>Before the Math Professors letters get misrepresented as some kind of incendiary hate speech I wanted to republish the following letters so you can make up your own mind.

Subject: Re: Common Ground Report

Dear Ridgewood Neighbor,

A number of people have attempted to claim that the Common Grounds
document means that we regard programs like TERC’s Investigations as acceptable. Nothing could be further from the truth. It got to the point that the two mathematicians among the authors, Wilfried Schmid and I, were forced to provide a joint clarifying statement, and I append it below.

Just to be entirely clear, I can’t speak for Wilfried beyond what we say
jointly in our statement below, however my personal view is that TERC is
the second most mathematically illiterate and damaging program I have ever
seen. The first, MathLand, was one of the main reasons I got involved in
issues of mathematics education, but Investigations is so little better
than that horror that it is scarsely possible to discern the difference
between the results for the students subjected to these programs.

Here is the joint statement that I mentioned above:

The following is a joint statement from
Wilfried Schmid
Professor of Mathematics
Harvard University

R. James Milgram
Professor of Mathematics
Stanford University

It has been suggested that our views on K-12 mathematics education have undergone a recent change. Not at all — we have consistently maintained that mathematics education must strive for a proper balance between mathematical reasoning, problem solving, and computational facility.

Mathematical reasoning requires not only accurate definitions, but also examples of precise reasoning with these definitions. In our view, all of the NSF funded curricula fall short of giving students the essential tools to reason accurately.

Basic number skills continue to be vitally important. Beyond the everyday use of arithmetic, these skills provide a crucial foundation for the higher level mathematics essential for today’s and tomorrow’s workplace. The NSF funded curricula generally encourage overuse of calculators, do not give students sufficient support to achieve automatic recall of basic number facts, do not teach algorithms properly, 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 Milgram
Wilfried Schmid

>SAVE THE WHALES!

From Saturday’s Record

Ridgewood lifts ban on signs of hospital critics

Saturday, July 7, 2007

By BOB GROVES
STAFF WRITER

Citing the right to free speech, Ridgewood officials have reversed a ban on lawn signs that say “Stop The Valley Hospital Expansion.”

Residents who had posted the yellow signs on their front lawns had received letters from the village ordering them to remove the signs. They were told the signs violated a village zoning ordinance.

But Anthony Merlino, Ridgewood’s construction official and zoning officer, said he changed his mind after he received “many sincere inquiries” and consulted with the village attorney.

“The village will not take any action to have the signs removed,” he wrote in a letter to residents.

A spokeswoman for the hospital declined to comment on Friday.

Many neighbors of The Valley Hospital have protested its proposed $750-million plans to add a one-story parking deck on Linwood Avenue, and to tear down two older buildings and replace them with three new structures up to 80 feet tall. The hospital campus is surrounded by homes and a middle school.

Residents who received notices to remove their signs were only further frustrated with the village. While Valley has presented its plans to town officials several times, opponents were told they must wait until September to argue their case against hospital expansion.

“I’m very upset about the letters,” said Patricia Ciliberti, who lives near the hospital. “They were attacking my free speech. I’m from the protest generation. I’m still upset.”

Despite being told to remove her sign, she never took it down.

Valley was “a small community hospital” when she bought her home in 1991, she said. “I don’t want them to get any bigger,” she said.

Jim Blinn, who lives directly across from the hospital, said he was relieved his sign could stay.

“I thought they had overstepped their bounds,” Blinn said. “I was taken aback. I thought it was intrusive.

“We left our sign up the entire time, to make other members of the village aware of this massive, mind-boggling project,” he said.

The “Stop Valley” signs are protected under non-commercial speech because they address a public issue, said Matthew Rogers, the village attorney. The same laws protect political campaign signs and placards promoting issues such as a local effort to remind residents to “Drive 25,” Rogers said.

“The courts, and a litany of case law on regulating signs in residential areas, have found that non-commercial speech is more protected than commercial speech, [such as] signs talking about a carwash going on,” Rogers said.

The “Stop Valley” signs can remain in place only if they meet certain criteria set by the village, Merlino said. They must not be larger than 18 inches by 24 inches in size, and they are limited to one sign per property, to prevent “visual clutter” in residential neighborhoods, he said.

The signs may not be placed on village property, or in public rights of way, including sidewalks or curb areas, and they must not obstruct the vision of pedestrians or drivers, Merlino said.

Otherwise, “we have to allow them if they’re on private property, and they’re for a cause, like ‘Save the Whales,’ ” he said.

>

ORDER FINE ART/ STOCK PRINTS ON-LINE

>