Sound Politics: Help On Math Education From President Bush?

May 17, 2006

Help On Math Education From President Bush?

Maybe. He has taken the first step.

The Bush administration has named a former president of the University of Texas at Austin to lead a national panel to weigh in on the math wars playing out across the country. The politically fraught battle pits a more free-form approach to teaching math against the traditional method that emphasizes rules and formulas to solve number problems.

The former president, Larry R. Faulkner, who led the university from 1998 until early this year, will be chairman of the National Math Panel, which President Bush created by executive order in mid-April.

The panel is modeled on the National Reading Panel, which has been highly influential in promoting phonics and a back-to-basics approach to reading in classrooms around the nation.

The New York Times article is not as clear as it might be on the "free-form" approach, better known in education circles as "constructivist" mathematics. You can find a better explanation here and here.

This should please our friends at Where's the Math? But I suspect that, in their next breath, they would tell us that we don't need to wait for this panel — and they would be right.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

Posted by Jim Miller at May 17, 2006 11:03 AM | Email This

Comments

1. I found the comment interesting that mathematicians are on one side (structured) and educators are on the other.

I am confused on whom to believe - mathematicians who do it it and are experts in the field, or government curriculum that emphasizes having culturally sensitive books and, now, defining the orientation of the people. Hard choice!

Posted by: Fred on May 17, 2006 11:17 AM

2. What I think is happening is that society is making job opportunities for home-schooled kids. When employers realize that the people coming out of public schools can barely add or subtract, they'll look for people who can.

As a supporter of home-schooling I want to thank these people for further devaluing public education so that private education can take it's rightful place in society.

Posted by: Republican (by default) on May 17, 2006 12:35 PM

3. My sister told me on Mothers' Day that is was all Bush' fault. She says the long schools years- Labor Day till the end of June is the need for all these teacher worthless meetings that he mandated as part of the NoChildLeftBehind program.

I doubt she has her facts right, but I was so flabbergasted that the swatter didn't have a comeback since I didn't know Bush was the fault of longer school years, too.

Posted by: swatter on May 17, 2006 01:09 PM

4. Did "No child left behind" require more teachers' meetings? I thought it just set a standard for the education of the kids.

Posted by: Fred on May 17, 2006 01:14 PM

5. No Child Left Behind said schools had to prove that their students met a set of minimum competencies in order to continue to receive federal funding.

The stupid part of this is, all states are allowed to create their own evaluation tools (here, it's the WASL). I would be more in favor of seeing one national standard (perhaps based on the SAT which is already taken by students nationally and used by universities for screening applicants, and which has an established history). If testing is needed at elementary grades, why not continue to use the ITBS, as has been done for decades. Just pick a minimum score that reflects satisfactory progress, and hold your ground. Since there is not a written portion to the ITBS, a brief essay assignment (with concise federal guidelines for scoring) could accompany the ITBS. I don't know why it has to be so damned hard.

Posted by: Peggy U on May 17, 2006 02:05 PM

6. Thanks for the update. I figured she was blowing NEA and WEA smoke. This is same family member who has a six digit salary (benefits included in number) and complains about the low teacher salaries.

And, I've noticed my fifth grader who is theoretically doing good at math is having difficulty when I ask her what 8 + 6 is. This year, unlike previous years, her problem is me putting the pressure on as an example of our educational system. She passes my interpretation with flying colors- i.e. the system sucks.

Posted by: swatter on May 17, 2006 03:40 PM

7. NCLB or Bush had anything to do with the current math pedagogy's being perpetrated on our children. This new way of teaching math is based on discovery; students must discover algorithms on their own. Teachers are not encouraged to "teach", rather "facilitate". Drilling students in computation is frowned upon and not used either. This change in math approaches started in the early 1990's...long before Bush became president. Our state started adopting the curriculums around 1996...long before Bush became president. California revolted against this math and in 1998 the legislature was forced by the backlash from parents and professors to remove this math from their recommended and approved curriculums...long before Bush became president.

Bush is aware of the reform math and he doesn't like it. The administration can't just snap their fingers and ban it but they are trying to implement a committee to encourage change and move away from all the fuzzy programs. We are encouraged he has created this panel but we are not optomistic it will change things. The forces behind this math are too powerful and the funding is too great.

