…divided by two.” At each pause, students have a chance to calculate mentally before the teacher moves on to the next step, but they don’t write anything down until the final answer. In the example above, students calculate the answer in their heads and write “5” (hopefully) in their math journals right beneath the Math Review problems of the day.

The answer is not given yet, however. The teacher repeats the same problem to allow students who might need a second chance to succeed. Those who think they know the correct answer are asked to calculate again to make sure. The teacher then asks the students to announce the solution, and the answer is verified by computing the problem aloud in increments to help those remaining students who were still unable to do it. In this way, everyone stays involved.

And, if you really want the whole kit and kaboodle, then this next step is for you. Again, from the same book, providing a math review:

An effective Math Review component to a balanced program does not come about simply by writing a different set of random arithmetic problems on the board each day. Instead, the same types of problems students see on the board on Monday reappear throughout the week. Students understand that these problems provide opportunities for practice of problems they have already been introduced to, and that they may receive additional guidance and instruction as needed from either their teacher or their peers.

Students also understand that their progress will be assessed weekly by encountering the same kinds of problems on the Friday Math Review quiz. If we want students to maximize their learning of particular math computational skills, it is necessary to avoid introducing them to new kinds of problems within the same week and to instead provide them with consistent practice of the same types of problems until they are learned.

Math Review presents a deliberate progression of mathematical concepts and computational skills that increase in difficulty throughout the school year. Problems of the same type recur week after week until the majority of the class masters them. Only then does the teacher introduce a new concept or skill, which replaces the one the students have sufficiently learned. In this way, new types of problems are cycled through Math Review as the year proceeds.

If students need to review any concepts at some point later in the year, those types of problems can again be included in Math Review. However, if students practice a particular computational skill until they thoroughly understand it, it becomes less likely that they will need to be re-taught that skill in the future. They can later revisit skills and concepts and build on prior understanding.

They give an example 5th grade math review template:

So, as a parent, you should check out their homework and try to create at least two problems that build off that homework, if you can. But the key in doing this is "correct the problem together":

The key to processing Math Review effectively is to emphasize number sense and reasonableness of answer. In other words, the goal is to help students determine whether their answer is reasonable in the context of the particular problem and if it demonstrates an understanding of our number system.

When teachers have successfully created a classroom climate where mistakes are regarded as a normal part of the learning process, it is much easier to teach their students how to do an “error analysis” when Math Review answers are incorrect. We define “error analysis” as helping students (1) identify the part of the problem done correctly and (2) pinpoint the part of the problem where they made an error.

This, clearly, is the whole package that parents can't implement fully unless they home school. (And if you do homeschool, or if you are an interested parent, I highly recommend getting this book.) However, parents can implement a part of it. (Again, some districts may be doing this. My own particular district seems to be making strides in recognizing the importance of doing mini tests now, and I'm currently getting the test back with a sheet that shows where my daughter should be according to the curriculum and where she is -- transparency is key -- but I've got a lot of years to make up.)

More on How to Help Kids with Math: Math Tutoring

OK, so your kids have Everyday Math (or another investigative learning curriculum) and your kids fall into one of the "Everyday Math doesn't help my kids" categories;

• Kids who might have a language problem but would be really good at mathematics,

• kids who need the "rules" first and then they can come to the concepts (think phonics versus whole language),
• kids who need drill in order to retain concepts,
• and kids who are mathematically gifted --

what next? What do you do?

To the teachers' credit, many teachers have figured out the deficiencies in the program since they have been teaching it a few years and try to get the children to learn their math facts. This is the case in my school district. (If your child was one of the first classes through the program, they may be deficient in this area and you may have to do some remedial work.)

However, a lot of class time may or may not be devoted to math facts simply because there or so many hours in the day or some teachers have to do it "on the sly." Some curriculum directors may prefer the program be taught in its "pure" form and therefore discourage any rote memorization or think time taken for drill is wasted.

This is where computers are extremely helpful. They can make flashcards fun!

I had my daughter go onto www.funbrain.com and use the math baseball game, which is free. She had to get so many runs. I didn't care how many outs she received, but she had to keep at it until she got 50 runs. In the beginning my daughter was tearful when she received an out. Of course I tried to tell her that making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn yada, yada, yada, but she really had a tough time with it. Contrast that with my son, he loves it. He keeps trying to get 50 runs with no outs, which he has done many times. He thrives on the challenge. (I also have him regularly do math games at the third grade level when he is in second grade. The second grade problems are too easy. Update: they now use the mathbrain games in the arcade section at funbrain. I actually have my daughter doing third grade rather than 6th grade right now because she is actually weaker in the addition and subtraction than she is in the multiplication and division. Again, she is going backwards trying to fix what she didn't get the first time with Everyday Math.)

