Much like the "reading wars" between phonics instruction and whole language learning, the K-12 "math wars" have raged for more than a decade. With many defeats and only occasional victories, parents, education reformers, and a number of university mathematicians have struggled against "fuzzy math" in schools. Now President Bush is proposing a bold plan to improve mathematics education, but some members of the House-even some members of his own party-are resisting.
The Problem
"Fuzzy math," a philosophical sibling of whole language learning, refers to textbooks and school programs that intentionally de-emphasize basic arithmetic and algebra skills. At the elementary school level, these programs encourage students to invent their own arithmetic procedures, while discouraging the use of the traditional and far superior methods for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Calculator use is encouraged to excess-in some cases, they're even included in kindergarten lesson plans, at precisely the age that students should be learning basic computational skills unaided. Student "discovery group work" is the preferred mode of learning, sometimes the only mode, and the discovery projects are almost invariably incoherent and aimless. Some of the elementary school fuzzy math programs do not even provide textbooks for students, as books might interfere with student discovery projects. Arithmetic and algebra are radically de-emphasized by these programs. In the higher grades, mathematical definitions and proofs are generally deficient, missing entirely, or even incorrect.
The principal funding source of fuzzy math for the past decade has been the federal government by way of the Education and Human Resources (EHR) division of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The EHR is the directorate within the NSF that funds K-12 education projects. No single institution in the United States has caused more damage to the mathematical education of children than this low-profile bureaucratic unit of the National Science Foundation. The damage that the EHR has caused, and continues to cause, contrasts sharply with the NSF's overall admirable and important role in supporting fundamental scientific research.
For example, in October 1999, the U.S. Department of Education released a list of 10 so-called "exemplary" and "promising" math programs that it recommended for the nation's 15,000 school districts. More than half of these "exemplary" and "promising" math programs were created with EHR funding, and the rest were and are aggressively promoted by the EHR. On the list were some of the worst math education programs in the country. For example, one of the "promising" curriculum called Everyday Mathematics calls calculators are "an integral part of Kindergarten Everyday Mathematics" and urges the use of technological aids to teach kindergarten students how to count. There are no textbooks in this K-6 curriculum-a serious shortcoming. The program assigns the standard algorithm for multiplying two numbers no more status or prominence than an Ancient Egyptian algorithm presented in one of the teacher's manuals. Students are never required to use the standard long division algorithm in this curriculum, or even the standard algorithm for multiplication.
A month after the list was released, I faxed an open letter to the Department of Education that was signed by more than 200 mathematicians and scholars. Our open letter urged withdrawal of the entire list of "exemplary" and "promising" mathematics programs and it asked for that withdrawal to be announced publicly. Among the endorsers of the open letter are many of the nation's most accomplished scientists and mathematicians. Department heads at many universities, including Caltech, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, as well as two former presidents of the Mathematical Association of America added their names in support. Seven Nobel laureates and winners of the Fields Medal, the highest international award in mathematics, also endorsed. The open letter was published as a full-page ad in the Washington Post thanks to the generosity of the Packard Humanities Institute.
Unfortunately, the pleas of mathematicians, scientists, and parents of school children have been ignored by the EHR with predictable consequences. The EHR-funded fuzzy math programs cause problems for all school children, but they are particularly harmful to children with limited resources. Upper middle class parents can afford tutoring to compensate for what EHR has done to their schools and their children. Sadly, lower income children typically do not have that option, and they must directly bear the brunt of these defective programs. The EHR steadfastly continues to fund vacuous-even damaging-math programs through its Math and Science Partnerships (MSP) program. In the past five years, the EHR has poured $1 billion into this damaging program.
A Solution
President Bush's science budget for 2005 would transfer the MSP program and its funding out of EHR to the Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The administration's proposal deserves support. It is crucial that this program be loosened from the grip of EHR.
Indeed, the best option would be to close down EHR entirely (it has a poor track record on multiple fronts, including its support for dubious reading and science programs) and perhaps shift its monies to state education agencies, which are at least more responsive to parent criticism of incompetent school programs. While significant questions remain as to how the MSP grants would be administered at the Department of Education-for example, would they still be competitive or apportioned among states according to a formula?-the administration's proposal is clearly a step in the right direction.
Resistance
Unfortunately, members of a key congressional committee, the House Science Committee, are opposed to the move. At least some of their reluctance likely arises from old-fashioned turf-protection, as the shift would also move oversight of the program to the House Education Committee. Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), criticized Bush's proposal in a February 2 statement (www.house.gov/science/press/108/108-181.htm):
While we are still reviewing the specific budgets of individual agencies, some glaringly bad decisions already stand out. Primary among them is the proposal to move the Math and Science Partnerships from the National Science Foundation to the Department of Education. We will fight that decision tooth-and-nail.
This may seem like an arcane battle over budgets, bureaucracies, and power. But it actually has tremendous consequences for the education of America's school children. Decreasing the EHR budget decreases its ability to cause harm. Parents, mathematicians, and the White House can only hope that Congress will take a closer look at an agency that undermines the mathematical education of America's school children.
David Klein is a professor of mathematics at California State University, Northridge, and author of "A Brief History of American K-12 Math Education in the 20th Century," available at http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/AHistory.html, from which portions of this article are taken. To read a presentation given to the American Enterprise Institute on the NSF's role in K-12 mathematics education, see http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/aei.htm.