6 ms·

Lawsuit against "Discovery Math" in Seattle Schools

30 points by brfox 17y ago

tokenadult 17y ago
It's interesting to use an ethnic achievement gap as a legal basis for opposing a particular math program. That most United States school districts don't simply use Singapore Math http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm shows that most math curriculum adoptions are not made on the basis of best results for least expense.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  It's mainly convenience. In the educational establishment and some courts, equality is more important than quality. Challenging curricula on the basis "this is bad for non-asian minorities more than others" is more likely to be successful than "this is bad for everyone". It is considered better for 100% of every group to be a moron than for 70% of blacks and 30% of whites to be a moron. [Edit: Added words "it is considered" to last sentence. Before it looked like I endorsed this view, which I don't.]
- evgen 17y ago
  This is probably because the program you repeatedly suggest as the solution to all of the math education woes in the US has a distinct lack of statistically valid studies to back up the claims being made. It is popular among the homeschooling crowd but that does not mean it is effective or applicable at a larger scale (e.g. the LA unified school district alone has three times as many students as Singapore but only twice the budget, etc.)
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    LA unified school district alone has three times as many students as Singapore but only twice the budget That's an interesting factual claim, which depends crucially on currency conversions between the United States dollar and the Singapore dollar. Do you have a link to a source for the factual statement, preferably one that "shows the work" (as a math teacher would say) by giving the school-age population numbers for each place and the all-sources primary education budgets for each place?
iterationx 17y ago
From the article >>In this approach math is substantially dumbed down for "equity" reasons and students are asked to discover age-old principles on their own. Charlotte Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, wrote the free eBook (pdf) "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/ http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
- lutorm 17y ago
  "Dumbing down" and "discovering age-old principles on their own" are not necessarily the same. There is definitely value in learning to do creative work in math and science, beyond just rote memorization and learning to regurgitate what the teacher tells you. It pretty clear that many people with high grades in school are poorly prepared for situations where you actually have to do original work, like grad school. Of course, there has to be a balance between base skills and that. Also, for another take on math education, see http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html
  - cabalamat 17y ago
    > "Dumbing down" and "discovering age-old principles on their own" are not necessarily the same. Indeed not. I'm writing an interpreter for a Lisp-like language right now (does Lisp count as "age-old"? I guess in computer terms it does), but I don't consider that a dumb thing to do.
  - bitwize 17y ago
    The problem with rote memorization is that it gets results. You cannot do algebra until you know your times tables by heart, and how did kids learn their times tables in ages past, when men were men and went to the moon without the aid of calculators? Drill, drill, drill. Going on and on about the beauty of math is all well and good if your brain is wired that way, but when 90% of America's high school grads are stymied by making simple change, you fall back on what works.
    - 17y ago
Afton 17y ago
I am made uneasy about someone that contrasts 'low income' and 'white' in their graphs. I do however, still holding a low opinion of the discovery math pedagogical model in general, as it requires more math sophistication than is likely to be found in an elementary/middle/high school's teacher.
- jff 17y ago
  I was disturbed by the "low income" vs. "white" separation. Does the white group also include low income white students? Or, to further their point, did they decide low income whites aren't really white? Nobody should have to "rediscover" the Pythagorean Theorem. I'll go out on a limb and say Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Descartes, etc. just went ahead and read Euclid, and they did pretty well for themselves.
  - lutorm 17y ago
    Learning to prove mathematical theorems is an important skill in mathematics. If you only learn to use what comes served on a silver platter, where will you learn to handle situations where you haven't had the theorem taught to you in advance? My impression of UC undergraduate students is that "find the correct formula and plug in the numbers" is the only type of math they know how to do, and encouraging that doesn't seem like a way forward.
    - curtis 17y ago
      > My impression of UC undergraduate students is that "find the correct formula and plug in the numbers" is the only type of math they know how to do, ... I believe that Mass has come to his position against Discovery Math precisely because his students at the University of Washington can't even do that.
    - jff 17y ago
      It is important to know how to prove theorems. However, I don't think the correct way to do it is to say "Here's some vague hints, now try to guess what we're talking about by playing with these blocks". The way I was taught, which I found pretty effective, was that we'd be given an theorem, then in some cases (not all, or we'd never get anywhere) prove that statement. When you hand over the theorem and then make the student prove it, he applies and synthesizes previous theorems to explain the new one.
olegk 17y ago
Welfare. These low-income and minority kids know they won't starve to death, they think that learning is "acting white". Here's the result. Oh well, better for the rest of us.
- lonestar 17y ago
  "Oh well, better for the rest of us." Do you really think so? I'd prefer to live in a society where everyone was well-educated, or at least enjoyed learning. I think you'd find there is some spillover benefit for yourself to be had from "these low-income and minority kids" receiving high-quality education.
  - olegk 17y ago
    I'd prefer to live in the society where all people would have unlimited supply of food, water, heath care, wouldn't kill each other, have lots of fun. Unfortunately this kind of "magical" thinking is a very weak argument, and just doesn't work. Welcome to the real world.
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      If we're being hard-headed, we should also consider the possibility that intelligence is just not evenly distributed, and while schools should seek to improve as many students by as much as possible, we need an economic infrastructure that can make productive and self-sustaining use of less intelligent people as well as smart ones. In short, dumb people are not going away, so there needs to be a means for them to earn a legal living.
      - olegk 17y ago
