SOCMM Public Comments before

CVUSD School Board

March 8, 2005

Honorable school board members, my name is Jo Anne Cobasko. I am the Founder of Save Our Children from Mediocre Math, which seeks “Math Choice” for Conejo Valley Unified School District students.

I received a letter last November from Martha Mutz the Director of Curriculum for the CVUSD which indicated “The SBE identified Everyday Math as an outstanding program.” The SBE 2001 Mathematics Adoption Report clearly states that the Everyday Math curriculum was rejected by the State Board of Education.

Yvonne Lux, a CLU Director, CSUCI Regional Site for The CA Mathematics Project, stated “Everyday Math met or exceeded all of the California Arithmetic standards except for the algorithm used for long division.” When asked if this statement was correct, Dr. James Milgram, Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University, and co author of the CA Math Standards responded:

“…No way is this correct. In fact …EM was uniformly weak in its coverage of all the standards in the lower grades except for aspects of geometry… (I was one of the reviewers of this program).”

These erroneous statements publicly made in support of Everyday Math, by individuals that hold great influence over curriculum decisions in our community, has only served to illustrate that they are either terribly misinformed, or that they are intentionally misrepresenting the facts to our community.

While there are a number of studies in support of the Everyday Math curriculum Professor Milgram states:

“…the recent publication of the book "On Evaluating Curricular Effectiveness" by the National Academy of Science, flatly states that none of the programs like EM have any body of valid research that shows they are effective... So it is safe to conclude that the district is trying a highly experimental, controversial, and unproven program on the district children.”

Everyday Math does not teach the standard algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, thereby leaving students ill prepared for advanced mathematics. Everyday Math delays the memorization of math facts beyond the grades required by the CA Math Standards, and fails to emphasize or reinforce pencil and paper computational skills.

California’s Math Standards are ranked #1 in the nation according to the Fordham Foundation. The CVUSD curriculum committee has ignored the opinions of some of the most respected individuals in mathematics and ignored the recommendations of the State Board of education. The CVUSD curriculum committee instead recommended a highly experimental, and grossly inadequate math program which discriminates against the economically disadvantaged, those least able to afford private tutoring.

Please do not allow this “experiment” in math education to continue without also providing parents “Math Choice”. CA approved math programs are scientifically proven effective in raising math scores for all students no matter the socio-economic status or language barriers they might face.

This matter deserves the school board’s immediate attention.

Save Our Children from Mediocre Math

Web site: http://socmm.home.att.net

CVUSD VOTER INFORMATION

CVUSD School Board Candidates

SOCMM CVUSD math choice SOCMM