Group to Rewrite Math Guidelines

Re “Appointments Seen as Blow to Math Reforms,” Nov. 10:

New reforms in the mathematics classroom focus on group work, manipulatives and extended reinforcement of concepts to replace memorization. As a teacher of both traditional algebra and the new College Prep Math algebra, I offer the following critique.

First, my students from Whitney High, Sunny Hills High and similar quality K-12 programs have absolutely no need for a new style of math. These students enter the ninth grade with an impressive set of math skills.

Second, the idea of introducing manipulatives, visual devices such as blocks, computers and other tools, is quite innovative, making math more interesting to learn, but schools seem unwilling to spend money for sufficient quantities of manipulatives. Teachers are left to expend their own resources for these devices. (Last year, I spent $3,000 of my own money for manipulatives.)

Finally, the added reinforcement (repetition) of the new CPM math effectively improves the learning process for slow, poorly motivated students. Parents of previously straight-F math students are ecstatic over the fact that their son or daughter can now achieve success.

CHARLES A. SENDREY

Huntington Beach

* Richard Lee Colvin’s article was like deja vu with issues like school vouchers and the whole-language approach to reading. Both the “basics” crowd and the “reform” crowd get much fanfare, yet the silent majority of parents and teachers like Martha Schwartz get a couple of lines on the back pages. “I’d like to put the basics back in and build to a higher level. I have no problem with new and innovative ways to understand the math, but you have to practice it.”

What Schwartz wants is more. What the majority of students want is less--less homework, and more television. Regardless of the methods used, both innovative and traditional methods work when parents stop accepting their children’s lies of “I have no homework,” and when teachers assign more homework, not less. Learning takes time and repetition, period. But when was the last time you heard a politician or their appointees talk about that?

BOB BATH

Mission Viejo