69传媒

Mathematics

Lost in Translation

By Samantha Stainburn 鈥 March 01, 2004 10 min read
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A new math curriculum has boosted test scores in several states. So why haven鈥檛 some New York City parents signed on?

Thomas Dooley, a fast-talking, 47-year-old retired firefighter in Queens, New York, believes public education has helped make America great. 鈥淚f you were smart, you could move ahead,鈥 he explains. 鈥淚f you worked hard, you could move ahead. You were given an opportunity.鈥

New York City鈥檚 public schools, he says, did just that for his two college-age sons. After attending their local elementary school, one earned a spot at the city鈥檚 prestigious math magnet, Stuyvesant High, and is now studying engineering at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, one of the country鈥檚 best engineering schools. Last year, Dooley鈥檚 young daughter thrived in a gifted math program at the same elementary school her brothers attended, multiplying mixed fractions and doing basic algebra in 3rd grade.

This year, however, the school overhauled its math curriculum. The new program, Everyday Mathematics, is used for kids at all levels and employs few of the traditional methods Dooley鈥檚 daughter is used to. Instead of teaching standard ways to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and long division and then drilling students with worksheets, teachers present several options for solving problems and encourage kids to use those that make sense to them. Rather than spend weeks or a single class on one subject, lessons bounce around, covering several areas in an hour. Computation is practiced by playing games, and students must continually explain why they鈥檙e solving problems in the ways they鈥檝e chosen.

It鈥檚 all part of broader changes in the New York City school system, the nation鈥檚 largest, that have overturned the curricular apple cart. In January 2003, Chancellor Joel Klein announced that he planned to replace the more than 75 math programs in use at city schools with a single mandated curriculum; similar sweeping changes have been made to reading programs. Klein argued that ensuring that all students receive the same City Hall-approved training would improve a system in which 70 percent of children entering 9th grade read or do math below grade level.

So during this school year and the next, the city鈥檚 600 elementary schools are implementing Everyday Mathematics. (69传媒 designated as 鈥渉igh performing鈥 are not required to switch this year, though many have; the rest will have their exemptions reviewed periodically.) Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam explains why school officials picked a program considered more progressive than those typically adopted by urban areas: 鈥淛ust mastery of basic skills would not prepare our kids to do problem-solving, logical reasoning. Everyday Mathematics is a curriculum that combines both.鈥

Yet for many parents, the program, which refutes the back-to-basics approach that became popular in the 1970s, has been a hard sell. Despite his daughter鈥檚 aptitude for math, Dooley says that she鈥檚 confused. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e teaching all these different methods,鈥 he explains, the anger rising in his voice. 鈥淣ow when she does division or multiplication, she makes mistakes. She forgets to carry numbers over. She goes from left to right instead of from right to left. She鈥檚 forgetting her basic stuff.鈥

At the same time, computations are not difficult enough, he argues. 鈥淚t鈥檚 back to 1st and 2nd grade math. I mean, 鈥3 times 1'? 鈥楾wo times 0'? What is that? She鈥檚 in the 4th grade.鈥


P.S. 230, a 1,200-student elementary school in Brooklyn鈥檚 multicultural Kensington neighborhood, adopted Everyday Mathematics six years ago, long before it was required. Former principal Howard Wholl, an administrator with a math background, believed then, as the city鈥檚 current crop of school administrators does now, that the program is more rigorous than typical workbook-driven fare.

It wasn鈥檛 easy to get used to, admits Sally Dyson, who鈥檚 been teaching for 35 years and gave up her classroom this year to become P.S. 230鈥檚 math coach, a new position the education department has added to schools implementing Everyday Mathematics. 鈥淲hen you first see it, it looks as if the lesson is teaching four things, which does fly against most everything we ever learn about how to teach math.鈥 Yet, Dyson adds, she likes that 鈥渋t鈥檚 something you have to talk about. It鈥檚 not the classic, 鈥楧o just the odd-numbered problems today.鈥欌

Principal Bruce Berkowitz agrees. Because lesson preparation requires more critical thinking on the teacher鈥檚 end, he says, 鈥渨e find that teachers are spending more time on math. Math is something that a lot of elementary teachers are afraid of. With this program, it鈥檚 more fun for them.鈥

And, indeed, on a frigid January day, the school鈥檚 classrooms crackled with energy during math hour. In Rita Donlon鈥檚 2nd grade class, the kids sat on a carpet in front of a whiteboard, and even the boy who had one arm inside his sweatshirt and the other out of it was following her every move. 鈥淚s 33 closer to 30 or to 40?鈥 she asked, pointing at a girl. 鈥淣our?鈥

鈥淭hirty,鈥 the girl whispered, clearly guessing.

鈥淭hirty? Do you understand why?鈥 Nour was silent. 鈥淟et鈥檚 draw a number line,鈥 Donlon said, sketching on the board. 鈥淐ome up and circle 33 for me. Is it closer to 30 or 40?鈥

鈥淔辞谤迟测.鈥

鈥淥K,鈥 Donlon said, and directed 11 kids to stand up and form a line symbolizing the numbers 30 through 40. She took Nour by the hand, and they walked down the line, stopping at Jimmy (30), Jasmine (33), and Sofia (40). 鈥淚s 33 closer to 30 or 40?鈥

鈥淭hirty,鈥 Nour answered, with more confidence.

鈥淲丑测?鈥

鈥淚t was only three steps, and Sofia was seven steps,鈥 she said.

