Last week, in a piece published in the Atlanta Journal (Let’s discuss how bogus new math coursework is), Kimberly Learnard, a Fayette County, Georgia parent took the Georgia Department of Education to task, including Superintendent Kathy Cox, criticizing the Georgia Performance Standards in Mathematics.  She took exception to one of the methods advocated in the new mathematics standards, in which she claimed “It is based on group discussion.”  To her all that students did was sit around in small groups waiting for one of the students to speak up, and teach the other students.  She was also concerned that “Georgia’s new math curriculum has no textbooks.”  Her concern here was that there was little opportunity for parents to reinforce classroom teaching since students did not have a textbook to take home.  She was also concerned that the number of students participating in accelerated classes has decreased in the past year.  She called the new math curriculum “pie-in-the-sky, untried, unproven, experimental, nontechnical conversational math”.  Learnard also pointed out that Georgia ranks 47th in nation in math, and has not moved since Cox took over as Superintendent.

A number of readers wrote in and congratulated Leonard, and agreed that the new math curriculum appears dubious; a parent from Cobb indicated that her students had textbooks; however there seemed to be a current of support for Leonard’s criticism.

There is very little criticism of the nature of and how standards are used in U.S. schools.  The standards movement began nearly 20 years ago, and all of the content areas have developed standards at the national level, and states have modified, or copied the national standards to create their own framework.  One of the few criticisms that I could find in the science education literature was a research article by Alberto J. Rodriques entitled The Dangerous Discourse of Invisibility: A Critique of the National Research Council’s National Science Education Standards. Other critiques have been published (Shiland, Lynch), but they are rare.  So, when Kimberly Learnard, parent from a community in Georgia, takes the time to write an article, we see a bit of democracy in action.

Then, yesterday, two university administrators from a university in Georgia wrote a three column retort to Learnard’s article.  Acting as gatekeepers for the State Department of Education Georgia Performance Standards in Mathematics, the authors report that New Math Coursework Rigorous, Move Effective, and published the piece in the Atlanta Journal.  They blame Georgia’s low SAT scores (47th in the nation) on the “old” math standards (QCC), and claim that the new Performance Standards were adopted on the basis of success (to them in Japan and North Carolina).  I find it interesting that they use results on international tests (TIMSS) claiming that Japanese students score higher on the TIMSS test because of their math curriculum because it has fewer topics, its more rigorous and in-depth, its integrated, and results in a clear, focused path to higher education.  But this is a weak argument, especially for U.S. schools which are more diversified.

David Berliner points out that TIMSS data for the USA, when analyzed by socioeconomic levels, shows great disparities and inequalities. He points out that schools in the most affluent neighborhoods do well on these tests, but schools in poorer neighborhoods do not. Until inequalities are fixed, scores on international assessment will not change.  As Berliner points out, the USA has more than 15,000 school districts, and to use a single test score on a test made of 40 – 50 items does not describe the qualities or inequalities inherent in the USA’s schools.

This article shows how difficult it is to argue, to raise questions about the State’s educational system when its business as usual in defending the approach of the state to education of students.  In the past year, the results on middle school mathematics (40% failed) and social studies (70% failed) were dismal.  In fact they were so bad, that the state threw the social studies test results out.

The mathematics and science standards are result of hard work by teachers and professors, but in my own view, they have been used to create a system of education that removes educational decision making from where it should be, and that is at the local level, with teachers leading the way.  High-Stakes testing now dominates the curriculum of schooling, and much of the methodology used to “prepare” students each year for the test.  Unfortunately how well students do on the standardized tests that are derived from the standards has been shown in every empirical investigation to be based primarily on the socioeconomic status (SES), not on the nature of instruction, or the curriculum.

The authors of the article about defending the mathematics standards use language (code words) that we’ve heard for years: a more rigorous curriculum; staying the course; strong, cohesive, and coherent.  Rigorous means harsh, severe or strict with very little flexibility.  “Stay the course” is the phrase that the Bush Administration use to describe its Iraq policy.  A strong, cohesive and coherent curriculum is a synonym for rigorous.  In the last sentence of their article they state:

with our strong, cohesive and coherent mathematics curriculum, student achievement by all metrics will steadily improve.

And of course, the metric they have in mind are high-stakes tests and the SAT.  Interestingly the article placed next to theirs was entitled SAT is losing a bit of its clout.