Everyday Math (Again)

[Anonymous]

The first edition of Everyday Math didn't come out until 1998.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The first edition of Everyday Math didn't come out until 1998.

I am sorry, "reform math" (EDM like) started in 1975, took root in 1980.

[Anonymous]

Teaching Math in the 1950s (Traditional): A logger sells a load for $100. His production cost is 4/5 of the price. How much is his profit?

Teaching Math in the 1970s (New Math): A logger trades a set “L” (of lumber) for a set “M” (of money). The cardinality of set “M” is 100. The cardinality of subset “C” (his cost) is 20 less than “M”. What is the cardinality of set “P” (his profit)?

Teaching Math in the 1990s (Reform): A logger sells a load for $100. Her production is $80 and her profit is $20. Your assignment: underline the number 20.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The first edition of Everyday Math didn't come out until 1998.

I am sorry, "reform math" (EDM like) started in 1975, took root in 1980.

From Wikipedia: "Reform mathematics is one name for mathematics instruction based on recommendations originally published in 1989 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) .... The recommendations were adopted by many education agencies, from local to federal levels through the 1990s." If you have proof that's not correct, please post it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fields Medals:
US 11 pop 304M
UK 7 pop 60M
France 9 pop 61M
We aren't that good in math, we won none in 2006.

I think your logic is flawed. You seem to be totaling up all the Fields Medal winners from 1936-2006, and then dividing that total by population, to suggest that the US has a low share of winners (and thus imply that current approaches to math education are misguided). I don't see how medals won in 1936 have anything to do with this discussion at all. (And since you took the time to count medal winners, you clearly knew when they were won.) Other significant, but less glaring, flaws are that you don't look at changing population numbers over time, and you don't explain how this tiny sample size is indicative of anything. Perhaps if you had a more thorough grounding in mathematical concepts (like an EDM curriculum would provide), you could have avoided these errors in reasoning.

[Anonymous]

6:11 here. I want to apologize for my sarcastic post. I got very frustrated when I realized you were using data about Fields Medal winners from 1936 to criticize a math approach adopted in the 1990s. But after a few minutes, I recognized that responding with sarcasm and a sneer doesn't advance this discussion or help anyone.

Look, I get that you don't like EDM, and that's your right. But if you want to convince me of anything, you need to make a persuasive argument. Making overblown statements like "EDM is terrible" or "Any child following EDM will be five grades behind" does not persuade me of anything that helps you. I can think of three approaches that would move me:
(1) Link to some valid statistics, studies, and research.
(2) Quote the anti-EDM views of some highly respected educational guru.
(3) Tell me a compelling story about how your son couldn't do basic math because the EDM curriculum was failing him, but his sister learning under a traditional curriculum was doing fine.

Again, I apologize for my earlier sarcasm. I'm sure there's some good reason behind your anti-EDM views -- I hope you'll share it with us.

[Anonymous]

Dear pp who would like proof (are you a lawyer?).
The fact is that the US has never had a good math culture, and it is not getting better. That said, maybe we don't need one, we can get others to do that for us. We make money pushing paper, let's be real. We all know that any contract writer can out-do those Medal winners in income hands down.

But here is an interesting article to read. It is long, but well written:

A Coherent Curriculum. The Case of Mathematics.
Schmidt, Houang, Cogan

BTW, EDM is trying to get international tests rewritten so US students do better. I guess it is a culture bias.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But here is an interesting article to read. It is long, but well written:

A Coherent Curriculum. The Case of Mathematics.
Schmidt, Houang, Cogan

BTW, EDM is trying to get international tests rewritten so US students do better. I guess it is a culture bias.

Thanks for providing some support -- do you have a link for either the article or the claim? I'd love to learn more.

[Anonymous]

I found a copy online at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/summer2002/curriculum.pdf

It's based on a study conducted in 1995 (before the Everyday Math curriculum was even published) and it's a critique of the US educational system for being a mile wide and an inch deep as well as for having a patchwork of different state and local standards/textbook adoptions rather than a uniform national curriculum. It also mentions repetition and disagreement about sequencing.

While, arguably, some of the rhetoric could be applied to EDM, it's clearly pre-reform math curricula they've actually studied. (Also, it's middle school that they flag as the point at which the US math curricula are most problematic and, of course, EDM is an elementary school program).

[Anonymous]

Hmm, I think we've all just enacted the different approaches. Some people "know what they know" and others keep asking "why?" and "how do you know that?"

EDM forces everyone to answer the latter kind of questions and people in the former camp just think "Who cares? That's a waste of time as long as I've got the right answer." In cases where there is an acknowledged right answer (e.g. number facts) that might work, but in cases where answers are less clear, reasoning ability matters as does having a sense of what numbers can and can't tell you and why.

[Anonymous]

And here's a link to more recent results from the same long-term study: http://nces.ed.gov/timss/results07_math07.asp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hmm, I think we've all just enacted the different approaches. Some people "know what they know" and others keep asking "why?" and "how do you know that?"

EDM forces everyone to answer the latter kind of questions and people in the former camp just think "Who cares? That's a waste of time as long as I've got the right answer." In cases where there is an acknowledged right answer (e.g. number facts) that might work, but in cases where answers are less clear, reasoning ability matters as does having a sense of what numbers can and can't tell you and why.

Good observation. Along similar lines, I was realizing that "reform math" is really just the broader principles of progressive education applied to math. I'd be curious to see whether those that support progressive education in general also support EDM and reform math, and vice versa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Teaching Math in the 1950s (Traditional): A logger sells a load for $100. His production cost is 4/5 of the price. How much is his profit?

Teaching Math in the 1970s (New Math): A logger trades a set “L” (of lumber) for a set “M” (of money). The cardinality of set “M” is 100. The cardinality of subset “C” (his cost) is 20 less than “M”. What is the cardinality of set “P” (his profit)?

Teaching Math in the 1990s (Reform): A logger sells a load for $100. Her production is $80 and her profit is $20. Your assignment: underline the number 20.

Actually, the EDM version would be something like here's a spreadsheet showing productions costs and revenues from 5 logging operations. Compute what percentage of revenue was profit for each firm. Then find the mean profit for the industry as a whole. Can you tell from the data set whether larger logging operations were more or less profitable than smaller one? If not, why not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And here's a link to more recent results from the same long-term study: http://nces.ed.gov/timss/results07_math07.asp

Thanks for the link! Data is interesting, particularly these two points:
The average mathematics achievement of U.S. fourth-graders in 2007 was 11 score points higher than the average score in 1995 (529 v. 518) (table 2).
The average mathematics achievement of U.S. eighth-graders in 2007 was 16 score points higher than the average score in 1995 (508 v. 492) (table 2).

Part of me wonders if the improvement could be linked to the increased teaching of reform math approaches in the years between 1995 and 2007. However, there's no way to tell what curriculum these students were using. I also have no idea what percentage of students nationwide use reform math approaches. Also, although this data clear shows an improvement in both groups, I'm not sure if it's enough to be a statistically significant improvement or just a data blip.

[Anonymous]

I had the same reaction/qualms, LOL! I'm guessing blip at least wrt 8th graders. Also, while scores went up for the US, it wasn't clear that the US ranking did. (I'm guessing it didn't because otherwise I think they'd be touting that!)

In the end, my take was we probably weren't seeing any EDM effect, at least wrt the 8th graders, who are highly unlikely to have had EDM throughout elementary school.

Re statistical significance of improvement -- I wondered what happened in GB over that period -- their improvement was really striking.

I also started to wonder about the previously cited study and its reliance on curricula to explain differences. I'd be curious to see how much hours of instruction per year correlates with test scores.