鈥淕ood girl!鈥 Donlon said. But there was no dwelling on the accomplishment as she directed the class to plop back down on the carpet and immediately moved on to addition. 鈥淗ow would you solve this problem?鈥 she asked, writing 鈥47 + 38" on the whiteboard. All but a few hands shot up in the air.

City officials like to show off P.S. 230 as proof that students who use Everyday Mathematics tend to learn more and like the subject better.

City officials like to show off P.S. 230 as proof that students who use Everyday Mathematics tend to learn more and like the subject better. The percentage of students scoring passing marks on standardized math tests rose from 60.9 percent in 1999, before the program was introduced schoolwide, to 74.9 percent in 2003. But the school is somewhat of an anomaly, enjoying extremely low staff turnover and a high level of community trust. P.S. 230 also had the luxury of introducing the curriculum gradually, in a way that garnered schoolwide support. Only those teachers who wanted to try it piloted the program, after paid summer training.

Many New York City schools, however, suffer from high staff turnover and tenuous relationships with parents. Plus, schools adopting the program this past fall were forced to implement it all at once, most with only a three-day, paid crash course for teachers on the new curriculum. Additional unpaid instruction during the summer was voluntary, and teachers who were losing math programs they liked attended with mixed feelings. Officials maintain that ongoing professional development and math coaches will help smooth the transition, but many schools鈥 coaches are new to Everyday Mathematics themselves.

The difficulty of getting educators in a troubled urban school system to rally around a single progressive math program has already been illustrated in San Antonio. Lam introduced Everyday Mathematics there in the mid-1990s, when she served as the city鈥檚 superintendent. After she had a dispute with the school board and left the district, however, teachers voted to jettison the program. Math scores had risen annually for four years, but inadequate training and lack of community buy-in prevailed.

Similar concerns are already bubbling in New York. Dooley says that his daughter鈥檚 school鈥攚hich he declines to identify, for the sake of her privacy鈥攈eld some meetings to introduce parents to the new program. But, he says, they were simply pep rallies. What鈥檚 more, they were held during the day, when many working parents couldn鈥檛 attend.

As hasty as the adoption of the new math and reading curricula appears, Lam insists that New York City school officials did take time to consult the public. Some 55,000 people, including parents, teachers, community groups, and mathematicians, participated in the district鈥檚 鈥渟trategic planning process,鈥 she says.

But Johnny Lott, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, suggests that a broader public conversation about math education still needs to happen, nationally as well as in New York City, if parents are to start trusting math educators. He believes that 鈥渕ath wars鈥 get ugly because people think math education doesn鈥檛 need to change. 鈥淭here will always be changes, and there should be,鈥 he says. 鈥淚f you鈥檝e got a curriculum that鈥檚 static, it鈥檚 never going to meet the challenges of today鈥檚 world.鈥


Everyday Mathematics is itself a response to global changes, prominently signaled in 1983 in the U.S. government鈥檚 sky-is-falling report, A Nation at Risk, which warned that American kids were dropping perilously behind other nationalities in math ability. Setting out to design a new curriculum, University of Chicago researchers translated textbooks from high-achieving countries and discovered that, in places like the Soviet Union and Japan, programs put more emphasis on connecting math knowledge to real-life situations.

Andy Isaacs, co-director of the University of Chicago鈥檚 Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education, believes that many criticisms stem from the fact that Americans don鈥檛 recognize how traditional math education has failed them. 鈥淧eople will say, 鈥業 could never do math,鈥欌 he notes. 鈥淗ow many people would say, 鈥極h, I could never read鈥? It鈥檚 not socially acceptable to be bad at reading, but it is socially acceptable to be bad at math.鈥

Everyday Mathematics is now used by about 2.5 million students in 28,000 schools nationwide, and in many places, it appears to be working.

Everyday Mathematics is now used by about 2.5 million students in 28,000 schools nationwide, and in many places, it appears to be working. A 2003 study of 100,000 children in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Washington found that average scores of Everyday Mathematics students on each state鈥檚 standardized test were significantly higher than for students of similar reading level, socioeconomic background, and race who were not using the curriculum. Numerous studies over the past decade have revealed similarly positive findings, and no study has determined that the program lowers test scores.

Yet many New York parents are having a difficult time reconciling such information with their own children鈥檚 experiences. Edmond David, whose son is a 2nd grader in Park Slope, Brooklyn, has been supplementing the school鈥檚 math classes with problems in traditional textbooks since kindergarten. 鈥淗e鈥檚 five grade levels ahead,鈥 David says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 only 20 minutes a day. Why can鈥檛 the schools do the same thing?鈥

Others take a more cynical view of curriculum reform in general. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 a money-generating effort,鈥 says Elizabeth Carson, a Manhattan parent and cofounder of NYC HOLD, an Internet-based group created in 2000 to oppose the use of progressive math programs in New York schools. 鈥淧rograms are going to fail. They will be replaced. And then there鈥檚 more money for the next round of professional development and research. How many years before you figure out how to teach a kid long division?鈥

Lam acknowledges that taking on any new program is a challenge. But she says the district 鈥渂elieves that our teachers can do this really hard work with the appropriate support system, and... really believes that students, whether they are poor, whether they are minority, are also able to do this kind of high-powered work.鈥

Without community support, however, New York administrators may not get a chance to prove skeptics wrong. City leaders 鈥渢hink parents will just take whatever you give them,鈥 Dooley says. 鈥淲ell, let me tell you something: Sometimes they do in the beginning, but they鈥檙e catching on. There鈥檒l be enough pressure brought. And eventually [the curriculum] will be gone, along with the mayor.鈥

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