News Analysis Math Wars

News Analysis
Math Wars

– By Peter Jovanovich –

The spirited discussion at the last Rye City School District Board Meeting on the subject of math was not unusual. All across America, parents, teachers and math educators are arguing with each other over the merits of the best approach to teach math. What's all the fuss about?

On the surface, the controversy seems to be about what are called “math facts” and “math skills” — things like multiplication tables, long division procedures, etc. Parents, including one of the Board members, report that their children can't perform simple mental math calculations because they don't know their times tables.

The culprit, according to some, is what they call “fuzzy math.” That's the critics' shorthand for a new math curriculum that was introduced by the National Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in 1989. This new NCTM curriculum encouraged schools to focus on the language of math, teaching math concepts instead of drilling math facts.

Both the proponents and the critics of the conceptual approach have a point. Drilling times tables ad nauseam will not help your child learn algebra. And, a curriculum with too little practice of math facts is equally deficient. Interestingly, the NCTM recently revised their curriculum guidelines to incorporate more practice.

Regrettably, neither approach has proven that it can solve the real problem: American school children do poorly in math compared to most other industrialized countries. Even with the introduction of a new math curriculum in many states over the last decade, we are not catching up. In Rye City School District, students have shown significant improvement in the elementary grades, but progress in middle school and high school has been more difficult. Math SAT scores are essentially unchanged since 2000.

What one learns by observing math teachers in better performing countries is that the teaching itself is different. Studies show that when American teachers teach conceptual problems, most often the lesson degrades into practice of procedures. In a country like Japan, teachers actually teach conceptual problems conceptually. Further, the average math teacher in the better performing countries is better educated (a college math degree is usually required) and better trained than Americans. And, most importantly, math teachers in leading countries like Japan collaborate constantly throughout the day to improve on the effectiveness of various lessons.

The epithets thrown about in “math wars,” like “fuzzy math” and “drill and kill,” tend to obscure the more pertinent problems in American math education. Our national math deficit has more to do with who's teaching math in our schools, and how they are teaching math, than when kids memorize 12 x 12. The answer's 148, isn't it?

Note: Sources for this article are available on our website, Ryerecord.com.