Teachers Wary of New State Math Standards

Ventura County educators expressed concern Monday over the state’s movement toward new math standards that emphasize traditional drills and rote memorization, saying that the guidelines aren’t rigorous enough and won’t help prepare students for higher levels of learning.

The proposed standards, endorsed Monday by the State Board of Education, would represent a fundamental shift in math education, one aimed at replacing calculators with old-fashioned computation while underscoring such basics as multiplication and long division.

But some educators said the proposed “back-to-basics” approach fails to prepare students for real-world applications of math concepts. Moreover, they said the new guidelines don’t go nearly far enough in priming students for the study of subjects beyond arithmetic, such as algebra and geometry.

“Students need to be able to think deeply about math, and that means being able to do more than add, subtract, multiply and divide,” county schools Supt. Charles Weis said.

“When I talk to people who use math every day in life, they know those basics are important,” Weis added. “But if we dwell on them and only teach them, our kids will be getting a second-class mathematics education.”

School districts won’t be required to abide by the new standards, proposed for kindergarten through the seventh grade.

But the guidelines will be influential because they will help shape new textbooks and the development of a new state test to monitor students’ progress in key subjects.

Advocates of the revised standards said the new approach does not ignore the need for students to understand mathematical concepts, but sets out a very clear measure for what they need to learn and when they need to learn it.

“These traditional forms of academics are traditional because they work,” said Simi Valley parent activist Coleen Ary, who belongs to a statewide group that lobbied for the more traditional approach.

“What we’re saying is here’s the point [where] we want kids to learn these concepts and here’s the process we want them to be able to use to demonstrate they know them,” Ary said. “Math is the most exact science of all the sciences out there, and the standards should reflect that.”

If approved, the revised standards would call for future generations of students to memorize the multiplication tables in third grade. They also would have to show that they know concepts such as borrowing and carrying while adding and subtracting, and in the fourth grade would begin mastering long division.

By the fifth grade, calculators would no longer be an acceptable way to solve math problems, and by the seventh grade, students would be required to find square roots without electronic help.

Educators say it’s too early to tell what practical effect the new guidelines would have locally. Many school districts--including Conejo Valley, Oxnard and Ventura--have recently adopted new math programs, and educators there will have to see how they match up against the new standards.

“Many of us have adopted materials already and have them in our classrooms,” said Richard Duarte, assistant superintendent of the Oxnard Elementary School District. “There’s nothing wrong with them [the proposed standards] if your objective is that kids be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide. But shouldn’t our objective also be to prepare them for the future and get them into advanced math?”

Patricia Chandler, assistant superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District, said the proposed standards could make students adept at only one part of mathematics crunching.

“Basic skills, as defined by standards that mean computation, are absolutely essential, but they are simply not sufficient,” she said. “There’s more to basic skills than just computation. What we don’t want to see happen is the watering down of good mathematics programs.”

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