        Well, they way system is set up right now, it obviously doesn't work, wouldn't you agree? Basically, the government is throwing money at poor/minorities, and they end up having more kids. Same exact thing happens in African countries. Every time somebody donates money/food, it goes towards procreation, not improvement of the quality of life or education. I remember one successful African story. This group of volunteers instead of building a water well decided to involve the residents in the process. So they served as architects, while locals were doing all the hard labor. The results were really good - locals knew how to support the well. They became self-sufficient. That, in my opinion, is the solution. It's a slow process, but I don't see many alternatives.
danteembermage 17y ago
As a university level instructor, I find so many things high school teachers have to put up with appalling. I choose my text book for one. My lesson plans are not approved by anyone except me (yes, in fact my sister-in-law had to use recycled old lesson plans because they were "AP approved") The decision rights should be located as close to the in-the-trenches information unless the coordination benefits outweigh the costs. I doubt the benefits come anywhere close here.
anigbrowl 17y ago
A pity that the article does not include any excerpts from the books or detailed critiques of what's wrong with them. Examining a Discovering Algebra book at http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Algebra-Investigative-Approach-Mathematics/dp/1559533404 http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Algebra-Investigative-Appr... suggests that the book is not so bad (though obviously this only allows previewing a few pages)...however, I'm unsure whether this is even the same book, since the OP doesn't mention the name of the publisher. It's hard to judge whether the books themselves are poor or whether the failure stems from teachers unwilling to adapt to a knowledge-building rather than a purely didactic approach. Education is important and worth spending money on but (as a European) I'm frequently horrified by American teachers, whose union seems defensive even of members who exhibit basic deficiencies in literacy or numeracy. It's still strange to me, for example, to consider that there are teacher's editions of textbooks that include answer keys for scoring homework - I ask myself what possible need a competent teacher could have for such a thing, and why school districts are wasting money on buying them. I'm strongly against dumbing down school curricula; on the other hand, I think discovery of knowledge by experiment imprints knowledge far better than mere receptive learning (cf. recent HN posts about college physics students who learn the material well but are hopelessly incapable of applying it to a novel context). So I'm inclined to favor the approach of these textbooks (without endorsing their actual content). This article http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/the_constant_math_problem_how.html http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/the_constan... suggests that at least some of the problem stems from parental or school unfamiliarity with the methods, such as complaints about an 'overemphasis on...problem solving'. Hmmm. I think we need to take a closer look before jumping onto the 'blame the book' bandwagon. The books discussed may well be inadequate, but it's hard to judge that without a more reasoned critique. If anything, this lends further support to opinion of many HN readers that we should be moving towards open-source textbooks instead of the current cosy arrangement between school districts and publishers.
- tylerritchie 17y ago
  It's the books and the curriculum. Just watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI and cry.
tsally 17y ago
If you want an example of math education that does a lot right, take a look at what's been done in Chicago [1,2]. Unfortunately, substandard K-12 curriculum is all too common. I don't even want to think about the billions of dollars society would save by implementing effective programs across the board. Makes me sad. :-/ [1] http://ucsmp.uchicago.edu/ http://ucsmp.uchicago.edu/ [2] http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/ http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/
Groxx 17y ago
I find it telling that the article breaks down scores by race, not by income. Note that it claims that the difficulties are for low income families who cannot afford tutors / other resources, not black children. What's the crossover? What's the pass ratio for poor white children? Granted, a book can easily be harder to read / understand for less-classically-trained children. I'm not saying it's not possible, just that the article is definitely seeing what it was looking for.
- abscondment 17y ago
  The first table cites the pass ratios for all low-income students at 37.3%, 28.3%, and 26.4% for 4th, 7th, and 10th grade respectively -- the pass rates for black children are lower than that. So one can accurately infer that non-black low-income children perform better. Granted, this isn't as informative as breaking things down by both race and income. But, as far as I can tell, this is a limitation of the state's reporting data and not a selective argument made by the blog. See http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us
  - Groxx 17y ago
    Maybe I'm just missing something, but I see no data there about pass ratios for any subject, much less a breakdown by race / income.
    - abscondment 17y ago
      You have to look at the WASL specifically and filter on other criteria from there. For example, a bar chart of 10th grade scores comparing low/non-low incomes: http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/waslTrend.aspx?year=&gradeLevelId=10&waslCategory=-5&chartType=2 http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/waslTrend.aspx?year=&gr...
      - Groxx 17y ago
        Aaah, now I see. Thanks!
cabalamat 17y ago
I'm sure some methods of teaching maths are better than others. But is a lawsuit really the best way to settle the issue?
houseabsolute 17y ago
OK, so it worsens the achievement gap, but what about absolute achievement. I'm fine if the poor are even worse off than the rich if they are 5% better off absolutely (i.e. the rich are 10% better off).
motters 17y ago
The categorisation of children's test scores into different racial types I think says a lot about how far America has yet to go in dealing with issues of segregation and unequal opportunities - despite Obama's election as president.
- curtis 17y ago
  We've been doing this categorization for a long time, and if we don't do it, we can't tell if we're really addressing the problem.
Scott_MacGregor 17y ago
Why not offer both types of instruction and let the teachers recommend which students should learn by which method. It seems like having an option would make it more likely more students would do better. Why limit the students to only one option.
dobbse 17y ago
A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart: http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf Persuaded me that the way I learned math is pathologically soul crushing; the way it's taught from kindergarden through university. The first two pages set up a nice metaphor: mathematics is argument and creativity and our traditional math education by memorization and rote repetition are akin to teaching music by reading and writing sheet music without first hearing or playing an instrument. "No society would ever reduce such a beautiful and meaningful art form to something so mindless and trivial; no culture could be so cruel to its children as to deprive them of such a natural, satisfying means of human expression." The rest of the article digs into some specific examples. Mathematics instruction needs an overhaul and back-to-basics isn't The Right Thing.

