Posted 9:48 AM by Susan Darst Williams

SEATTLE JUDGE ORDERS SCHOOL BOARD
TO TAKE A HARDER LOOK AT FUZZY MATH TEXTS

This is a victory for fans of traditional math instruction! A group of citizens filed a lawsuit against the Seattle Public Schools for selecting a "discovery math" curriculum, even though the evidence showed that it increased the racial achievement gap, rather than helped low-income and minority students succeed more in math.

The judge recently ruled that the school board should take another look at the evidence for and against that curriculum. While he stopped short of ordering them to throw it out, he agreed with the citizens that it looked counter-productive to the goal of helping low-income and minority students succeed in math:

http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/2010/02/decision-favors-plaintiffs-in-court.html

"Discovery math" is the style of many, many public school boards these days. It keeps the low-income kids down, and prevents more advantaged kids from achieving as much in math as they could, if they had traditional math instruction.

Wouldn't it be great if school boards would come to their senses, drop-kick "fuzzy math" and get tried-and-true, computation-based math textbooks back in the classroom?

Or do we have to SUE 'em?

Labels: fuzzy math prevents low-income and minority kids from achieving success, problems with discovery math, Seattle math lawsuit