Parents for Quality Math Education

Several years ago, our school district adopted new math programs for use in grades K-8. According to SCASD administrators, this change was made to improve continuity, because previously teachers were free to use multiple resources in their classrooms and this caused problems when students changed schools. The administrators, however, also used the change as an opportunity to introduce non-traditional math programs that are called by several different names, such as "constructivist", "conceptual", and "reformist".

The program adopted for use in grades K-5 is "Investigations in Number, Data, and Space" developed by the Technical Education Research Center (TERC). The Investigations program does not teach long division, multiplication tables or many other commonly accepted methods of arriving at an answer in a systematic fashion. The program in use in grades 6-8 is "Connected Mathematics" developed at Michigan State and marketed by Prentice Hall. Connected Math also avoids teaching standard algorithms and, like Investigations, assumes that children will construct their own mathematics knowledge and rely heavily on calculators for computation.

There is a general lack of good research comparing math programs. The only research demonstrating the effectiveness of "constructivist" programs has been funded by the same organizations that developed the programs or sell them. A recent study published by the U.S. Department of Education, however, compared four different math programs as implemented in 39 schools. It was found that the two traditional math programs produced significantly higher student achievement than that resulting from the two constructivist programs. One of these was Investigations, which finished last in student achievement.

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel report, issued in 2008, recognized that understanding of math concepts must be accompanied by proficiency with standard algorithms and automatic recall of facts if U.S. students are to be adequately prepared for algebra. The programs currently in use in SCASD de-emphasize these skills.

Parents in school districts nationwide have been fighting these constructivist programs with success. The entire state of California dropped their 12-year experiment with these programs in 1997 after a widespread outcry from parents and experts in mathematics.

For the benefit of our children, our school district and our community, the undersigned petitioners urge the SCASD board to eliminate Investigations and Connected Mathematics from its core curriculum and replace them with more traditional math programs for the 2009-2010 school year.