Everyday Math – The Right Answer?
When the Nation’s Report Card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, came out last December, Washington, D.C.’s public schools had reason to feel proud. The biennial report charts how well America’s 4th and 8th graders are doing, and Washington was one of only 11 urban school districts to make significant gains in math in 2007 and 2009. Since 2003, the District’s 4th graders’ math scores have grown at triple the national rate, according to the Washington Post. And educators there think one big reason is the adoption of the Everyday Mathematics curriculum, which emphasizes problem-solving in the worlds the students live in, and frequent practice of math skills via games, the Post says. For example, in the game Baseball Multiplication, the “pitcher” rolls dice and the “batter” multiples the resulting number to determine if he or she hits a single, double, triple, homer or was out. The curriculum, which was developed at the University of Chicago in the 1990s, also has a “spiral” format that keeps revisiting topics after they’re introduced.
D.C. is hardly the only school district to subscribe to Everyday Mathematics. The Post notes that it is used by 3 million students across the country in 185,000 classrooms. Of course, it has its detractors, who say it teaches “fuzzy math” because kids aren’t pushed to hone basic computational skills. In 2006, the paper says, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics urged schools to emphasize basic skills. The Department of Education gives Everyday Mathematics a rating of “potentially positive.” As the Post explains, that’s “higher than other math curricula, but hardly conclusive.”
Filed under: K-12 Education News
Tags: Mathematics, Research on Learning
