The National Assessment of Educational Progress test of students’ progress in elementary and secondary schools offers “a distorted picture of achievement” and fails to fully examine how well schools prepare students for adult life, according to a paper summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The report commissioned by the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College of Columbia University argues that the NAEP focuses too narrowly on basic academic and critical thinking skills in measuring how well students are being educated.
“Moreover,” the report says, “the federal benchmarking test fails to gauge the long-term impact of education because it does not look at whether adults who were educated at elementary and secondary schools do things such as vote, read independently, or stay in shape physically.”
Those expecting disagreement will not be disappointed. The Chronicle’s report is followed by a reader comment: “I don’t give a flip whether students in question (or you for that matter) vote, read independently, or stay in shape. However I do care very much whether students can read, write, and do basic math.”
There’s almost no good idea in pedagogy that doesn’t become a bad idea the moment it hardens into orthodoxy. People’s exhibit 1A: Constructivist math. On the surface, the idea makes sense. It’s not enough to perform a math algorithm by rote. If you divide fractions by saying “Yours is not to reason why, just invert and multiply,” you’ll get the right answer, but you don’t really understand the math. Constructivist math values the why of math over the how. But somehow, in too many schools, this good idea—that children should actually understand the calculations they’re performing—transmogrified into “children should not be taught standard algorithms.”
The video above, produced by a Washington State TV news personality M. J. McDermott, shows of examples of TERC and Everyday Math problems and how those programs expect students to solve them. Teachers may find it familiar, but it’s instructive for parents and policy types who might wonder why math scores continue to lag. Remember that this is not a fringe curriculum, but mainstream math as it’s taught in tens of thousands of classrooms every day. Meanwhile, parents in suburban Washington, DC are the latest to raise questions about the constructivist math instruction their kids are getting in school, even launching a dissenting parent web site.
As a teacher, I certainly want my students to understand the bigger concepts behind long division and two-digit multiplication. But I don’t want them to take 20 minutes to multiply 26×31. Truth be told, I went off the reservation and gave my students daily timed drills until they were all able to do 80 problems in five minutes. Watch the video and ask yourself how a student who doesn’t have automatic grasp of math facts can possible score well on a standardized test when calculators are forbidden.
The video, by the way, is from the Where’s the Math web site, which puts forth a reasonable position on math instruction: “Math education must be balanced, encouraging solid essential skills and understanding. It is time to stop blaming teachers— poor State math standards and curricula are failing our students. Well-meaning activists, pushing unsupported theories, have undermined our State’s educational system.”
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