>You are forgetting the kids for whom the “reform” math actually helps make math accessible to them. My daughter (RHS grad) would have benefited greatly from this. In fact, I would have benefited from it! Instead, both she and I struggled continuously and eventually just gave up, with little opportunity for alternative ways to learn math concepts. I went through high school with straight A’s in everything, and C’s and D’s in algebra I and algebra II, and that’s it — no geometry, nothing else. Took a basic math class in college to fulfill the requirement. But never really learned. I tried, but teachers simply did not know how to explain it in a way I could actually learn. Now when I read some of the TERC or Everyday Math solutions, they make sense to me! They sound an awful lot like the methods I have figured out for myself! If I had this kind of teaching 30 years ago, I might not have been a “math-hater” all my life.
I know you all are the majority and you obviously have kids who can handle the structure of “old-school” math, but just don’t forget that there ARE kids out there who benefit from a more verbal and conceptual approach. That’s why this stuff was developed in the first place. I guess those kids, like my daughter and I, are expendable?
>I question whether you were ever really exposed to traditional math.
After all, TERC is the “new new” math. When you were in school, you might have been taking the “new” math. My sister, now 46 years old, was exposed to the “new” math and complains bitterly about it, because she can’t even calculate a 10% discount in her head.
I also agree that you must have had terrible math teachers. No suprise…finding a good math teacher is like finding a needle in a haystack.
>10:54 – Good math teachers are not hard to find. At least they were not hard to find in the past. I do not know about the current teachers but this district you to employ top notch math teachers. I hope the current administration has not changed its course of action and decided that the message is more important than the messenger. Not only would this be a horrible gameplan but the district also picked the wrong message.