30 points by brfox 17y ago

It's interesting to use an ethnic achievement gap as a legal basis for opposing a particular math program. That most United States school districts don't simply use Singapore Math http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm shows that most math curriculum adoptions are not made on the basis of best results for least expense.

yummyfajitas 17y ago
It's mainly convenience. In the educational establishment and some courts, equality is more important than quality. Challenging curricula on the basis "this is bad for non-asian minorities more than others" is more likely to be successful than "this is bad for everyone". It is considered better for 100% of every group to be a moron than for 70% of blacks and 30% of whites to be a moron. [Edit: Added words "it is considered" to last sentence. Before it looked like I endorsed this view, which I don't.]
evgen 17y ago
This is probably because the program you repeatedly suggest as the solution to all of the math education woes in the US has a distinct lack of statistically valid studies to back up the claims being made. It is popular among the homeschooling crowd but that does not mean it is effective or applicable at a larger scale (e.g. the LA unified school district alone has three times as many students as Singapore but only twice the budget, etc.)
- tokenadult 17y ago
  LA unified school district alone has three times as many students as Singapore but only twice the budget That's an interesting factual claim, which depends crucially on currency conversions between the United States dollar and the Singapore dollar. Do you have a link to a source for the factual statement, preferably one that "shows the work" (as a math teacher would say) by giving the school-age population numbers for each place and the all-sources primary education budgets for each place?

iterationx 17y ago

From the article >>In this approach math is substantially dumbed down for "equity" reasons and students are asked to discover age-old principles on their own. Charlotte Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, wrote the free eBook (pdf) "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/ http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/

lutorm 17y ago
"Dumbing down" and "discovering age-old principles on their own" are not necessarily the same. There is definitely value in learning to do creative work in math and science, beyond just rote memorization and learning to regurgitate what the teacher tells you. It pretty clear that many people with high grades in school are poorly prepared for situations where you actually have to do original work, like grad school. Of course, there has to be a balance between base skills and that. Also, for another take on math education, see http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html
- cabalamat 17y ago
  > "Dumbing down" and "discovering age-old principles on their own" are not necessarily the same. Indeed not. I'm writing an interpreter for a Lisp-like language right now (does Lisp count as "age-old"? I guess in computer terms it does), but I don't consider that a dumb thing to do.
- bitwize 17y ago
  The problem with rote memorization is that it gets results. You cannot do algebra until you know your times tables by heart, and how did kids learn their times tables in ages past, when men were men and went to the moon without the aid of calculators? Drill, drill, drill. Going on and on about the beauty of math is all well and good if your brain is wired that way, but when 90% of America's high school grads are stymied by making simple change, you fall back on what works.
  - 17y ago

