Why the Latest Trendy Approach to Learning Math Is Driving Students and their Families to Tears

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http://www.alternet.org/education/why-latest-trendy-approach-learning-math-driving-students-and-their-families-tears



Recently, I saw a Facebook post by an educator teaching sixth grade for the first time. In it, she begged for help from anyone who had taught Common Core math to sixth graders. Her school district hadn’t provided much training, and she was clearly in over her head.

Her post was a perfect illustration of a point Elizabeth Green made in a July New York Times Magazine article: “( New Math) – (New Teaching) = Failure.” (This is a much better headline, by the way, than the one you will see if you click on the link.) The article explains how new curricula, new approaches and yet another round of “new math” are all bound to fail, just as they did in the 1960s and '80s, thanks to a lack of extensive teacher training.

I know about those earlier failures from personal experience. Because I was taught Max Beberman’s approach to math in high school, I definitely suffer from “ innumeracy”—a lack of understanding of mathematical concepts. I attribute the fact that I need a calculator to do most anything math-related to the failure of this early effort at new math. Despite being a good student, I was so turned off by the curriculum that I never entered another math class after 11th grade. I dropped out of helping my own kids with math homework before middle school.

Thus, when I tried to help one of my granddaughters with her second-grade math homework, the results were less than ideal. She brought home a standard worksheet from Everyday Mathematics, a curriculum aligned with Common Core math. I read the hint to parents at the top and asked her if she had practiced this at school yet. She claimed she had not. Well, how hard could this be? We plunged ahead.