District's math curriculum hurts future of students

http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2007/jun/20070606comm004.asp

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District's math curriculum hurts future of students

Published Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Editor, the Tribune: Imagine that a school district decides to change
how the high school basketball team is taught, based on
recommendations from consultants who are neither basketball players
nor coaches and have a vested interest in promoting the new
techniques. The district adopts the recommendations without
determining whether they are effective at teaching basketball skills.
The consultants claim that because children are natural athletes,
directly teaching rules or transmitting a cumulative knowledge base
should be avoided, along with practice drills. When your team plays
against other teams using the same new methods, they seem to perform
comparably, and the district proclaims success. However, when they
play against teams using the traditional, coach-directed strategies,
they consistently lose. They are unable to make baskets; they foul
because they don't know the rules; and they seem lost on the court. No
one on your team gets a scholarship.

That hypothetical new basketball method would not last long. Yet, the
Columbia Public Schools Math Task Force is recommending that an
analogous scenario in our high school math program be allowed to
continue.

Data show that students in the Integrated Math pathway have lower MAP
grades in both eighth- and 10th-grade assessments and score lower on
ACT tests compared to students on the traditional algebra track.
Significantly more graduating Columbia students are placed in remedial
courses in college now than before the new curriculum was instituted -
20 percent versus 1 percent to 5 percent. It is time to abandon a
curriculum that is hurting our students.

Ines Segert, Ph.D.
University of Missouri-Columbia
Department of Psychological Sciences
204 McAlester Hall