What do you know about Everyday Math in PS?

[regentrude]

I am still puzzled how University of Chicago, which has one of the best math departments in the U.S., managed to produce this excuse for the curriculum.

 

Everyday Math was developed by the education department, not by the math department. Which, IMO, explains everthing.

[Kathryn]

Everyday Math was developed by the education department, not by the math department. Which, IMO, explains everthing.

 

I was pretty sure I read that yesterday, and was thinking the same thing.

[Berta]

(NOT a snarky question) - How did that go over? Were they accepting of that? My own experience with the PS taints my idea of how this went.

 

AND I really admire your strength.:D

 

 

I was just reading the hand out that I got when I went to "meet the teacher" night. It says homework counts towards grades. How do you not do homework but still pass the class? I have already written an email to the teacher declaring us a homework free home, but I haven't clicked SEND yet lol.. I'm thinking the teacher is going to freak, especially since I already sent her one telling her that I don't want my daughter learning math with EM. I asked if I could send in my own math (CLE) for her to do.

[MBM]

EM was originally developed and overseen by two mathematicians and two mathematics educators:

The University of Chicago School Math Project officially began in 1983 when the departments of mathematics and education received a grant from the Amoco Foundation (now the BP Foundation for a multifaceted project to improve mathematics education for students in grades K–12. The project brought together several faculty whose research laid the groundwork for UCSMP: the mathematicians Izaak Wirszup and Paul Sally, and the mathematics educators Max Bell and Zalman Usiskin. Education faculty Larry Hedges and Susan Stodolsky joined the project as evaluators.

 

http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/about/ucsmp-cemse/ucsmp/

 

If you do some Google searches, you should be able to find out the problems that arose early on, who left, and why. ETA: Here is one:

 

http://oilf.blogspot.com/2010/09/math-problems-of-week-4th-grade.html

 

Edited August 18, 2012 by MBM
added a link

[wapiti]

If you do some Google searches, you should be able to find out the problems that arose early on, who left, and why. ETA: Here is one:

 

http://oilf.blogspot.com/2010/09/math-problems-of-week-4th-grade.html

 

 

 

Thanks for pointing in this direction. This discussion has been very enlightening. From one of the comments at your link:

 

I have spoken with Jim Milgram, a math professor from Stanford, who knows Paul Sally and of his involvement with Everyday Math. The description you provided via Google is correct. What it leaves out is that the Chicago Math (i.e., Everyday Math) program as originally envisioned was for gifted and talented students. The lattice method of multiplication, which is a mainstay of the current incarnation of EM, was originally included as a sidebar type of discussion, not as an alternative algorithm. The sidebar was meant to provide some discussion of why the method worked--something notably missing from the current EM. Jim remarked that he can spot some math problems in the current EM which were part of the original, and it is interesting and disheartening to him to see how the problems are just left as problems with none of the discussion and development that Sally and crew had originally intended.

 

The forces of the ed school politics at U of Chicago prevailed at that time, and Sally was unable to push back against it. This may seem incredible given a mathematician of Sally's stature, but not so incredible when you consider that teachers with frighteningly little math knowledge and proficiency have told Jim Milgram that he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to how kids learn math. Jim would be the first to admit he is not an expert on pedagogy, but he does know what content students need to master and the proper sequence for presenting it. Content and sequence in the ed school perspective are viewed as obstacles that have prevented students from learning math.

Sally is an interesting guy.

 

He made a grander entrance into that arena in 1983 as founding director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, better known as “Chicago Math,†a curriculum designed mainly for grade schools. Still used in educating an estimated four million children nationwide, its teaching materials and textbooks tie math to everyday activities such as counting money and playing cards.

 

Four years into the Chicago Math experiment, Sally departed as director, pointedly. “I got fed up with the educational bureaucracy,†he recalls, expressing the view that school leaders generally felt the best way to engage students in math was to make the math easier. He wanted to make it more challenging, in part by teaching the concepts behind simple mathematical operations—why any number multiplied by zero equals zero, or why the product of two negative numbers is always positive.

 

Though one of the most illustrious, Sally is not the first mathematician to throw up his hands after seeking to elevate math instruction in America’s schools from outside the classroom. Staffilani of MIT says that at professional meetings, mathematicians often vent about the halting pace of progress toward raising standards and reshaping curriculum. As Staffilani relates, Sally decided to take his effort “in a completely different direction.†He went inside the Chicago school system and straight to the teachers, “straight to the fact that if people know more, they can teach better.†One has to know a lot of mathematics to teach the “simple things†with confidence, says Staffilani.

 

[MBM]

Yeah, Sally is cool. My son, who at this point wants to eventually develop math curricula (and has some wild ideas!), will probably be one of Sally's *victims* this year in the weekend Young Scholars Program at U of C.

[mom2scouts]

Thanks for those links! I'll have to spend some more time reading the whole background of EM.

[magnificent_baby]

.

[fraidycat]

(NOT a snarky question) - How did that go over? Were they accepting of that? My own experience with the PS taints my idea of how this went.

 

AND I really admire your strength.:D

 

Everyday Math aside, we were lucky and had good experiences throughout the 5 public schools DD attended. She had good teachers who were open to parent input and were reasonable adults who listened when I gave them my reasons. What was there for them to say or do? There really wasn't anything they could say or do to me. I guess they could have given DD a "bad grade", but she was always well behaved, did her work and was a teacher pleaser while in class. At conferences I always got glowing reports of such a sweet, kind, friendly, helpful little darling (I'm still not sure they were talking about my DD, but that's a whole 'nother post :tongue_smilie:).

The "homework" they sent home was not graded, it was not unfinished classwork, but merely extra work designed especially to be sent home for "parent involvement".