Afton 17y ago

I am made uneasy about someone that contrasts 'low income' and 'white' in their graphs. I do however, still holding a low opinion of the discovery math pedagogical model in general, as it requires more math sophistication than is likely to be found in an elementary/middle/high school's teacher.

jff 17y ago
I was disturbed by the "low income" vs. "white" separation. Does the white group also include low income white students? Or, to further their point, did they decide low income whites aren't really white? Nobody should have to "rediscover" the Pythagorean Theorem. I'll go out on a limb and say Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Descartes, etc. just went ahead and read Euclid, and they did pretty well for themselves.
- lutorm 17y ago
  Learning to prove mathematical theorems is an important skill in mathematics. If you only learn to use what comes served on a silver platter, where will you learn to handle situations where you haven't had the theorem taught to you in advance? My impression of UC undergraduate students is that "find the correct formula and plug in the numbers" is the only type of math they know how to do, and encouraging that doesn't seem like a way forward.
  - curtis 17y ago
    > My impression of UC undergraduate students is that "find the correct formula and plug in the numbers" is the only type of math they know how to do, ... I believe that Mass has come to his position against Discovery Math precisely because his students at the University of Washington can't even do that.
  - jff 17y ago
    It is important to know how to prove theorems. However, I don't think the correct way to do it is to say "Here's some vague hints, now try to guess what we're talking about by playing with these blocks". The way I was taught, which I found pretty effective, was that we'd be given an theorem, then in some cases (not all, or we'd never get anywhere) prove that statement. When you hand over the theorem and then make the student prove it, he applies and synthesizes previous theorems to explain the new one.

olegk 17y ago

Welfare. These low-income and minority kids know they won't starve to death, they think that learning is "acting white". Here's the result. Oh well, better for the rest of us.

lonestar 17y ago
"Oh well, better for the rest of us." Do you really think so? I'd prefer to live in a society where everyone was well-educated, or at least enjoyed learning. I think you'd find there is some spillover benefit for yourself to be had from "these low-income and minority kids" receiving high-quality education.
- olegk 17y ago
  I'd prefer to live in the society where all people would have unlimited supply of food, water, heath care, wouldn't kill each other, have lots of fun. Unfortunately this kind of "magical" thinking is a very weak argument, and just doesn't work. Welcome to the real world.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    If we're being hard-headed, we should also consider the possibility that intelligence is just not evenly distributed, and while schools should seek to improve as many students by as much as possible, we need an economic infrastructure that can make productive and self-sustaining use of less intelligent people as well as smart ones. In short, dumb people are not going away, so there needs to be a means for them to earn a legal living.
    - olegk 17y ago
      Well, they way system is set up right now, it obviously doesn't work, wouldn't you agree? Basically, the government is throwing money at poor/minorities, and they end up having more kids. Same exact thing happens in African countries. Every time somebody donates money/food, it goes towards procreation, not improvement of the quality of life or education. I remember one successful African story. This group of volunteers instead of building a water well decided to involve the residents in the process. So they served as architects, while locals were doing all the hard labor. The results were really good - locals knew how to support the well. They became self-sufficient. That, in my opinion, is the solution. It's a slow process, but I don't see many alternatives.

danteembermage 17y ago

As a university level instructor, I find so many things high school teachers have to put up with appalling. I choose my text book for one. My lesson plans are not approved by anyone except me (yes, in fact my sister-in-law had to use recycled old lesson plans because they were "AP approved") The decision rights should be located as close to the in-the-trenches information unless the coordination benefits outweigh the costs. I doubt the benefits come anywhere close here.

