Teachers Must Be Teaching Math Wrong (Again)

I just finished reading this article in Hechinger Reports. I also just finished writing a comment about the article, which follows:

From the article: “Before the partnership, the district’s approach to math resembled what math instruction looks like today in many schools across the nation — a patchwork of different methods and approaches. ”

Take a look at many of the Common Core aligned textbooks that have been in use for more than 10 years and you might see why. Common Core aligned textbooks delay the teaching of standard algorithms (even though CC doesn’t prohibit teaching them earlier). The result of such delay is a smorgasbord of methods (many if not most being inefficient and some relying on drawing pictures), so that students are awash in a never-ending buffet of side-dishes. When the “main dish” of the standard algorithm arrives after a few years, it looks like yet another side dish.

The NSF has been funding reform/progressive math education methods for the past three decades. From the looks of it, they will be doing it for many more years. The usual reason for why “the current approach isn’t working” (even though they are supposedly teaching for the holy grail of “conceptual understanding”) is that teachers are “doing it wrong.”

Also from the article:

“The elementary teachers in the room solved the problem quickly. But the solution wasn’t the point. The teachers spent more time discussing what type of problem this was. Describing and deconstructing it helped the teachers reach a deeper understanding of not only how it works but how to explain it to their youngest learners. “Put yourself into the mind of a child,” Robinson said.”

They are clearly NOT putting themselves in the mind of a child. Most children focus on procedures, but the prevailing belief among math reformers is that standard procedures/algorithms eclipse conceptual understanding. Clinging to such beliefs, teachers hone in on whether students “really get it” and spending much time by having students explain why they solved the problem the way they did (in writing) and/or solving a problem in three different ways. Students are quick to learn what teachers want to hear in the way of explanations, and they will parrot back the explanations of “concept”. The result is what I call “rote understanding.” Other students whose parents can afford it will reap the benefits of outside tutoring–something that has never been taken into account when looking at school districts’ standardized test scores — and for which districts take full credit.