http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2002665108_newmath01m.html
Monday,
December 5, 2005 - Page updated at 11:05 AM
"Reform"
math: Examining the pluses, minuses
By Linda
Shaw
GREG GILBERT / THE
Shorecrest
High students Aydan Sarikaya, left; Justin Kofoed,
seated; and Peter Olson, Katrina Freitag and Brian Sharkey, standing in rear,
show how they figured out a math problem.
Related
Strengths, weaknesses of students' math abilities
Two ways of teaching math
As students file into her
classroom at Shorecrest High, Marilyn Leverson flips through the textbook to
show how math instruction is changing.
Words dominate the pages,
not numbers. There's not a problem set to be found. It's definitely not the
kind of math book that parents remember — which dismays some of them.
Leverson, however, loves
the book. It's a more effective way, she says, to help students understand —
not just memorize — mathematics. It sparks more interest in the subject, too,
she says, and seems to have helped boost Shorecrest's math scores on the
Washington Assessment of Student Learning, which more than half the state's
sophomores failed last spring.
With the WASL scheduled to
become a graduation requirement in 2008, concerns about math are rising. If
nothing changes soon, a failing math score on the WASL could stand between many
students and their diplomas.
Some middle and high
schools are now requiring students to take two math classes a day if they're
behind, and others are increasing math requirements in high school. (
But many educators think
math needs to be taught differently, too. Shorecrest, in Shoreline, is among a
growing number of schools embracing what's known as "reform" math,
which stresses problem-solving over problem sets, based on long-standing
recommendations of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Critics call it
"fuzzy" math and warn it fails to give students a good grounding in
the basics. Some parents complain that students leave elementary school without
being taught how to do long division. But schools in more than a half-dozen
districts in the
Few doubt students' math skills
could use a boost. On a number of international exams,
Many students (and their
parents) don't view math as something they must be good at, math teachers say.
"The cultural and
personal attitudes about math are huge barriers for us," said Bill Moore
of the state Board for Community and
Even when she used a more traditional text,
Leverson says, she dreamed up exercises and projects like the ones in the new
book Shorecrest uses, part of a series called the Interactive Mathematics
Program. Its texts are divided into sections that start with a big problem that
students spend weeks learning the math to solve.
One morning this fall, for
example, a group of mostly sophomores and juniors in an Integrated III class
were weeks deep into a trigonometry problem that required them to calculate
when a man riding the Ferris wheel can let go of a partner to ensure the
partner lands in the water as the cart passes by.
To figure it out, students
learn about sines, cosines, polar coordinates and some physics. Along the way,
they learn a number of formulas, but from their teacher, not the book. And
Leverson expects them to be able to explain why the formulas work, too.
The idea is to deepen
students' understanding of math so that they're not lost if they forget a
formula, or face that problem not previously explained in the book. And to let
students find approaches that work for them.
"Everyone needs at
least two ways to add, subtract, multiply and divide efficiently and
accurately," says Jane Goetz, director of instructional services in
Seattle Public Schools and, before that, an award-winning math teacher. She
notes that many countries don't teach standard
In all, it's a big shift in
how math is taught, one that draws in some students and frustrates others.
"It's a lot more
interesting than it was before," said Aydan Sarikaya, 15, one of
Leverson's students. "It's a lot easier to visualize."
But Justin Kofoed, 16,
prefers the more traditional books he used in middle school. Those texts
"explained stuff a lot more," he said. The Interactive Mathematics
approach, he said, "definitely takes a lot more work."
Shorecrest, however, is
seeing promising results after switching to Interactive Math from a somewhat
more traditional series a little more than two years ago. Last year, the
sophomores who had used those books since they were freshmen scored 10
percentage points higher on the WASL than the sophomores the year before.
And at Garfield High in
In California, a move
toward "reform" math a decade ago led to what came to be known as the
"math wars," with parallels to the "reading wars" that
pitted those who view phonics as central to reading instruction against those
who favored more of a focus on reading comprehension.
And in math, like in
reading, many teachers favor a middle road.
"Do I want kids to be
fluent in addition, multiplication and division? You bet," says Bev Neitzel,
director of a new math initiative at the state Office of Superintendent of
Public Instruction. "But if they get to seven times eight, and they can't
remember what the answer is, I want them to have a strategy because they
understand what multiplication is and can figure it out."
But some think the balance
is still out of whack.
Drills haven't disappeared
from "reform" classrooms. At Shorecrest, for example, students must
pass a number of "mastery" tests on skills teachers think should be
second nature, such as factoring. Proponents say the "reform"
approach reinforces basic skills in ways that don't look like drills, and that
students need less practice when they understand the concept.
But drills and computation,
such as long division, do not get as much focus in "reform" classes.
Leverson, for example, doesn't think students can or need to quickly divide
five-digit numbers by four-digit numbers by hand. Students, like adults, should
be able to use calculators to do that, she says, and it doesn't hold them back.
And that's one reason
critics say "reform" math adds up to a big problem.
Ballard math teacher Niki
Hayes is one of them. When she returned to teaching high-school math last year,
she says she was surprised to find how many students couldn't do basics such as
adding fractions. Showing them the steps refreshed many of their memories, she
said, but the fact that they had forgotten showed they didn't know it well
enough.
"You don't forget
something that you really know," she said.
The national math council
has good intentions but students don't get enough practice to master important
skills, she says. So they struggle in algebra, Hayes says, because they're weak
in long division.
There just isn't enough
time in the regular, 50-minute math class to teach math through projects, she
says, especially for students who are already behind. And she doesn't like
"integrated" math, which she says jumps around too much, leaving
students with holes in their knowledge.
Hayes favors Saxon Math, a
textbook full of numbers and problem sets, and many fewer — and shorter — word
problems. She has used the Saxon series in
Hayes, however, says she's
a "lone voice in the wilderness" among math educators in this state.
But she's not all alone.
In the
"He was just doing
wacko things trying to figure out how to divide," she said. "Fingers and toes and other things."
At TOPS, a K-8 school in
In
One variable that's often
forgotten is how well math is taught, said Craig Gabler, math-curriculum
director in the
"It's easy to bash a
book," he says. But taught well, he said, students using
"reform" books get the basic skills they need.
The trend is moving toward
"reform" math in many places. In high schools, for example,
Shorecrest and two
Some districts, such as
Critics of
"reform" math say it will hurt students when they go on to college,
but that's debated, too. At the community-college level, professors like the
kind of mathematical thinking that the "reform" approach promotes,
says
At the
"Their preparation is
different," Bube said. "The question is whether you want to say one
is better than the other."
Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com