I think that this highlights why Everyday Math was written the way it was -- if you don't care if you get the correct answer, then everyone can enjoy math because there is no real test of your knowledge. Being almost right is just as good as being right.

Now, I have some personal sympathy to this way of thinking. I always received above 90 % in the concept portion of any math exam, and then received 10 points lower in the application. I hate detail. I hate drill. I tend to think in the long-term rather than the short-term. Calculators are a wonderful tool, etc.

However, now I am (cough) older and wiser with experience in:

• occupational analysis (many years ago I worked on the Guidance Information System and helped create a product with literally thousands of occupations and the skills required to do those jobs)
• management (I teach an excellent management methodology at www.managementvitality.com)
• and just plain years of business experience (Houghton Mifflin, Ziff-Davis, ZiffNet, ZDNet, ZDU, KnowledgeSoft, FamilyEducation and now ManagementVitality),

I have come to respect the urgency of getting "the correct answer." You need someone on your team who is obsessed with getting the correct answer plus defining the many details of the project or the project, whatever that project may be, is likely to fail.

It seems to me that this curriculum was built for my daughter's short-term needs -- her potential to like math -- rather than her long-term needs -- her ability to actually do math on a consistent basis.

As a parent, my job is to balance the short-term and long-term needs of my children so they can grow up to be happy, healthy and wise (note the tag line of this site.) Therefore, it is my job to make sure that my daughter understands that it is OK to make mistakes, but she has to keep trying because that is the way you learn. Period. And sometimes learning is hard. But, to grow up to be a successful adult, she needs to be able to pull out her "I can get the right answer and be careful about details" when needed even if it isn't her natural tendency. She has to respect that it is important and be able to do it because sometimes there isn't someone else on the team and it needs to get done or the project will fail. She doesn't have to make this her career, but she needs to be competent when pressed because her chosen career may require her to understand the math to get to the information she needs.

Anyhow, so what can you do? Have them go to www.funbrain.com or another site and drill them on their math facts. (Many of the other math computer programs don't focus on these drills either because it is less fun, but the kids need them.) Make sure they work 5 to 30 minutes a day outside of their math homework.

Once their facts are up to snuff, have them work on a traditional math program in addition to their current curriculum. I have found www.aleks.com to be wonderful. There is a free 3-day trial which starts out with an assessment to help you pinpoint where they need help. It then guides the child through the concepts step by step based on what they know. What is even better is that Aleks gives two explanations for any concept so you can help your child even if you have forgotten a bunch of math. It is the best $17.90 a month I spend. Furthermore, the child has to get the problem correct at least 5 times before Aleks moves on, and Aleks continually reassesses.

I have also found some traditional math videos that are free at www.mymathtutor.com. (Right now they are free!) The instructor is first rate. My second grader tried the place values and addition videos, and he can easily understand up to the billions and firmly grasps how addition works even when you "turn it around.")

I'll talk about how to get your child motivated in a later post. And if you know of other computer programs that cover a traditional math curriculum, please let me know.

(Full disclosure, I worked for www.familyeducation.com (now part of Pearson Learning Network) at the time that FamilyEducation purchased funbrain, which is how I know about funbrain. I no longer work for them and have absolutely no financial ties to the company.)

Other posts on this topic include:

• If your school has Everyday Math (first post on math)
• this is the second post
• More on Math... Math Sense: Stage 3 Help (third post on math)
More Parents Find Out About EveryDay Math (fourth post)
Everyday Math Exposed: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Reverses Course (fifth post)

If your school has Everyday Math

If your school uses Everyday Math, you should be extremely watchful.  Everyday Math is problematic because it is a language-intensive-based program that

• stresses the use of calculators,
• wants the kids to come up with their own ways to solve the problems
• doesn't teach the traditional algorithms (the multiplication and division methods that they teach break down when using large numbers, but there is absolutely no reason to be able to compute large numbers nowadays, is there?),
• and does not advocate drill in any form.

Now, this means that some kids lose out:

• Kids who might have a language problem but would be really good at mathematics,
• kids who need the "rules" first and then they can come to the concepts (think phonics versus whole language),
• and kids who need drill in order to retain concepts.

Furthermore, if your child is mathematically gifted and is good in language, this program is just not advanced enough.

My town uses this and it is a disaster for both my kids. My daughter falls into the categories of needing the rule, then the concept and needing more drill. I am drilling my daughter in math concepts using a computer program, and she has improved dramatically. On the other hand, my son is so bored it is frightening. Particularly frightening is that I have read that it leaves out concepts that you need in order to go on to math at the highest levels. I’m doing more research on that now.

