In “Schools to Retain Controversial Math Curriculum” Michael Birmbaum reported that a local education agency has elected to continue teaching arithmetic using a curriculum that has minimal evidence of effectiveness. Mr. Birmbaum, who works for the Washington (DC, US) Post, wrote about the decision by the school system of a county that is in neighboring northern Virginia (it’s, in fact, where I attended first through third grades).
Prince William County elementary schools will continue to teach mathematics with a textbook series that has drawn parent criticism and national scrutiny, despite deep divisions in the community over whether students should be given other options.
The curriculum from Pearson Education, “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space,” which is used in thousands of classrooms nationwide, has been debated virtually since Prince William began using it three years ago under the administration of Superintendent Steven L. Walts. Critics say it fails to help students learn basic skills and facts.
As Mr. Birmbaum reported, the tension is between people who support direct, explicit teaching of computation skills and those who advocate development of problem solving and abstract concepts of mathematics. There is preliminary evidence that Investigations is less effective than at least two other curricula (Math Expressions or Saxon Math). The accompanying figure from the SRI evaluation shows relative achievement of students taught by four curricula. Note that there is no overlap between the bar showing the distribution of scores for Investigations and either Math Expressions or Saxon Math, the two more effective curricula.
Investigations has been the subject of substantial criticism by the community of people concerned about adoption of the discovery-oriented, child-centered, computation-minimizing approaches to teaching arithmetic. One can learn about those objections from many sources—among the critiques is one from the folks at Where’s the Math. Many are summarized at NYCHold’s “Reviews of TERC: Investigations in Number, Data, and Space.”
Robert G. Barlow, who objected to using Investigations, established a Web site replete with a petition that garnered endorsement by at least 1500 people. The LEA’s decision to continue keep the curriculum serves as a response to one of the requests by the petitioners: “Remove “Investigations” as the core PWCS elementary math program no later than the start of the 2008-2009 school year.”
Prince William schools are not the only LEA facing questions about whether to sweep Investigations out of schools. For another view from 2004, see “Mathematical unknowns” from the Boston (MA, US) Globe.
Link to Mr. Birmbaum’s story. For more on lots of these types of issues, keep up with Kitchen Table Math
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