NJ Education Report

Here’s a piece from the Star-Ledger on New Jersey’s “math wars,” the pedagogical conflict between those who advocate reform math and those who promote traditional math. Reform math, the Ledger explains, focuses on conceptual understanding as opposed to rote computation:

Reform math also teaches students several different computational methods — in addition to the traditional algorithms, such as long division — with the goal of helping kids find one that works for them. It supports the use of calculators in early grades, and encourages student exploration — such as using a tape measure to find the perimeter of routine objects — under the theory it will help certain types of learners more easily grasp math concepts.

Advocates for traditional math instruction espouse a back-to-basics movement that incorporates conceptual learning but bans calculators until middle school so that children will memorize basic computation. Lucille Davy says she wants a “balance” between the two, believing that the State has erred too far on the side of reform math. Ergo, a new committee or “writing team” charged with incorporating elements of both sides and producing, hypothetically, a balletic amalgam that satisfies both those who believe children learn math through student-directed exploration and problem-solving, and those who believe that children learn math through long division and multiplication tables.

However, a group called Concerned Math Educators of New Jersey alleges that the D.O.E. appointed this committee/ writing team to oversee the revision of New Jersey’s K-12 math curriculum and then ignored the findings. The group’s website states,

The release of the February 2009 draft of the standards by the New Jersey Department of Education, however, was a shock to all of us. This draft bears little resemblance to the latest (December 2008) version of the work of the state-appointed writing team and essentially rejects a document that has been reviewed and endorsed by mathematics educators throughout the state. In effect, it proposes to replace them by standards that were developed without input from New Jersey teachers. A vast number of the cumulative progress indicators (CPIs) in the current draft – over 250 of them – are lifted verbatim from a few other state standards (primarily Indiana and California), and do not fit in with the rest of the document or connect to the surrounding CPIs or grade-level expectations. Nor do they correspond to established performance expectations for children of different ages. Although some of the individual changes might in themselves be reasonable, as a whole they produce a random collage. Thus it is not surprising that the balance, rigor, consistency, coherence, and continuity of the standards have all disappeared.

Endorsers of the group number about 300, including math professors at various colleges and universities and N.J. math supervisors, principals, and teachers.

Meanwhile, the D.O.E. already has egg on its face from its recent meeting with the Assembly, which largely derided cookie-cutter graduation requirements — Algebra II quickly disappeared as a mandatory high school course — and overly ambitious curricula.

The D.O.E. seems stuck within a paradox: on the one hand it espouses differentiated instruction – the buzzword these days in education circles for individualizing curriculum depending on a student’s strengths and weaknesses – and mandating standardized instruction and requirements. While autocratic mandates without stakeholder buy-in is not usually an effective strategy for effecting change, finding consensus, especially in the face of high-stakes testing, is equally onerous. The D.O.E. needs to find its own balance, or the Concerned Math Educators of New Jersey will not be the only group to fight back.