What do you like about the way math is taught at your school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why use bad curricula that you have to modify or tweak?

Every curriculum can benefit from tweaking. More important, we will never all agree on what constitutes a good curriculum, but there may be non-curricular best practices that can be applied in any school.

Some are being tweaked too much.

[Anonymous]

agree that too much tweeking can be harmful pp ... something like "too many cooks spoil the broth"...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, my child's school uses the Houghton Mifflin Math curriculum, which seems OK. His previous school used Saxon Math. Saxon was adequate, but the pace moved very slowly. I think it can be a good curriculum if the teachers divide the kids into ability groups, and let the ones who can work faster move at a more rapid pace. My son found the pace to be excruciatingly slow.

The best curriculum I have seen and one I would like my son's school to use, is called Singapore Math.

Here is a detailed review of many math curricula.

http://mathematicallycorrect.com/books.htm

The above chart is old. There have been some much better, newer curicula that have come along that were not evaluated back then, including Singapore Math.

Yeah, I noticed that. Have you seen any reviews that compare the newer curricula in a similar way? I'd like to see it.

[Anonymous]

See nrich.maths.org/public/ and artofproblemsolving.com, for challenging problems with good explanations, and http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vLibrary.html for "virtual manipulatives."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, my child's school uses the Houghton Mifflin Math curriculum, which seems OK. His previous school used Saxon Math. Saxon was adequate, but the pace moved very slowly. I think it can be a good curriculum if the teachers divide the kids into ability groups, and let the ones who can work faster move at a more rapid pace. My son found the pace to be excruciatingly slow.

The best curriculum I have seen and one I would like my son's school to use, is called Singapore Math.

Here is a detailed review of many math curricula.

http://mathematicallycorrect.com/books.htm

The above chart is old. There have been some much better, newer curicula that have come along that were not evaluated back then, including Singapore Math.

Yeah, I noticed that. Have you seen any reviews that compare the newer curricula in a similar way? I'd like to see it.

No, sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you seen any reviews that compare the newer curricula in a similar way?

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/elementary_math/topic/

[Anonymous]

And here for middle school math:
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/middle_math/topic/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have you seen any reviews that compare the newer curricula in a similar way?

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/elementary_math/topic/

This conclusion was based on a comparison with a VERY poor curriculum. One worse than EDM (if you can believe that there is something worse).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have you seen any reviews that compare the newer curricula in a similar way?

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/elementary_math/topic/

This conclusion was based on a comparison with a VERY poor curriculum. One worse than EDM (if you can believe that there is something worse).

Where did you read that? What curriculum do you think it was compared with? As I read the Dept of Ed materials, the positive rating for EDM is based on four different studies that looked at 171 different schools and over 12,000 students. That seems pretty persuasive to me. It appears the Houghton Mifflin curriculum (mentioned by some PPs as used in FCPS) also gets high marks, based on two studies. Three other curricula (Saxon, Scott-Foresman, and Progress in Mathematics) show little benefit, based on one credible study for each. Here is support for these statements: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/ESM_APP_07_16_07.pdf.

Please educate me on why you think the studies cited by Dept of Ed are invalid. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

PP here. I just looked further at the Dept of Ed materials and found the descriptions of the various studies. Here is a link: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/elementary_math/eday_math/appendix.asp . It appears the EDM curriculum was compared to a pretty wide variety of traditional math curricula, including Addison-Wesley, Houghton-Mifflin, and Scott Foresman. Once again, seems pretty persuasive to me.

[Anonymous]

http://www.illinoisloop.org/archive/emproof.html

[Anonymous]

I don't have data on this, but we did tour St. Patrick's recently, where we learned that they recently eliminated Chicago Math (i.e., EDM) in favor of Investigations. I am not familiar with Investigations at all, but personally find EDM very frustrating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't have data on this, but we did tour St. Patrick's recently, where we learned that they recently eliminated Chicago Math (i.e., EDM) in favor of Investigations. I am not familiar with Investigations at all, but personally find EDM very frustrating.

Investigations is bad too. Not as bad, but bad.
They probably just eliminated EDM so they could say so on the tour and impress everyone.
You should find out who is in charge of these decisions. I am starting to wonder about the proficiency of the people running these schools that we are spending so much on.
Either the Investigations guys gave them a nice lunch, or they are dumb.

[Anonymous]

http://www.wgquirk.com/TERC.html

http://mathunderground.blogspot.com/2008/10/tercinvestigations-invades-frederick.html

I feel sorry for those at St. Patrick's. If the school recently adopted Investigations, chances you are stuck with it for some time.

[SAM2]

I'm not a participant in the "math wars," but something I've never understood is why each side feels the need to insist that it's preferred curriculum is strong and all other curricula are absolutely terrible. My suspicion would be that each of the various modern curricula has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. None will be perfect, but most will be pretty good. The real determinative factors will be whether a particular teacher is adept at teaching the chosen curriculum and whether particular students happen to do well with that curriculum. Some teachers and some students will do better with some curricula than with others.

Why does everyone seem to adopt the "my way and no other" attitude? Is that just a function of human nature? Or is there some reason people are especially passionate about math curricula?