anigbrowl 17y ago

A pity that the article does not include any excerpts from the books or detailed critiques of what's wrong with them. Examining a Discovering Algebra book at http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Algebra-Investigative-Approach-Mathematics/dp/1559533404 http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Algebra-Investigative-Appr... suggests that the book is not so bad (though obviously this only allows previewing a few pages)...however, I'm unsure whether this is even the same book, since the OP doesn't mention the name of the publisher. It's hard to judge whether the books themselves are poor or whether the failure stems from teachers unwilling to adapt to a knowledge-building rather than a purely didactic approach. Education is important and worth spending money on but (as a European) I'm frequently horrified by American teachers, whose union seems defensive even of members who exhibit basic deficiencies in literacy or numeracy. It's still strange to me, for example, to consider that there are teacher's editions of textbooks that include answer keys for scoring homework - I ask myself what possible need a competent teacher could have for such a thing, and why school districts are wasting money on buying them. I'm strongly against dumbing down school curricula; on the other hand, I think discovery of knowledge by experiment imprints knowledge far better than mere receptive learning (cf. recent HN posts about college physics students who learn the material well but are hopelessly incapable of applying it to a novel context). So I'm inclined to favor the approach of these textbooks (without endorsing their actual content). This article http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/the_constant_math_problem_how.html http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/the_constan... suggests that at least some of the problem stems from parental or school unfamiliarity with the methods, such as complaints about an 'overemphasis on...problem solving'. Hmmm. I think we need to take a closer look before jumping onto the 'blame the book' bandwagon. The books discussed may well be inadequate, but it's hard to judge that without a more reasoned critique. If anything, this lends further support to opinion of many HN readers that we should be moving towards open-source textbooks instead of the current cosy arrangement between school districts and publishers.

tylerritchie 17y ago
It's the books and the curriculum. Just watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI and cry.

tsally 17y ago

If you want an example of math education that does a lot right, take a look at what's been done in Chicago [1,2]. Unfortunately, substandard K-12 curriculum is all too common. I don't even want to think about the billions of dollars society would save by implementing effective programs across the board. Makes me sad. :-/ [1] http://ucsmp.uchicago.edu/ http://ucsmp.uchicago.edu/ [2] http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/ http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/

Groxx 17y ago

I find it telling that the article breaks down scores by race, not by income. Note that it claims that the difficulties are for low income families who cannot afford tutors / other resources, not black children. What's the crossover? What's the pass ratio for poor white children? Granted, a book can easily be harder to read / understand for less-classically-trained children. I'm not saying it's not possible, just that the article is definitely seeing what it was looking for.

abscondment 17y ago
The first table cites the pass ratios for all low-income students at 37.3%, 28.3%, and 26.4% for 4th, 7th, and 10th grade respectively -- the pass rates for black children are lower than that. So one can accurately infer that non-black low-income children perform better. Granted, this isn't as informative as breaking things down by both race and income. But, as far as I can tell, this is a limitation of the state's reporting data and not a selective argument made by the blog. See http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us
- Groxx 17y ago
  Maybe I'm just missing something, but I see no data there about pass ratios for any subject, much less a breakdown by race / income.
  - abscondment 17y ago
    You have to look at the WASL specifically and filter on other criteria from there. For example, a bar chart of 10th grade scores comparing low/non-low incomes: http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/waslTrend.aspx?year=&gradeLevelId=10&waslCategory=-5&chartType=2 http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/waslTrend.aspx?year=&gr...
    - Groxx 17y ago
      Aaah, now I see. Thanks!

cabalamat 17y ago

I'm sure some methods of teaching maths are better than others. But is a lawsuit really the best way to settle the issue?

houseabsolute 17y ago

OK, so it worsens the achievement gap, but what about absolute achievement. I'm fine if the poor are even worse off than the rich if they are 5% better off absolutely (i.e. the rich are 10% better off).

motters 17y ago

The categorisation of children's test scores into different racial types I think says a lot about how far America has yet to go in dealing with issues of segregation and unequal opportunities - despite Obama's election as president.

curtis 17y ago
We've been doing this categorization for a long time, and if we don't do it, we can't tell if we're really addressing the problem.

Scott_MacGregor 17y ago

Why not offer both types of instruction and let the teachers recommend which students should learn by which method. It seems like having an option would make it more likely more students would do better. Why limit the students to only one option.

dobbse 17y ago

A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart: http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf Persuaded me that the way I learned math is pathologically soul crushing; the way it's taught from kindergarden through university. The first two pages set up a nice metaphor: mathematics is argument and creativity and our traditional math education by memorization and rote repetition are akin to teaching music by reading and writing sheet music without first hearing or playing an instrument. "No society would ever reduce such a beautiful and meaningful art form to something so mindless and trivial; no culture could be so cruel to its children as to deprive them of such a natural, satisfying means of human expression." The rest of the article digs into some specific examples. Mathematics instruction needs an overhaul and back-to-basics isn't The Right Thing.