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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

******

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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>Dear Friends:

On June 13 2007, the Ridgewood Council will have a public hearing on an ordinance to amend the Code of the Village of Ridgewood to provide for certain violations for the “consumption and/or possession of alcoholic beverage by underage persons”.
The intent of this ordinance is in no way meant to provide police with additional grounds to enter a residence or to give kids a police record, but rather to protect them as well as the residents of the Village. Our goal is to save lives!

The following information provided by the National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information is important to note:
1) A child who reaches age 21 without smoking, abusing alcohol or using drugs is virtually certain never to do so.
2) The average age when youth first try alcohol is 11 years for boys and 13 years for girls. The average age at which Americans begin drinking regularly is 15.9 years old.
3) It has been estimated that over three million teenagers are out-and-out alcoholics. Several million more have a serious drinking problem that they cannot manage on their own.
4) The three leading causes of death for 15-24 year olds are automobile crashes, homicides and suicides — alcohol is a leading factor in all three.

The Community Task Force will be holding presentations for students as well as parents. Teenage drinking is a problem not only for Ridgewood. However, we as parents/adults can do something to help our children. Come to the meeting on June 13th.! I Support the Ordinance!. I believe it will help save lives.
What do you think? I would like your input to get a clear idea of where the community stands on the proposed ordinance. You can e-mail me with your comments at pmancuso@ridgewoodnj.net or call me at (201)447-3489.
If you would like, I will also be happy to meet with you (individually or in groups). I look forward to hear from you.

Please send this e-mail to ten friends and ask them to do the same.

Thank you.

Pat Mancuso

>The Fly wonders if anyone else felt as though there were an unusually large number of BOE supporters present at the microphone during the public comment portion of last Monday night’s meeting. Do BOE members actually think that the public doesn’t recognize a stacked deck when they see one?

The absence of negative comments during 5/14’s meeting should not be viewed as public acceptance of Dr. Brooks’ appointment as our new Public Schools Superintendent. Nor should it signify parental acceptance of TERC. The BOE’s intimidation strategy worked this time, but the REAL public will be heard at future meetings, like it or not.

>General H. Norman Schwarzkopf:Some of the best leadership lessons I learned as a young officer were from terrible officers. I mean, absolutely morally bankrupt Officers who had no redeeming qualities. People followed them out of sheer wonder for what they would do next. You learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because you learn how not to do it. And therefore, you learn how to do it. Speech at the United States Military AcademyGeneral Schwarzkopf’s quote really fits this blog to a T! 2498 ISP’s this month so far – Why? Simply because some of the people who write on this blog have their own personal agenda (Including you PJ) and they are just like those morally bankrupt officers. And people follow this blog out of sheer wonder of what these self serving, egotistical people have to say! I must admit it is entertaining.

Your friendly Village Idiot

PJ,

I am amazed that you haven’t figured this out? It really isn’t that difficult to understand! Of the relativity few people that agree with you and your ideas only 6 or so showed up at last nights meeting. Apparently you don’t understand that even if you had a super majority, an elected official is charged with doing what is proper and correct for the entire community. I could try to give you a basic civics lesson, but I am sure it would be a waste of time.

Why didn’t we have 10 or more candidates running for the Board of Education? Where were the many critics (from this blog) of the Board of Education at the last Board Election? Nowhere to be found, that’s where!

You stated “So next time opposing candidates run against the status quo please give them some serious consideration and recognize that we shouldn’t have to have a fiasco like this every couple of years to galvanize our interest in our children’s future.”

What fiasco are you referring to? The fact that you and a small group of people who agree with you didn’t get your way? Sounds to me like your having a temper tantrum!

Your friendly Village Idiot

Anonymous asked me….
Idiot while you busy patting yourself on the back, have you noticed how many homes are for sale in town? ..Remember as the schools go so goes the town

Yes, I have noticed the 110 homes currently on the market….and I am hope to see more so there is continued drop in the prices of these homes (Thanks in part to the sub prime lenders) so I can buy low (now) and sell high (later – PJ I believe you should have some knowledge about this.) So please put your home up for sale….maybe I will be the buyer!

Your friendly Village Idiot

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>We’ve been experimented on. The National Research Council concluded that 13 NSF reform math texts in use “essentially have been experiments” (On Evaluating Curricular Effectiveness: p.188). These NSF texts include EverydayMath and TERC Investigations in Number, Data, & Space. The NRC evaluated a total of nineteen curricula and published a book that can be purchased on Amazon.com: On Evaluating Curricular Effectiveness: Judging Quality Of K-12 Mathematics Evaluations, or read painfully online.

In the book’s conclusion the NRC explains that to first find out if a major investment in an approach is successful and worthwhile is responsible policy. The NRC further notes that the experiment was a success in that it sparked a national debate. Is your child part of this experiment? Do you mind that the measure of success of your little experiment is the sparking of a national debate? What about your kid?

The conclusion states: “These 19 curricular projects essentially have been experiments. We owe them a careful reading on their effectiveness. “Demands for evaluation may be cast as a sign of failure, but we would rather stress that this examination is a sign of the success of these programs to engage a country in a scholarly debate on the question of curricular effectiveness and the essential underlying question, What is most important for our youth to learn in their studies in mathematics? “To summarily blame national decline on a set of curricula whose use has a limited market share lacks credibility. “At the same time, to find out if a major investment in an approach is successful and worthwhile is a prime example of responsible policy.

