Please see the letter below from Ann Marie Banfield… There are a few videos at the end of the letter.
Commissioner Edelblut and Members of the State Board of Education:
As I was scanning through the “Friday Forum,” which is the weekly email sent by the NH Department of Education, this paragraph caught my attention:
The Association of Teachers of Mathematics in New England’s (ATMNE) 2024 Mathematics Conference is being hosted by the New Hampshire Teachers of Mathematics (NHTM). Join keynotes Pamela Seda, Ken Williams, Rachel Lambert and Latrenda Knighten and a diverse lineup of presenters at the ATMNE 2024 Fall Conference October 24 to 25 at the Sheraton Tara in Nashua. Visit the NHTM website for more information and to register.
I then clicked on the link which takes you to their website where you can see their announcement for a 2024 conference, and began scrolling through the speakers they have lined up to speak in Nashua.
The NHTM is an affiliate of the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics). As I began to look at who will be speaking, and their message on math education, I wondered if you were familiar with the failure of the NCTM to improve math education in the United States. Looking at the topics that the speakers will cover leaves me to believe, this organization hasn’t done much to improve math education–so why is their affiliate featured in this weekly email?
Let’s begin with the evidence that shows how the math standards developed under the NCTM led to the dumbing down in math education:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymvSFunUjx0
In this short but informative video, Dr. Cliff Mass provides you with historical and detailed information on the fuzzy math wars from the 90’s. You will see the evidence that the NCTM contributed to the poor quality of math education across the country.
This is all spelled out in this letter from Dr. David Klein ,Emeritus Professor at the California State University, A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education (Scroll down to: The 1980s: Prelude to National Standards and then The 1989 NCTM Standards). I encourage all of you to read this entire document.
EXCERPT 1
The1989 NCTM Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics is comprised of sections devoted to general standards for the bands of grades: K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Another section is devoted to “Evaluation Standards.” In many respects, the 1989 NCTM standards promoted the views of An Agenda for Action, but with greater elaboration. The grade level bands included lists of topics that were to receive “increased attention” and lists of topics that should receive “decreased attention.” For example, in the K-4 band, the Standards called for greater attention to “Meanings of operations,” “Operation sense,” “Mental computation,” “Use of calculators for complex computation,” “Collection and organization of data,” “Pattern recognition and description,” “Use of manipulative materials,” and “Cooperative work.”
Included on the list for decreased attention in the grades K-4 were “Complex paper-and-pencil computations,” “Long division,” “Paper and pencil fraction computation,” “Use of rounding to estimate,” “Rote practice,” “Rote memorization of rules,” and “Teaching by telling.” For grades 5-8 the Standards were even more radical. The following were included on the list to be de-emphasized: “Relying on outside authority (teacher or an answer key),” Manipulating symbols,” “Memorizing rules and algorithms,” “Practicing tedious paper-and-pencil computations,” “Finding exact forms of answers.”
As in An Agenda for Action, the 1989 NCTM Standards put strong emphasis on the use of calculators throughout all grade levels. On page 8, the Standards proclaimed, “The new technology not only has made calculations and graphing easier, it has changed the very nature of mathematics…” The NCTM therefore recommended that, “appropriate calculators should be available to all students at all times.” The Standards did concede that “the availability of calculators does not eliminate the need for students to learn algorithms,” and it did acknowledge the need for “some proficiency with paper and pencil algorithms.” However, these concessions were not supported in the classroom scenarios, or other parts of the document.
The NCTM Standards reinforced the general themes of progressive education, dating back to the 1920s, by advocating student centered, discovery learning. The utilitarian justification of mathematics was so strong that both basic skills and general mathematical principles were to be learned almost invariably through “real world” problems. Mathematics for its own sake was not encouraged. The variant of progressivism favored by the NCTM during this time was called “constructivism” and the NCTM Standards were promoted under this banner.54
With the help from the National Science Foundation, the NCTM standards were carried into many of the failed fuzzy math programs that were used in public school classrooms. This began what was called the “Math Wars” during the 90’s where parents, teachers and math professors across the country began their quest to expose this math education disaster. A logical person reading through what the NCTM proposed in the past, could easily conclude it was a recipe for disaster.
I had the pleasure of joining these esteemed professors, parents and teachers on the NYCHOLD.com forum where we all came together to analyze math education, and then help others understand the problems.
Fast forward to today’s Friday email, and I’m reminded of how these organizations have contributed to math illiteracy in this country. For those who avoid public schools, their children will have a distinct advantage over children in the public schools. However, your task should always be focused on improving public education in New Hampshire.
The individuals featured as speakers at this upcoming event in October do not give me any confidence that the past mistakes have been corrected. Who is promoting quality math standards to replace the dumbed down Common Core math standards? Why is no one presenting the information Dr. Klein detailed? This is supposed to give us confidence that math education will improve if our public school teachers attend this conference?
Their bios focus on:
Dr. Pamela Seda: she helps schools build the capacity of teachers to provide engaging, rigorous, and culturally relevant mathematics experiences for all students through the ICUCARE Equity Framework.
Ken Williams: recognized trainer, speaker, coach, and consultant in leadership, instructional equity, and school culture.
Dr. Rachel Lambert: Dr. Lambert researches emotion and identity in mathematics classrooms, particularly for neurodiverse students of color. She has designed a mathematical version of Universal Design for Learning that integrates Design Thinking (UDL Math)
Based on the topics they focus on, it looks like these people are leading everyone towards the current math disaster in California.
At what point will someone get serious about the failure of Common Core math in New Hampshire? These individuals never get to the real root of the problem in math education. It’s not a big secret, all you have to do is talk to any of the math professors who know the history of math education, and what a good math curriculum looks like.
Education consultants are a dime a dozen. If you are going to advertise on their behalf, can you at least offer resources that have a proven record of success in math education? We have Charter Schools using Singapore math, and a Russian school of Mathematics in Nashua. They’ve managed to identify what a quality math education looks like. Or you can check with a home-school parent, they seem to have no trouble picking a quality math program for their kids.
Sincerely,
Ann Marie Banfield
Parental Rights Advocate focused on Excellence in Education
