School math books, nonsense, and the National Science Foundation

Solution: The equation 10 = x – 2.5 is a specific case of the equation y = x – 2.5, which has a slope of 1 and a y-intercept of –2.5.

This problem comes from a 7th grade math quiz that accompanies a widely used textbook series for grades 6 to 8 called Connected Mathematics Program or CMP.[1] The solution appears in the CMP Teacher’s Guide and is supported by a discussion of sample student work.

Richard Askey, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, reported, “I was told about this problem by a parent whose child took this quiz. The marking was exactly as in the text.”[2] Students instructed and graded in this way learn incorrect mathematics, and teachers who know better may be undermined by their less informed peers, armed with the “solution.” This example is far from the only failing of CMP. Among other shortcomings, there is no instruction on division of fractions in the entire three year CMP series, and the other parts of fraction arithmetic are treated poorly.[3]

Is CMP just an anomaly? Unfortunately not. CMP is only one of more than a dozen defective K-12 math programs funded by the National Science Foundation. More specifically, the NSF programs were created and distributed through grants from the Education and Human Resources (EHR) Division within the NSF. In contrast to the NSF’s admirable and important role in supporting fundamental scientific research, the EHR has caused, and continues to cause, damage to K-12 mathematics education.

At the elementary school level, one of the worst NSF funded programs is the widely used K-5 series TERC: Investigations in Number, Data, and Space.[4] The program relies heavily on calculators and does not include textbooks in the usual sense. Harvard mathematician Wilfried Schmid evaluated it and concluded that by the end of 5th grade, TERC students were roughly two years behind where they should be according to the California, Indiana, and Massachusetts state mathematics standards, the best state math standards in the U.S.[5] Schmid added, “The TERC authors are also opposed to the teaching of the traditional algorithms of arithmetic, such as long addition, subtraction with borrowing, and the usual pencil-and-paper methods of multiplication and division. Not only do they refuse to teach the algorithms, they make clear their preference not to have the students learn them outside of the classroom, either.”[6]

(snip) The root cause is money badly spent. The NSF and corporate foundations maintain a gravy train of education grants and awards that stifle competent mathematics education. Although it is conceivable that ongoing NSF grants for new editions of defective math programs, such as those I have described, will improve matters, that is a poor strategy. It amounts to throwing good money after bad. The most that one can realistically hope for is that the original NSF-funded math programs will eventually rise to the level of mediocrity.

"as a matter of public policy ...public education is one of the building blocks that made our nation great.

The first poster that posted to the thread noted the problem in the product paid for by fed dollars. It's a junk math book. There is a big problem and there has been, of tax money being spent as a jobs program for incompetent text book writer industry. A text book is the key element in anyone's education on a subject. It has a permanent presence and is a very patient teacher. If the writer is competent, the student can learn the subject. This book is junk and that's all any student could get from it. In general, one does not teach a subject by feeding students junk.

This is a core element of corriculum. The other things, such as "our global world" being taught, and the socialist propaganda comment and content of science books is a big problem. That part of the publlic policy is simply partisan campaigning for the sole purpose of creating socialists.

"keep starving the public schools. You'll get exactly what you want. "

They are not starving. They are fat and their fat, as this math text product shows, stinks.

I recognize this is unpopular among the church school and home school types, but I personally believe public education is one of the building blocks that made our nation great.

Oh, I agree with you, up til about 1975, and then it seems to have broken down. I'd love to see some sort of study on just WHY, but I suspect a lot of it has to do with just how much control any teacher or principal has over the students in the school.

Just an anecdote from my Senior year of school; yes, with the anecdotes again. My Senior year, 1970-71 was the first year of forced bussing in my Mississippi hometown. There had been the black high school and the white high school, and even though there had been black kids at the white high school for all my three years there (it was 10-12), there had been no whites going to the black school. Well, in the spirit of equal education for all, they divided up the town and forced all the kids on one side of the line to got to the black school, and all the kids on the other side to go to the white school. Disaster ensued. The few whites who would have been forced to go the the black school were worried they would be 'targets' of some of the black kids, and though there were more black kids being bussed to the white school, some of them felt awkward as well.

Near the beginning of school, some of the black kids formed a protest for several reasons, none that couldn't have been addressed if they'd just asked, and for a week would get off the bus, walk to the Student Lounge, and when the first bell rang, would just sit around the Lounge, then go off to the second class of the day. We even had the city's RIOT police show up one morning. All the white kids, and some of the black ones were laughing at that stupid sight. That night, my Mama asked me what the trouble was at school, and said she'd seen it on the National News! There was NO trouble, but some black leaders were hyping the situation. The black kids involved in this episode were never punished, and there were a lot of kids resentful of that, white AND black.

