School Information System: On Math Reform

March 16, 2007

On Math Reform

If one could make a case against the perpetrators of reform math—complete with arrests and jail time—showing that such programs are a form of child abuse, the math wars would cease in a matter of days. As it is, however, reasoned arguments from those who oppose the reform programs haven’t seemed to carry much weight, as the programs seem to proliferate in school after school across the U.S. And in a recent Education Week column, Mr. T.C. O’Brien seems quite content to skewer those who criticize the reform programs, resorting at times to borderline name-calling, and laying blame in large part on mathematicians. It seems that mathematicians’ call for math to be in math textbooks and that such math be is an artifact of purism and backwards thinking.

Ordinarily I would ignore such a diatribe. But I believe there have been too few rebuttals to this type of editorial which Education Week seems only too happy to publish. Take for example this statement: “The National Mathematics Advisory Panel, established by the Bush administration in April of last year, has been meeting to discuss the improvement of achievement in mathematics in the schools. A good portion of its members have no experience in mathematics, no experience teaching children, or both.”