Math Wars: I Guess It's Not Over

Many of you may be aware of the advocacy work of UW Professor Cliff Mass who has worked tirelessly to try to get the powers that be and the public to understand the effects of discovery math (and, as UW professors are some of the end users of the students of SPS, he does have an interest). It appears that even though the vote has gone through for the math curriculum SPS will be using, he is continuing the fight and put out a bit of a smackdown to the UW School of Education which has been waging its own battle. (And Dan D., if you printed this elsewhere, I may have missed it; my apologies.)

Here's a link to the UW School of Education Research page (it has links to the right on Where's the Math). It is headed by Pat Wasley whom I have heard speak several times. Here is her letter to her colleagues on the subject of math education. I have to say I don't agree with many of her views on education so I would tend to side with Professor Mass on this point.

Professor Mass had an interview with Real Change (a newpage written and distributed by the homeless - it's pretty good) about math. Here's an e-mail he sent about feedback on it. It's long so I have highlighted key areas.

 Since my comments to "Real Change" initiated an extended
conversation on math education, perhaps it is appropriate for me to
provide you with my views directly.  To put it succinctly, I believe
K-12 math education in our state is in a bad place and a number of UW
faculty involved in math education (that is educating future teachers)
have greatly contributed to the situation.  To put it bluntly, some of
us here at the UW are a major part of the problem.

 The first question:  is there a major problem?  I think the answer
is certainly yes.  During my career here the math capabilities of
students have progressively declined and hundreds of you have noted
the same thing (last year I circulated a petition on this subject..by
the end I had hundreds of faculty signatories).  I give a math exam to
students taking atmos 101:  most can't do basic math (e.g., fractions,
algebra).   Math remediation rates are stunningly high at colleges
around the state  and the gross income of tutoring services has
increased over 350% during the last 10 years. Increasingly UW students
wanting to major in atmospheric sciences are dropping the major due to
math issues.   I could provide a dozen other examples-- and the
problems are not limited to our state.  Many of you have written to me
with similar observations. This is also a national problem.  And a
real one.

   Virginia Warfield (who wrote to you criticizing my comments) and I
have very different views on the origins of this decline in math
skills.  I believe one major causal factor is the ascendency of
"discovery math" --  the theory that students need to "discover" math
concepts for them to internalize them, with lots of calculator use
("technology" in eduspeak), manipulatives, group work, and
talking/writing, rather than calculations.  Mastering key skills is
tertiary (often called "drill and kill"  in eduspeak).  Another issue
is the poor quality of the math textbooks adopted during the past
decade or so (e.g., IMP , Terc, Everyday Math, CMP, and the
Discovering Math series).  Some of the worst text books have been
"integrated", whereby the subjects are intermixed and spiralled in a
way that insures superficial learning at best.  Many of these math
books have little in the way of equations or what one would call real
math. And they are poorly written and organized.  In contrast to what
Virginia claims, there is virtually no competent research to support
the discovery approach.  In fact, the National Academy found that
supposed "research" was weak and poorly controlled.  In contrast,
there is solid research showing the superiority of the  example-based
instruction where teachers show students the proper steps to solve
problems (often derided as "traditional" by the education
cognoscenti).  And current math education approaches are hurting
minorities and the underprivileged the most, since they can't afford
expensive remediation and often don't have parents with strong math
skills. Now don't get me wrong, there are other contributors of
course--like the poor math backgrounds of many teachers, weakening of
families, etc-- but poor textbooks and a failed approach to teaching
math deserves much of the blame.

    I should note that my understanding of the problem began with my
own children, who had discovery/integrated texts and who were learning
little math in school (when my middle school son could not handle
simple fractions I knew I had problems).  Intensive parental tutoring
and Kumon salvaged my children, but it got me worried.  About this
time I got involved with a group called wheresthemath.com (a
state-wide group of parents, teachers and others concerned about math
education--the majority of us use math in our careers).

      The K-12 math education community in our state is still
dominated by discovery advocates.  They have somehow entrained a
mistaken belief that social justice requires the discovery approach
(as if the underprivileged can't learn the real stuff). The math
education old boy/girl network in our state (e.g., UW School of
Education math education "specialists", some math education types in
the math department) are clearly threatened by the criticism of the
discovery paradigm and current education policies.  But the truth is
that their policies are failing.  State legislators had enough with
the weak "discovery" math standards of our state and recently improved
them and dropped the poorly conceived and extraordinarily expensive
WASL exam.

Unfortunately, UW faculty involved in K-12 education are
working hard to prevent change and keep their approach in play.
Several UW faculty have grants to foster discovery math education in
our public schools.  One member of the education group in the math
department set up a phony web site (wheresthemath.org) to confuse
individuals intending to view the wheresthemath.com site (he even used
a university account to set it up!).   At a recent Seattle School
Board meeting a UW math education faculty membeer spoke in favor of
adopting the poor Discovery Math series.  The School of Education was
so threatened by the criticism of their math education approach that
they published, at university expense, a defensive brochure that they
distributed to state legislators (an online version found at
http://education.washington.edu/research/rtm_07/).  You have to read
this official School of Education document to believe it...they make
fun of the wheresthemath.com group in their chapter headings, suggest
that architects don't really need to know how to do calculations, and
other startling revelations.  Members of the state legislature were so
concerned about UW Education lobbying the legislature with this
brochure that they initiated an ethics violation investigation.
Members of the UW K-12 Math Education enterprise regularly write
editorials and op-ed pieces supporting the status quo.  I can give a
dozen other examples of the promotion efforts of the UW K-12 math
education establishment.  They are formidable and entrenched.

      In short, there is a real tension between UW faculty in
technical subjects who experience first hand the disastrous math
background of incoming undergrads, and those teaching future K-12 math
educators who are following a paradigm that is failing our students.
The future teachers, principals, and administrators trained here in
the UW leave convinced that discovery approaches and other current
educational fads are the future.  And it is hard to reprogram them.
The problem, I am afraid to say, is to a considerable degrees ours.
Parents, the state legislators, and others are increasingly
understanding the problem.  Are we going to remain part of the problem
or the solution? It is not a little ironic that one part of the UW is
undermining math and science education, while the other is attempting
to train the technical and scientific leaders of the future.

  This is not an insolvable problem. There are strong, effective
alternatives to the terrible discovery and integrated math texts.
Books that provide the basic skills, give students lots of practice,
challenge to think creatively about the application of math, and
provides instruction that effectively develops mathematical
understanding .  Some school districts like Shoreline are making the
switch.  We can insure our K-12 teachers have a sufficiently strong
math background to educate our children.  The educational
establishment can allow their curriculum and approaches to be guided
by competent research and empirical information.  We can turn this
around relatively quickly I suspect. But the UW K-12 education
establishment will have to change to do so.

..cliff mass, atmospheric sciences

(Professor Mass did give me permission to print this e-mail.  He also
mentioned that the use of public funds to print the UW Education Department's brochure
to legislators in being investigated.)