Another episode involved my Physical Science teacher. He was black, and had been brought in, again, for equalitiy's sake. He was, hands down, the WORST teacher I believe I have ever had! The only reason I learned anything was because instead of teaching anything, we who were interested, and wanted a decent grade, read our textbooks. When it was time for a test, he'd hand out the papers and leave the room. Well, it only took about 1 minute for most of the kids to figure out they'd died and gone to heaven. The dragged their books out and proceeded to cheat. There were only four of us, and we all sat at the same table, who were honest with our work. When the test was over, we asked him if it was supposed to have been an 'open book' test. He just shrugged. It annoyed us so much that we complained to our Spanish teacher, who would dock a grade if she suspected someone had cheated on their HOMEWORK. She said that the principal couldn't get rid of him because it was a 'political' situation. It was disgusting! I had another black teacher that year, Mr. Blake, who was so good, I remember his name after 35 years. He made World Geography such an interesting class, and I was glad they'd brought HIM in.

So that drip, drip, drip of losing control of the actions of the students, combined with the truly racist notion of dumbing down education so that 'those kids', be they black or Hispanic, can keep up, has contributed to near chaos in many public schools. Even in the good schools, kids who are skating on the edge are left to their own devices many times, or worst, plunked into the Special Education class. I had several girls in my Girl Scout troop who were in that class at school, and they wore it as a badge of honor. These were not stupid girls, they just didn't perform superbly on tests, so they were labeled as 'learning disabled' and put in a box by all the teachers. Schools like this are NOT serving our kids, and are not preparing the majority of them to avail themselves of opportunities that might be presented to them when they graduate.

The world is different from when you and I, or even your kids went to school, and even in the 'good' public schools, the administrations are still constrained by PC stupidity, and forced to teach all manner of stuff that has nothing to do with advancing genuine knowledge or intellectual curiosity, in fact, for the most part, that trait of curiosity is drained out of kids by most teachers who just drone on and on. That building block that was public education, that made this country what it is today, is no longer there.

Ha. Good one.

I await your explanation of the concept of superposition and uniformitarianism.

Can you tell me when Darcy's law applies and when the Dupuit-Forchheimer equation can be safely applied?

Can you explain for me the role of the octanol-water partition coefficient in understanding the fugacity of chemical compounds in the environment?

Can you summarize for us the importance of Theis assumptions in interpreting aquifer test results?

Perhaps you'd like to summarize the key differences between alternate concentration limits developed under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act?

We'd all love to hear your heartfelt opinion on why the technical impracticability waiver under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act should be retained.

I'm quite interested in your opinion on the key differences between the Financial Accounting Standards Board Interpretation No. 47 and the Government Accounting Standards Board Exposure Draft on Accounting and Financial Reporting for Pollution Remediation Obligations, with a particular focus on implications for both stock markets and bond markets.

And where do you stand on the carcinogenicity of dioxins?

School teacher, indeed.

Post 75 from spunkets is more-or-less spot-on as a description of the situation, the only thing wrong with it is that the operative bad quality the text-book authors have is probably not NEA membership, but a degree in education rather than the subject area they are writing about, and a job in a college of education.

A lot of vilification is heaped on the NEA because of their idiotic political stands, but membership usually means simply working at a school which is a 'closed shop', not the embrace of the idiotic positions.

The idiotic politics, the perpetual pursuit of the latest 'trend' in education, and the fact that those trends never involve introduction of intellectual rigor, always the watering-down of curricula, all flow from the colleges of education, not the NEA's lobbying arm.

Do you remember 'Ed majors' from college? 85% of them are math-phobic ditzes (the thread is about math education, and I see them in mathematics courses I teach). The several states have bought a crock of sh*t from the colleges of education, and granted a monopoly on teaching to ed majors. Yeah, I know, if you've got another degree and can stand to take enough of the contentless rot that passes for courses in colleges of education, you can get certified, too.

The thing to break if you want to fix American education is not the NEA, but the state-granted monopoly given to products of colleges of education. Back when my dad was in high school, all of his teachers had masters degrees in the subject they taught and a few had Ph.D.'s, now high school teachers, by and large, have degrees in 'secondary education with a concentration in. . . .' The few exceptions in my son's high school tend to be ex-military who for some reason took a fancy to teaching, got a certification on top of an old degree in the content area, and are both among the most rigorous teachers in the school and the most popular.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.