Schools of Thought

Interesting report coming out of EdWeek:

The Bush administration is trying to take a more aggressive role in strengthening math education, using its sweeping, and sometimes controversial, endeavors in reading as a guide.

To that end, the White House is focusing on research to shape how students across the country are taught the most basic mathematical concepts.

Unveiled this month, the plan would potentially give the federal government far more influence over classroom practices that traditionally have been left to states, school districts, and individual teachers. The proposal would establish a National Mathematics Panel to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various teaching strategies, akin to the body set up in the 1990s to judge reading methodologies. It would also introduce Math Now, a program to promote “promising research-based practices” in elementary and middle school math.

The White House proposals are part of a larger, $380 million plan to improve math and science education, with the goal of producing a more skilled workforce and sustaining economic competitiveness internationally.

Both undertakings would be modeled on actions the federal government took toward reading, including the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program, which distributes grants to states for districts to carry out reading strategies federal officials deem to be effective and backed by research.

This is one of those times when I am tremendously wary given the Bush administrations' history, but I have to admit, that sounds about right. I want to qualify my support with a myriad of corrolaries, such as that the proposals need to focus on critical thinking; they need to be fair in their consideration of all options; they need to not contain even a whiff of the corruption that has dogged Reading First; the recommendations must allow for individual teacher flexibility; and they need to draw from a broad spectrum of expertise that falls on all sides of the Math Wars so as to avoid demagoguery.

But many of us in the wonk community have long harped on the lack of rigorous research going into classroom practice, and here's a proposal to do just that. Hopefully, the math panel will be able to learn from the reading panel's experiences. I'm swallowing more than one grain of salt, but this has the potential to produce significant benefits.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 17, 2006 at 12:10 PM. |