Response to Dr. Kristine D. Butcher, C.L.U.

Re: T.O. Acorn Letter, “Everyday Math passes the test” April 14, 2005

By Dr. Wayne Bishop, Professor of Mathematics, C.S.U. Los Angeles

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Dear Dr. Butcher,

Your letter to the Thousand Oaks Acorn in Thursday's paper was passed along to several of us who have been in contact with Jo Anne Cobasko for several months and I'd like to add some clarification.

Although it may be literally true that only my counterpart at CSUN, David Klein, is quoted in her letters to the Acorn, rest assured that she has been - since Square 1, in fact - seeking advice and opinion from several of us who have been active in helping California escape from being last in the country both in reading and mathematics a decade ago (NAEP 1992 and 1994).  Progress in this endeavor has been slow but in the right direction.

Your letter remarks that you give little credence to either positive or negative opinions of the mathematicians around the country who signed the letter to then Secretary Riley objecting to the US Department of Education's stamp of approval (since pulled) for several curricula including Everyday Mathematics.  I would hope that you give second thought to your criticisms in this regard.  Getting and keeping the involvement of genuine mathematics faculty - as opposed to only mathematics education faculty - in California's curricular approval process has been great and instrumental to this reform that began with the ABC legislation in late 1995.  That involvement began when several of the Stanford mathematics faculty had their children in Palo Alto schools (stronger even than the excellent Conejo Valley ones) but were appalled at the sharply declining computational competence of the district and the work their children were bringing home.  Their efforts have been critical to the present so, please, do not dismiss them or us, more generally, for having become involved.

I do not know how or why Conejo Valley's waiver proposal was supported by Sacramento; most districts that got waivers for it, some 30 or so I believe, were already using it per prior approval.  It did not, however, make the cut with the 1999 or the 2001 approval process by the state and, I believe, based on sound reasons.  Although I was not assigned to EM either time, I am quite familiar with the program, its educational philosophy, and the nature of the research data that supports it.  An important part of that data - widely quoted so I assume used by Conejo Valley at the time - comes from the Pittsburgh Public Schools (http://www.cse.ucla.edu/CRESST/Reports/TECH528.pdf).  Regrettably, this is very misleading evidence.  I was part of team that advised the Pittsburgh Public Schools Board of Directors in 2002 so got a pretty good look at reality there.  Although much more complicated, a pretty good summary is that the school that had made the most objectively measured progress in mathematics using Pennsylvania's student assessment system (the PSSA) had figured out a way to purchase a more traditional mathematics program and was using that whenever the MPs (Mathematics Police, Diane Briars and her minions) were not in the neighborhood.  As you read her CRESST report, don't miss the fact that PSSA data was not used in this analysis.  In fact, it is not mentioned that Pennsylvania even has such a program for state level assessment of its schools.  With good reason.

More than likely, Pittsburgh will finally be replacing Everyday Mathematics this fall but you can safely extrapolate across the nation.  San Antonio USD used it for several years and EM still gets credit for improving the district's test scores.  In fact, the progress was in spite of EM, not because of it.  The superintendent that imposed it, Diana Lamm, had her contract bought ought by the district and, as soon as she was gone the teachers voted (79-21 by secret ballot) to replace it with Harcourt's Mathematics Advantage.  Their mathematics scores (TAAS) continued to rise.

Grade  3     4     5     6
1998   61   69   77   65   Last Lam year
1999   69   75   81   72   Last EM year  
2000   69   78   84   77
2001   71   83   90   79
2002   75   86   92   83

In any case, I'm glad your children are learning well and find the program stimulating but, please, appreciate the help that mathematics department faculty are offering to California, don't deprecate it.

Respectfully,

Wayne Bishop
Math Department
Cal State LA

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Save Our Children from Mediocre Math

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

SOCMM CVUSD Math Choice SOCMM

rebuttal of Dr. Kristine D. Butcher, C.L.U., T.O. Acorn Letter April 14, 2005, Everyday Math passes the test .