Students in Washington State have had to deal with some dismal math standards (we gave them an F in 2005). Finally, last year, the legislature decreed that those standards should be reviewed and if necessary revised. A team of educators, experts, and outside consultants were given the job and determined the documents did indeed require revision. They recommended that Washington jettison its discovery-math approach and craft standards with strong content, focus, rigor, and clarity. That was then. Recently, the state has a newly released set of math standards--and many think they are barely better than their woeful predecessors. Dissatisfied Washington parents, educators, and professionals have therefore teamed up with an organization called Where's The Math and created an alternate set of standards that align closely with the best examples from other states and nations. A similar situation is playing out in Prince William County, Virginia, where parents are frustrated by the murky math curriculum used in their children's schools. They've lobbied the school board to kill it and started a website to further that goal. Fuzzy math, it seems, leads to unhappy consumers, who sometimes develop a new product for their consumption!
"Battling for math education," by Clifford F. Mass, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 12, 2008
"Parents Rise Up Against a New Approach to Math," by Ian Shapira, Washington Post, February 19, 2008