Local math advocates' progress multiplies

02-Jun-1997 Monday

Mathematically Correct

It all started with a math textbook that is decidedly prettier and more entertaining than those most parents might recall from their junior high or high school days.

But seventh-graders Rebecca and Charles McKeown hated the textbook and the course. They complained to their parents of boredom.

Their parents, Mike and Erica McKeown, immediately became concerned. Mike McKeown is a scientist at Salk Institute, and Erica McKeown is a former math teacher.

Their twins had tested "supergifted." They had always excelled in math.

Something had to be wrong.

Erica McKeown thumbed through the textbook. She concluded that her children were being taught algebra in a radically different way. And, to her, the difference was fundamentally flawed.

There was too much group work, too many activities where children were left on their own to discover academic principles, and not enough practice, practice, practice.

Something had to be done.

Erica McKeown began tutoring the twins and some of their friends. Mike hooked up with a La Jolla parent, Paul Clopton, and started researching the so-called "new new math" and asking questions.

When the answers didn't satisfy, the two men turned on their computers and launched a campaign against the "new new math" reform movement. They called themselves Mathematically Correct, to the horror of some educators.

A year and a half later, the group is known nationally. Its founders have been quoted in trade and news publications across the country. Now several of its members serve on a committee that is shaping the state's math curriculum -- thus influencing textbooks used across the country.

Parent groups have long played a role in public education politics, but rarely has a group founded by parents managed to move so quickly into the state political scene as Mathematically Correct.

Internet acumen

Many reasons are given for their success, but the single most powerful is something for which San Diego, one of the nation's most wired cities, is fast becoming famous: Internet savvy.

Mathematically Correct founders used cyberspace to broadcast their views and connect with people with similar philosophies.

They posted e-mail messages on bulletin boards and contacted people who they thought were of like mind or who they thought had the power to influence, such as politicians and education journalists.

And they built a Web site (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mathman/index.htm).

The site -- which has more than 75 documents posted -- serves as a publication refuge for math educators opposed to the reform movement.

At the Web site, parents and others can find analysis of new new math textbooks and their impact on test scores as well as a list of what students should be able to do at the end of each grade.

And some folks -- parents in San Luis Obispo County's Atascadero, for instance -- are using this information to influence math instruction in their schools and lobby for specific instructional standards or textbook adoptions.

The group's critics privately describe Mathematically Correct members as elitist, single-minded, manipulative and extremist.

But with many of its members holding doctorates in science or math, they are a hard group to ignore.

Well-connected group

Gail Burrill, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, says Mathematically Correct is unusual because its members have impressive academic credentials and extensive political connections.

She's seen their Web site and knows the group is highly critical of the council's position on math reform.

"There should be ways for us to talk to each other, instead of lining up and firing at each other," Burrill said in an interview from Wisconsin.

Their science and math expertise has helped them win the respect of politicians on both sides of the aisle -- and appointments to influential educational committees.

"They are incredibly persistent, computer literate, technologically oriented," said state Sen. Deirdre "Dede" Alpert, D-Coronado. "They have strong credentials in mathematics."

The group contends:

The despised "drill and kill" method of instruction, where students do series of problems, is necessary at times for students to master formulas
and techniques.

Children must master fundamental mathematical principles such as figuring percentages before they can apply those skills to solve elaborate word problems.

"Cooperative learning" activities, where students work in groups, slow the pace of instruction, which means more advanced learners will become bored.

High-school mathematics is best taught in the traditional sequence: beginning algebra, geometry, advanced algebra and calculus.

Math teachers should have advanced degrees in mathematics.

To educators who support the new new math reform movement, rhetoric from Mathematically Correct sounds like a "back to basics" campaign.

"What they are looking for is more of the same," said Vance Mills, San Diego Unified's math and science team leader. "I think we have not done necessarily a good job in mathematics."

From his perspective, too many students are turned off to mathematics by algebraic equations and never take more-advanced courses required for university admission.

Then there are the students who can't seem to apply their math skills once they get a job. Mills and many other math educators think this is because they learned math in isolation.

The new textbooks try to make math come to life, by presenting real-world problems that need to be solved, and integrating algebra, geometry, even trigonometry.

Realistic examples

For example, in "Interactive Mathematics," a seventh-grade textbook by the Glencoe division of McGraw-Hill, students read about how a group of students use geometry, percentages and graphing skills to set up a recycling project.

Both sides point to recent findings in neuroscience and cognitive psychology as proof that their method is the best way to teach.

In arguing that old-fashioned rote-memory exercises should remain a mainstay of mathematics instruction, traditionalists cite the importance of practice in pushing knowledge from short-term to long-term memory.

Reformers, on the other hand, cite studies showing that many children learn in different ways. Many people, they say, learn best by doing problems with real-world application.

The debate is much like the one over the merits of phonics vs. a holistic approach to teaching reading. In that case, a consensus has been reached that a balance is needed, and the same is likely true in math.

Political conservatives were among the most outspoken opponents of the "whole language" approach to teaching language arts, and, for that reason, Mathematically Correct sometimes gets typecast as right-wing.

This amuses its founding members. Four of them -- McKeown, Clopton and Martha and Rick Schwartz of Torrance -- consider themselves liberals.

McKeown found Larry Gipson, the group's "token conservative," over the Internet. Gipson, an electronic engineer, already had a parents group fighting the math program in Escondido schools.

