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Ridgewood’s Assist. Superintendent for Curriculum Caught Misrepresenting Stanford and Harvard Math ProfessorsThe Fly on the Wall took note that viewers had a front row seat at last night’s Board of Education meeting to see how administrators of the District’s math department mislead taxpayers and parents. Regina Botsford, the District’s Director of Curriculum, squandered what remained of her credibility by claiming in an extensive presentation that the document entitled, “Reaching for Common Ground in K-12 Mathematics,” was the standard followed by Ridgewood’s math department in its desire to pursue the “Investigations” curricula, also known as TERC, in an effort to make math accessible to all children. This 2007 document prepared by the prestigious Mathematical Association of America was authored by six premier educators who sought to find ‘common ground’ in the ongoing math debates to protect districts from falling prey to experimental math programs and to ensure that their K-12 math curricula is established on solid academic standards. Ms. Botsford praised the document and its authors and made it clear that by following what this document outlined, Ridgewood was providing the very best math texts and programs to its children.
What happened next was nothing short of stunning as a parent, identified as Ms. Joan O’Keefe, took to the microphone to share with the public her recent communication with the key mathematics professor who served as one of this document’s authors, Professor R. James Milgram of Stanford University. This parent had contacted Professor Milgram when the “common ground” document first appeared on the District’s web site under “Information for Parents.” Contrary to what Ms. Botsford would have parents and board members believe, Dr. Milgram wrote that, “TERC is the second most mathematically illiterate and damaging program I have ever seen.” Milgram’s full response and the joint statement he references are below:
“Dear MS. O’Keefe,
A number of people have attempted to claim that the Common Groundsdocument means that we regard programs like TERC’s Investigations asacceptable. Nothing could be further from the truth. It got to thepoint that the two mathematicians among the authors, Wilfried Schmid andI, were forced to provide a joint clarifying statement, and I append itbelow.Just to be entirely clear, I can’t speak for Wilfried beyond what we sayjointly in our statement below, however my personal view is that TERC isthe second most mathematically illiterate and damaging program I haveever seen. The first, MathLand, was one of the main reasons I gotinvolved in issues of mathematics education, but Investigations is solittle better than that horror that it is scarsely possible to discernthe difference between the results for the students subjected to theseprograms.”
R. James MilgramProfessor of MathematicsStanford University
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The following is a joint statement fromWilfried SchmidProfessor of MathematicsHarvard UniversityandR. James MilgramProfessor of MathematicsStanford University
It has been suggested that our views on K-12 mathematics educationhave undergone a recent change. Not at all — we have consistentlymaintained that mathematics education must strive for a proper balancebetween mathematical reasoning, problem solving, and computationalfacility.Mathematical reasoning requires not only accurate definitions, but alsoexamples of precise reasoning with these definitions. In our view, allof the NSF funded curricula fall short of giving students the essentialtools to reason accurately.Basic number skills continue to be vitally important. Beyond theeveryday use of arithmetic, these skills provide a crucial foundationfor the higher level mathematics essential for today’s and tomorrow’sworkplace. The NSF funded curricula generally encourage overuse ofcalculators, do not give students sufficient support to achieveautomatic recall of basic number facts, do not teach algorithmsproperly, and pay insufficient attention to the arithmetic of fractions.We regard the K-5 program “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space”(TERC) as especially deficient.
R. James MilgramWilfried Schmid
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