>https://www.gazette.net/stories/08142008/fredlet165341_32459.shtml
TERC Investigations math.
Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008
If you don’t know what it is, and you have an elementary student, you need to educate yourself.
Look it up on the Internet , and you will see the testimony of parents and teachers, students and principals who have been horrified by this poor teaching curriculum.
Math professionals’ review of this elementary math teaching curriculum puts it at the bottom in terms of educating children in basic math and preparing them for a future in math.
Investigations has not been recommended for use by the National Math Panel. In Virginia, third-graders’ standardized math test scores have gone down since TERC Investigations was implemented.
This is the math your child will be taught in Frederick County Public Schools starting this fall.
Sadly, the public’s concerns have been brought to the attention of our own Board of Education, but either the majority of them do not believe what others have experienced, they do not feel that mathematicians who hold doctorate degrees know what they are talking about, or they just don’t care.
Only two members of the school board voted to reconsider using TERC Investigations for this school year. They felt strongly enough to reconsider its use.
Sadly, the rest of the board has been sold on this product.
Obviously, those members are blindly taking the word of the “math specialist” who is selling it, rather than really looking at the proven poor track record of this curriculum.
We, as parents, have so much power to control what our children are being taught and how they are being taught. I know you are busy. I have three children younger than 13 and work outside the home.
But this is too important an issue to overlook or to hope someone else will take care of. We need to band together, educate ourselves, and intercede on our children’s behalf.
Visit our Web site, FrederickEducationReform.com, for information about TERC Investigations math. Talk to your children’s principal about your concerns once you, too, have read the facts.
Contact the Board of Education. That’s why they are there.
Let’s let them know that we are entitled to have a say in what kind of math they are teaching our kids and what is being left out.
Suzanne Middleton, Frederick
The writer is a member of Frederick Education Reform.