In experimentation, success and worthiness are two different measures of experimental value. An experiment can fail and yet be worthy. “The experiments that probably should not be run are those in which it is either impossible to determine if the experiment has failed or it is ensured at the start, by design, that the experiment will succeed. The contribution of the committee is intended to help us ascertain these distinctive outcomes.” Do you want your child to be in the experiment? If not, say so. The experiments will continue for as long as parents are willing to put up with it. View the NRC report.
• Email to a friend •

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>Thursday, August 10, 2006

Richard Feynman on the textbook review process

My wife’s post about how poor public school textbooks are reminded me of Richard Feynman’s account of reviewing textbooks for the State of California.Before reading the account it helps to know who is Richard Feynman. Briefly he was a very accomplished physicist. He is one of the top names in physics. As his section in Wikipedia says Feynman is know for “expanding greatly on the theory of quantum electrodynamics, particle theory, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium.”And to have the full context for understanding his account of the textbook review process it helps to know that Richard Feynman was also well known for his ability to teach physics. He had that rare gift of being able to understand hard, complex ideas, and then teaching them in such a way that others could comprehend the concepts and principles.In his book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! he wrote a chapter on evaluating school textbooks. His account is well written and it is worth reading the whole chapter.

Here are a few snippets:Richard Feynman wrote about how he would get so angry when reading the books. “The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for “sets”) which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties.

The definitions weren’t accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous — they weren’t smart enough to understand what was meant by “rigor.” They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn’t understand, and which was, in fact, useless, at that time, for the child.”

After Richard Feynman plowed through various books he would go to committee meetings to evaluate and rate the books. Richard found out that sometimes he was the only one who read the books. In fact a blank book had gotten a high rating by a number of committee members.

He recieved a lot of attention from book publishers. They would offer him gifts. For example he said: “Another thing like this happened when one of the publishers sent me a leather briefcase with my name nicely written in gold on it. I gave them the same stuff: ‘I can’t accept it; I’m judging some of the books you’re publishing. I don’t think you understand that!'”I read this account several years ago.

When I went to Google to find it again, I found it on The Textbook League’s web site.

At the end of the chapter the TextbookLeague has a postscript, here is part:”We don’t know of any other case in which state functionaries have given high marks to a book whose pages were blank, but all the other follies and outrages described in Feynman’s narrative are familiar.””During the past ten years we have studied adoptions operated by state agencies in California and elsewhere, and we have seen — again and again — the same practices that Feynman observed in 1964. As a rule, state textbook-adoption proceedings are bureaucratic shams.

As a rule, the evaluation committees assembled by state agencies are manifestly unqualified to appraise textbooks or to render any meaningful advice.”and later the postscript says:”If a state agency really wanted to obtain legitimate evaluations of textbooks, the agency could achieve this by using a process that is very well known: Send each book to a knowledgeable reviewer who will appraise it, who will write a report to set forth and explain his appraisal, and who will sign his name to his report.

This is the process employed by the book-review editors of newspapers, magazines and professional journals throughout the land. It works, and it can be repeated to any desired extent: To obtain several appraisals of a given book, simply send the book to several reviewers.””As a rule, however, state agencies don’t want legitimate evaluations of the textbooks that publishers submit for adoption, because the agencies are allied with the publishers.

“When you hear in the news about again the decline in American public schools, remember at least part of the problem is the process by which the textbooks are selected.

also see https://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

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>From BOE 5/14/2007 Agenda:
It is recommended that the Board approve Martin G. Brooks, Superintendent of
Schools, effective July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2012 beginning at the rate
of $212,000.

Dr. Brooks’ background is as follows:
� Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, Department
of Educational Administration
� Ed.M. from Teachers College, Columbia University, Department
of Educational Administration
� Master’s degree from New York University, Department of
Secondary Education
� Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University
� Over twenty-three years experience as an administrator:
o Seven years as Superintendent of Schools, Plainview-Old Bethpage
Central School District, Plainview, New York
o Eight years as Superintendent of Schools, Valley Stream School
District
o Sixteen years with the Shoreham Wading River Central School District
as principal, Assistant Superintendent of Instruction, Deputy
Superintendent, Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent, and Director
of Elementary Education
o Teacher and guidance counselor for the Bronx, New York City Public
Schools

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>During their Public Meeting on May 9, Village Council members introduced Ordinance 3065 – “Consumption and/or possession of Alcoholic Beverages by Underage Persons”.

The Public Hearing for this ordinance will be at 8:00pm on June 13 in the Sydney V. Stoldt, Jr. Court Room at Village Hall.

Click Here for the ordinance’s full text.

Readers speak out…..

At the “News you can use” meeting last week Shelia claimed that 52 towns in Bergen County have already adopted similar ordinances. They sited and provided the NJ statute allowing municipalities to create local ordinances regarding private property – I have still yet to find the section where it states that underage drinking is probable cause for police to enter private property.

Captain Killion stated that Cops can already enter your property “to check things out” I don’t know you about you but if this has been the case in the past they wouldn’t be able to arrest anybody.

Fairl Lawn was the most recent to pass this ordinance which relatviely mirrors the one proposed by the council. I personally disagree with the ordinance but know it is going to pass. I suggest that the monetary fines be removed and only impose community service sanctions. The suspension of driving priveleges for a non-driving offense is not right in my opinion either.

I agree it is up to the parents. An “arrest” for a village ordinance is simply a summons to court to determine the fine – Has no long term affect on kids “Permenant Record” and this ordinance will do nothing to stop underage drinking.

They claimed there was no way to track the degrees of success by this ordinance. That means they haven’t been writing tickets to the homeowners that are providing the alcohol and the place to drink. They claim that this will magically fix everything.

COME ON!