Math Achievement and Teaching Reforms

Re “Sacramento Math Wars: Basics vs Reformists,” editorial, March 9: Being a liberal Democrat, I wish I could agree with you that Delaine Eastin, the Democrat, is supporting a balanced approach, while the Republican, Janet Nicholas, only wants “a greater emphasis on basic math instruction.” This is simply not true. Nicholas included mathematicians and scientists on the mathematics framework committee who recognize the need for balance, while Eastin wanted to exclude the moderates and retain the reform extremists.

As a professor of mathematics, I make my living on the so-called “higher order thinking skills” in mathematics, and I strongly support their inclusion in K-12 pedagogy. Unfortunately, it is impossible to learn these advanced skills without complete and absolute mastery of the basics. The current reform advocates are wildly out of balance.

Take for example “MathLand,” a widely used pedagogy for the elementary school grades that has been strongly endorsed by the education bureaucracy that Eastin leads. There are no textbooks for MathLand, but the teacher’s manual instructs teachers not to teach the standard methods of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It says, “Most students can be taught standard algorithms for the four operations, but committing sets of teacher-imposed rules to memory often makes arithmetic a rote process which these students neither enjoy nor excel at.” The manual supports “invented algorithms” instead, much like whole-language learning supported “invented spelling.”

Shortchanging arithmetic and the basic principles of algebra, as many of the reform advocates do, is a prescription for disaster.

DAVID KLEIN, Professor of Mathematics, Cal State Northridge

*

Your editorial regarding the National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics test scores failed to recognize that California did not go down, the rest of the nation went up. The reason that they did is that 38 states have developed standards based on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards, as is California’s framework, but those states have implemented their standards. We have not.

So you can blame low test scores on the same old basics taught in the same old way. In California we have politicians, parents and newspapers that yearn for the good old days, old days that their children will never see. They will live in the 21st century, which will require a different mathematics taught in a way that all children can learn. Teachers in this state are doing their best to teach all the children but they get no help from a Legislature or a populace that always places education on the bottom of any priority list.

JACK PRICE, Newport Beach