Below is an article from the LA Times you may have seen before, but I have
added directions on how you can have input in California at the end.
Ed Laughbaum
____________________________________________________
Los Angeles Times
December 2, 1997
State Endorses Back-to-Basics Math Standards
Education: Board would stress fundamental skills, discourage calculators
and develop new test.
Rules sacrifice understanding of key concepts, critics say.
By RICHARD LEE COLVIN, Times Education Writer
SACRAMENTO--The State Board of Education on Monday endorsed a
controversial set of no-nonsense standards for math education from
kindergarten through seventh grade that emphasize correct answers and
lots of practice while discouraging the use of calculators.
The first statewide math standards, the target of attacks by critics who
say that they sacrifice thinking for rote memorization, will guide the
development of a new state test aimed at monitoring how well
California's public schools are teaching key subjects.
In response to the harsh criticism from some educators and members of a
state commission that had taken the first crack at preparing math
standards, the board agreed to allow a panel of experts to recommend
minor revisions before it takes a final vote next week.
But board members said those changes were unlikely to resolve the
fundamental philosophical differences that separate them from their
critics. "The differences are genuine," board member Kathryn Dronenburg
of El Cajon said just before the 10-0 vote, with one abstention.
At the heart of the debate is how much emphasis to put on the
fundamentals--skills such as memorizing multiplication tables or
mastering formulas for finding the area of a cone.
Both sides agree they are important and that American schools have to
start teaching them more like their counterparts in Japan and Singapore,
whose students come out on top in international tests.
But board members said the initial version of the document prepared by
the standards commission did not go far enough.
~They voted instead for standards that call for California's public
school students to memorize multiplication tables in third grade and
master the age-old routines of borrowing and carrying while adding and
subtracting. Long division, a skill that some educators believe is
obsolete in an age of calculators, would once again become a staple
starting in the fourth grade. And in every grade, the standards call for
students to "make precise calculations."
The standards also frown on the increasing use of calculators, saying
that they especially should not be used on state tests.
~But members of the appointed standards commission--which had worked for
a year preparing a draft of the math guidelines--complained that the
board's revisions overemphasize basic skills while downplaying the need
for students to also understand math concepts and be able to use them to
solve problems that don't fit a standard formula.
Standards commissioners were sometimes emotional in expressing their
anger. As if trying to take over the very rhetoric that back-to-basics
advocates have long directed at current practices, they alleged that the
board's document was "dumbed down" in comparison to their standards.
"The title of our document should be 'Expecting More,' while the title of
yours should be 'Expecting Less,' " said Judy Codding, the most
outspoken of the members of the Commission for the Establishment of
Academic Performance and Content Standards to address the board. "I am
truly discouraged."
Board members were equally adamant that they had done no such thing and
took offense at the label "dumbed down," pegging it as a "clever" ploy to
undermine support for the math standards among educators.
~"The entire state of our children's education depends on these
standards," Dronenburg said. "All you have to do is read them to see
they are incredibly rigorous at every level."
The state's 1,000 school districts are not required to abide by the
standards. But the standards will be highly influential anyway because
they will help shape new textbooks and the statewide standardized
tests--the results of which will be highly publicized.
When the board takes its final vote on the standards up to seventh grade,
it is expected to act also on standards for the upper grades in order to
meet a Jan. 1 legislative mandate. The debate over the content for the
middle and high school grades is expected to be equally contentious.
Even the mathematicians in the audience Monday could not agree on
whether the board's standards were superior to those put forth by the
standards commission.
Ralph Cohen, a math professor at Stanford University who helped the
board write its draft, said the board's document was clearer in stating
what students must know while also presenting the skills in a logical
progression from kindergarten to seventh grade.
Students who master its contents will be far better prepared
mathematically than most California pupils are today, Cohen said.
"Their skills will be strong, their problem-solving for sure will be
strong because they will have the skills with which to solve problems,
and certainly their conceptual understanding will be strong because you
can't ask kids to understand concepts without giving them the tools," he
said.
But Dan Fendel, a mathematician at San Francisco State, insisted that
students who master the standards will be adept at only one part of
mathematics--number crunching.
The document approved by the board "shifts the focus to a very
computational look at what math is and that's not what math is about,"
he said. He also opposed the board's decision to ban the use of
calculators on statewide tests--even for computing square roots.
"For anybody to take a square root without a calculator is the height of
absurdity," he said.
~The vehemence of the views of both sides reflects the fevered debate
over math education that has been building in California and across the
nation.
Responding to the fact that relatively few California students take
advanced math classes--only one in six now takes more than one year of
algebra and only one in three completes geometry--math educators have
been trying for decades to find a way to teach the subject in a way that
was both interesting and rigorous. For the past decade or so, support
has been growing among math teachers for stressing the ways math is used
outside the classroom, or trying to make lessons more concrete by using
blocks or folded paper to illustrate concepts, for instance, or
enlivening lessons with games.
But these so-called reform approaches have been met with growing
skepticism among parents and many mathematicians who worry that pupils
today are failing to internalize the basics.
Attempting to settle the dispute, the state board last year adopted an
advisory policy that sought to balance the competing views. On Monday,
though, state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin said the new
standards tip that balance too far in the direction of skills.
* * *
The New Standards
California's new math standards for kindergarten through seventh grade
have a distinct back-to-basics stamp. Here are some that received
tentative approval Monday:
GRADE 1
* Know the addition facts (sums to 20) and the corresponding subtraction
facts.
* Use the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction to solve
problems and commit them to memory.
* * *
GRADE 3
* Memorize to automaticity the multiplication tables for numbers between
1 and 10.
* * *
GRADE 4
* Solving problems involving division of multi-digit numbers by
one-digit-numbers.
* * *
GRADE 5
* Add, subtract, multiply and divide with decimals and negative numbers
and verify the reasonableness of the results.
* * *
GRADE 7
* For integers that are not square, determine without a calculator the
two integers between which its square root lies.
____________________________________________________________________________
How You Can Respond to: California state board of education standards
What you can do: Read the state board standards (at above URL)
Read the state board math framework draft
Respond to the state board standards
When? State board standards meeting is Dec. 11 and 12 in Sacramento
Call state board office by 3 PM Tuesday to be on list
(916) 657 - 5478
How? Present public testimony in Sacramento on Dec. 11
Respond in writing
fax: (916) 653 - 7016 or e-mail: kyee@cde.ca.gov
Respond to the state board math framework draft
using Reviewer evaluation form on found at the web
site
When? December 15
How? PO Box 944272
Sacramento, CA 94244-2720
____________________________________________________________________________
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