How did I find out about this and come to these conclusions? The state standardized tests; literally, thank God for the state standardized tests, the only test that allows a glimpse of what might be happening within the schools before it is too late. My daughter received a “needs improvement” on her 4th grade math scores.  Meanwhile, her math grades were all fine -- nothing that showed she should have received a needs improvement.

Of course, on receiving the score, I immediately contacted the school and asked for a copy of the test and her answers, which I received. I had her take the test in my kitchen to make sure that the results were valid. They were. Only one question off. I asked for a teacher conference, which I received. Her teacher didn’t seem concerned and said that she wasn’t a candidate for remedial math, and I can see why. My daughter gets concepts pretty quickly, but if she doesn’t drill to retain them, then they aren’t retained.

Furthermore, I found out at a school committee meeting that my daughter’s elementary school didn’t implement the curriculum correctly in comparison to the other schools in town. Everyday Math is based on a spiral – keep teaching the same concept in small doses each year. If you don’t get it that year, you will get it the next. Well, the teachers at my daughter’s school slowed down the curriculum so most children got it the first time. They didn’t go ahead as fast as they should have. As a result, they didn’t finish the program each year, and my daughter never was exposed to some key concepts at all. (This has since been fixed, but the parents who didn't listen to that school committee meeting were not informed.)

Fast forward to the end of 5th grade. It turns out that they give a pretest and a posttest for the curriculum. In other words, they give the final at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year to track the learning. My daughter received a 25 at the beginning of her 5th grade year in math, but she only received a 69 at the end of the year. Obviously, one year didn’t make up for what she was missing.

Clearly, intervention was needed. In the summer at the end of 5th grade, I had her try the Aleks computer program in math, www.aleks.com. The Charter School in my town uses it, and I decided to try it for my own daughter. A tutor would have been expensive and less than optimal in this situation because my daughter does get concepts, she just needs more drill (how can most kids hone their number sense if they aren’t ever asked to multiply and divide numbers continuously), and she needs algorithms that have fewer steps so there is less possibility of error (everything that Everyday Math does not provide.)

According to Aleks, my daughter only knew 21% of a traditional 5th grade curriculum – and this was at the end of 5th grade. Talk about having a heart attack! This was soon remedied. My daughter is now in the 6th grade and she has completed the 5th and 6th grade curriculum according to Aleks. I’m looking forward to the tests at the end of the year to see if my intervention worked.

All of the things that apply to my daughter don’t apply to my son. He gets everything the first time, including figuring out the multiplication tables, etc. He doesn’t need drill. He just needs to spend more than 60 seconds doing his math homework – something that is a bit more challenging. He isn’t going to get it from this program or the town’s teaching methods. When teaching reading there is more sophistication in the teaching methods, kids are broken out by ability and then brought back together. In math, every kid is the same. And every kid SHOULD learn math the same way; it doesn’t matter what their learning style is or what their strengths are – it doesn’t matter what IS.

So, bottom line? Kids in upper income communities will probably do OK despite the Everyday Math curriculum. Why? Because there are parents like me to pick up the pieces. If it isn’t Aleks, then it is high-priced tutors or mom or dad working with the kids each night. If there are concepts that are missing that are needed to become a mathematician, we’ll find out what they are and make sure they learn them.

Where Everyday Math will do real damage is in the communities who don’t have the knowledge or the resources to overcome the shortcomings.

And, sadly, who really gets shortchanged here? The kid who might be mathematically gifted but who has a language disability. All kids should have the opportunity to be good at something; these kids can’t even have that.

To find out what it could do if parents don't pay attention, read this: How Not to Teach Math, New York's chancellor Klein's plan doesn't compute, by Matthew Clavel (City Journal, Mar 7, 2003).

To find out what concepts are missing, read this: Review of the Everyday Mathematics Curriculum and its Missing Topics and Skills, by Tsewei Wang (April 9, 2001).

And for lots more criticism, go to this page: Reviews of UCSMP Everyday Mathematics.

Update: And for lots of contrarian views, read the comment section.

Update:

BTW, I'll be writing more about this, but my daughter made it into the "accelerated" math class for next year based on three things: her test score, her grades, and her teacher's recommendation. What a difference working with a traditional curriculum makes! Of course, her success will be attributed to the Everyday Math curriculum. But helping my daughter is much more important than "proving" a curriculum is broken for a lot of kids. And more math help here.

Additional posts here:

• More on How to Help Kids with Math: Math Tutoring (second post)
• More on Math... Math Sense: Stage 3 Help (third post)
• More Parents Find Out About EveryDay Math (fourth post)
• Everyday Math Exposed: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Reverses Course (fifth post)