Un-Math Night

We went to Math Night at the school last night. It was the school's way of trying to teach the parent's the "Everyday Math" support curriculum through games. As a non-fan of the Everyday Math curriculum, my attendance was to support my daughter. At home we are (or will be) teaching standard math, that well-worn program we all grew up with: long division, addition and subtraction tables, etc. So I take all their "pitches" with an in-one-ear-and-out-the-other approach...

When my daughter's teacher said they were teaching Kindergarteners and elementary school kids to use calculators last Monday, I inquired more deeply. Why in the world would anyone teach a child to use a calculator to do the work of her brain? The answer I got assuaged my fears temporarily (I decided to take a "let me see exactly what you're doing" approach). The teacher told me that I could be present for the 2 calculator lessons and that I would be told when those lessons were. Pooh came home Monday and said they'd had a lesson in calculators that day... I had not been told that the lesson
would be on Monday, as I was told I would be. Note: I had also been told that the lesson would be nothing more than further work learning numbers; not really a matter of doing their math work on a calculator (e.g., adding on it). Again, my daughter told me that they spent the lesson doing all their addition and subtraction problems on a calculator. After going through the roof, I decided I'm going to have to approach the matter more directly. I had also been told the curriculum had been adopted district wide for "consistency", yet just found out a school at the north end of town uses a standard math curriculum (Saxon), and not surprisingly, very successfully. That school has seen a nice rise in test scores among its students over the scores of the previous modern math taught students. This, too, requires more investigation: why can this school do something outside the district's policy?

Alas, the best part of last night's math night was that Pooh was too sick with her cold to concentrate or finish the math games. We left after the first round. She didn't want to, but her little eyes were so droopy and her breathing so drippy and stuffy. We came home, did some math tables (ha!) and went to bed.

It continues to blow my mind that administrative educators can tell us that standard math left too many children behind so they have to use the new math curricula, when the proof of failing test scores shows the new curricula are leaving ALL children behind. And when they say that standard math didn't teach us mathematical thinking, I look in the mirror and ask, "well, you who took umpteen higher and advanced math, science, and logic classes and did well in them, how in the world did you do it with all that standard math not teaching you to think?" PLEASE! Didn't it every occur to these administrators that perhaps it wasn't the curriculum but the approach to teaching it that left some kids behind? Maybe there was prejudice, economic disparity, cultural differences, and other factors that led to the disparity? Are the children of those children who didn't understand standard math being helped any more by the new curricula? Are these issues too touchy, incomprehensible, difficult, or improbable to remedy? And will math reform or any true education reform every come about without these (and their partner issues) being dealt with?

And perhaps someone will tell me why it matters more that our districts curriculum supervisor be able to walk into any school in Seattle and see the same lesson being taught on the same day (her words) than that the teachers be able to teach the students in front of them the way she or he sees those children need to be taught so that they can learn?

Aaaaa. It makes me crazy.