The only way to remove this math is a backlash from the public. Once Bush gets involved this will be reduced to a partisan issue. If we don't demand change, our country will suffer. Wake up and Get involved!
www.wheresthemath.com

Posted by: Shalimar on May 17, 2006 04:01 PM

8. I just love how educators and uniformed parents blame Bush for all the problems in Ted Kennedy's legislation.

I blame him, too. For signing it.

Posted by: jimg on May 17, 2006 04:24 PM

9. In my experience, it is more than No Child Left Behind. I have been living in a No Child Allowed to Move Ahead environment. This is a very frustrating situation, and I ended up home schooling as a result of it.

I wish I could say that mine is an isolated case of disenchantment. It's not. I have met many people (a surprisingly large number) who homeschool for that particular reason - no provisions made for accelerated students (not even accomodations that cost nothing, such as grade promotion or allowing children to work ahead). All of the focus has shifted to making sure the lowest performing students meet the minimum requirements so that schools can hang on to their precious Fed subsidies.

Essentially, the top students are left to drift. To make matters worse, they are sometimes treated with resentment by teachers and administrators. It is very discouraging.

Posted by: Peggy U on May 17, 2006 05:38 PM

10. There is no authorization in the Constitution for the Federal Government to regulate education. The 10th Amendment says if it ain't specifically authorized by the Constitution, it's left to the states or to the people. Anyone who voted for NCLB violated his oath of office, including Bush, when he signed it.

Don't we want to get education out of the hands of the Feds? Don't we want to put it back in the hands of parents? NCLB is a huge step in the wrong direction: the direction of nationalizing education.

But heck, I guess it worked for the Soviet Union...

The further away from the City and County and private level it gets, the more "one-size-fits-all" and bureaucratic and hide-bound it gets. We want flexible programs that reflect local, even individual needs, not big government socialized programs. We want our creative, enthusiastic and passionate teachers to be freed from all this red tape so they can teach.

I thought Republicans were supposed to favor states rights and limited government?

I guess it's just we Libertarians who favor that now.

Let's hear it for homeschooling and private schools!

Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on May 17, 2006 09:19 PM

11. Bruce, you're right. We need to get control back at the local level. But, in the meantime, place blame where blame belongs. Bush had nothing to do with this reformed math, neither did NCLB. Yes, I agree, NCLB has contributed to it in a way. NCLB requires states to improve on their test scores year after year. NCLB allows the states to determine what the standards are and what the test will be. The WASL is a home-grown assessment that is only used in Washington State. No other state has a test quite like it, nor is the WASL modeled under any set of federal guidlines. NCLB gives most of the powers to the states by allowing them to choose their own standards and their own assessments.
If we had good state standards, based on proven math curriculum, and a better assessment that tested traditional math curriculum, and our students showed adequate yearly progress, NCLB would accept it.

Posted by: Shalimar on May 18, 2006 06:44 AM

12. I still don't understand how my generation (generally stated) is better at math than the current generation when we went to school Labor Day to Memorial Day as compared to today's Labor Day to the end of June.

Contrary to my sister's assertion, I think it is the WEA and NEA kowtowing to some educators that like to ski and take several vacations during the school year.

Posted by: swatter on May 18, 2006 07:13 AM

13. My sister turned to homeschooling 25 years ago when they said her firstborn, with Down Syndrome, would never be capable of reading or writing. She does both remarkably well.

My sister continued homeschooling her younger children. Her son has a doctorate in hydraulic engineering from WSU and is a scientist at a local research laboratory. Her daughter is an emergency room supervisor at a major regional hospital's trauma center. Both are under 30 and fine young people.

My daughter attended a tiny public school in rural Eastern Washington (her mother and I are divorced), escaped to Community College as a Running Start student at 16, and is now, just turned 23, completing her masters in speech pathology at WSU. She is planning on completing her doctorate while working for the Seattle School District, where she starts as an intern in January.

Motivated kids will learn anywhere, but do so much better when free of the NEA/WEA influence.

Posted by: Saltherring on May 18, 2006 11:12 AM