"If you look at the overlap at what conservatives and liberals want in education, it's totally amazing," Gipson said. "The overlap is bigger than the differences."

Said Martha Schwartz: "We range across the political spectrum, from socialist to libertarian. We all get along. We're the best of friends."

Members loved math

Similarities in backgrounds show up, though. All of the group's founders and many of its members are highly educated in math or science, and they generally considered mathematics a favorite subject while children.

McKeown is a molecular biologist at Salk Institute who studies how complex organisms develop. Clopton, the group's webmaster, is a statistician at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in La Jolla.

Schwartz is a former high school math teacher and finishing up a doctorate in geophysics at USC, and her husband, Rick, is a high school chemistry teacher.

The group began in the fall of 1995 after the McKeowns began investigating the new math program at Standley Junior High in University City.

At the same time, Clopton was facing a similar situation at Muirlands Junior High in La Jolla, where his daughter was in seventh grade. He contacted the McKeowns, whom he knew through a nursery school cooperative.

The Schwartzes met McKeown at a fall 1995 award ceremony for the American Chemical Society. Rick Schwartz was there to accept an award as top teacher of the year; McKeown was a speaker.

Most of the group's supporters learned of Mathematically Correct over the Internet, including Frank Allen, a former president of the National Council of the Teachers of Mathematics.

"They're a fine group of people," Allen said of Mathematically Correct.

"I'm disgusted when I hear people classify these people as a group of reactionaries who want to go back to basics."

Allen, a professor emeritus of mathematics at Elmhurst College in Illinois, found himself shut out of education journals in recent years because his view went against the political tide.

With Clopton's encouragement, he wrote an article for Mathematically Correct's Web site, which has become the group's platform.

In the six-page, single-spaced article, he calls for a balanced approach to using problem-solving techniques to teach math, national tests for secondary math courses, and a requirement for math expertise for math teachers.

"When standards are held firm and the student is required to adjust to them, we have a process that can be accurately described as education," he wrote.

"In recent years, we have seen a distressing reversal of this process. . . This stultifying process where changes take place in the system rather than in the student is education turned on its head. It is destroying education in America, and it must be stopped."

The names of more than 100 endorsers follow this cyber-petition, including Jaime Escalante, the inspiration for the movie "Stand and Deliver," and E.D. Hirsch, author and founder of The Core Knowledge Foundation.

Tim Scheidt, an educational consultant who promotes fun activities using math, is disturbed that McKeown and Clopton have spent so much time trying to influence people's views at the state and national level.

While others may be impressed by their credentials, he points out that they are examples of people who excelled under the old mathematical instruction.

Not everybody does, he said.

"They are quick to criticize methodology, but I don't see them as part of the community," Scheidt said. "You can be critical or become part of the solution."

McKeown and Clopton think they are part of the solution. They sit on a San Diego Unified School District committee that is developing grade-level standards. Clopton also sits on a task force charged with rewriting the state math frameworks, which influence teacher training and textbooks.

Kirk Ankeney, vice principal at Mira Mesa High who is active in statewide curriculum efforts, has been watching those meetings. He fears new new math will be dismantled before it has a chance to show results.

"I think it's one of those things where the pendulum is swinging way, way back and we're going to miss an opportunity," he said.

Kathryn Dronenburg of El Cajon who serves on the state Board of Education, agrees the pendulum is swinging. The 1992 version of the state math frameworks put too much emphasis on problem-solving, at the expense of math fundamentals.

"The problem becomes one of balance," Dronenburg said. "You need children to be engaged in problem-solving, but you need to give them basic skills."

The math framework committee is due to submit its report to the state's Curriculum Commission in July. Commission chairman Gus Dalis cautions that the framework committee's recommendations are "one step in the process."

"When it goes to the commission, the commission debates it, discusses it and, more often than not, changes are made -- some subtle, some not so subtle," said Dalis, an administrator in the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Ultimately the state board will decide whether to shift the emphasis of the state's mathematics program away from problem-solving and toward more basic instruction, he said.

"I'm sitting back and letting the process work," he said. "Some people want to do battle. I think battle will be done on various fronts and along the way."

Twins are tutored

As the battle is waged, the McKeowns' twins attend a special three-credit class at University City High led by their mother. Three times a week, in an arrangement approved by the school's principal, she leads an hour-long math lesson in a campus theater.

One morning recently, Erica McKeown scribbles a word problem on a white board and reads it aloud.

"The probability that Bob will ask Julie to the senior prom is 1/4, that Jack will ask her is 1/2 and that Tom will ask her is 7/8 . What is the probability that at least one will ask? That at least two will ask?"

Five teens -- her twins and three of their friends -- immediately start writing numbers on note paper. Only a few minutes pass before they begin telling McKeown how to solve the problem.

In less than 10 minutes, they have discussed various approaches to the solution, and moved on.

McKeown presents another challenge: "If you flip a coin eight times, what is the probability of getting heads six times?" Again, heads drop only to rise within minutes with theories, equations and answers.

Over and over, the group tackles a word problem and brings it to resolution, just as math students have done for centuries.

While Mike McKeown and others work to change policies and textbooks that govern how teachers teach math, Erica McKeown focuses closer to home, on what most parents care most about: the performance of their own children.

"I'm solving it in a small micro-managing way," she said. "My husband is solving it in a macro-managing way."