"Too Little Math in Math?"

Lynn Thompson:

But they strongly believe that their math textbooks should include actual math.

Donald's "Connected Mathematics" book at Harbour Pointe Middle School in Mukilteo asks him to arrange a list of 20 cities in order of their populations, all in the tens of millions.

Yes, he concedes, he must recognize differences among numbers, but it's a pretty low-level task for a bright sixth-grader, about as challenging as alphabetizing words.

But check out the next activity: Locate the cities on a map.

"That's not math," Donald protests. "That's geography."

The Chacon-Taylor children and their parents, Hugh Taylor and Monique Chacon-Taylor, are among Snohomish County families raising questions about the effectiveness of widely used math textbooks that encourage discovery and writing about math, but de-emphasize basics such as multiplication and long division.

They've joined other Washington parents in an organization called Where's the Math? that's calling on the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to rewrite its K-12 math standards, select more effective textbooks and re-examine the math content of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL)

The calls for rethinking the state's math education come amid signs that the present system is failing large numbers of students. Just 51 percent of 10th-graders and 59 percent of fourth-graders passed the math section of the WASL in the spring. About 29,000 juniors haven't passed the WASL math test, which they must do to graduate in spring 2008..

The Madison School District uses Connected Math in middle school. Many links and notes on math, including the recent Math Forum audio/video.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 17, 2006 4:23 PM
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