James Shuls: Why We Need School Choice

by James V. Shuls Introduction Throughout the country, lawmakers have discussed expanding educational options for students by establishing charter schools or allowing public dollars to go to private schools. Yet bills that legislators proposed often failed to gain much traction; in part, because opponents of school choice often hail the traditional system where children are [...]

by James V. Shuls

Introduction

Throughout the country, lawmakers have discussed expanding educational options for students by establishing charter schools or allowing public dollars to go to private schools. Yet bills that legislators proposed often failed to gain much traction; in part, because opponents of school choice often hail the traditional system where children are zoned for a local public school based on their address. Some view this method of delivering public education as the model because democratically elected officials control the schools on a local level. Though democratically controlled local school districts meet the needs of many students, they simply cannot satisfy the needs of all families. Many families, mine included, have found the traditional system to be frustrating and unresponsive.

James V. Shuls

In this essay, I describe the problem with the democratic process regarding public education from my perspective. You may be inclined to agree or disagree with my conclusions about math pedagogy after reading my story. Nevertheless, this story is not written to convince you one way or the other in terms of math instruction. Rather, my story illustrates the difficulties a parent faces when attempting to exact change in his child’s school. In the 2011-12 school year, my children spent 100 days in a traditional public school. I did not anticipate pulling them in the middle of the year, but my wife and I could not come to terms with how the school was educating our children. We sought change, but in the end, we were left with only two options: subject our kids to a style of instruction we felt was ineffective or place our children in a private school. We chose the latter.

Though this story takes place in Arkansas, it very well could happen in your town. Indeed, this story could take place anywhere parents do not have access to quality educational options for their children. At the time, Arkansas had some charter schools, but these schools were severely hampered from opening because of local school district opposition and the sole charter authorizer, the state board of education. In previous years, charters had sought to open in our district, but the local school district vehemently opposed the move. This meant there were no elementary charter schools in our district. Our only free public options were the traditional public schools.

My Story

My wife and I sent our kids to a local public school for the 2011-12 school year because of financial reasons. They had attended a private school for pre-school and kindergarten, but the monthly tuition quickly overwhelmed my wife’s teacher’s salary and my fellowship as a graduate student. Though we were upset that we would no longer be able to send our kids to a school that shared our religious values, we were sure our kids would receive a quality education at the local public school. We also knew we would be supplementing their education at home. After all, my wife and I were both educators. In fact, my wife was in her eighth year teaching Spanish, with the most recent years served in the district in which we lived. I had taught both first and fifth grade in southwest Missouri and hold bachelor’s and master’s degrees in elementary education. Suffice it to say, we were not your average parents.

Unfortunately, when we moved to the area, we had not fully considered the quality of the local public schools. As it turned out, our house was in the school zone for the second-lowest performing school in the district. In the 2010-11 academic year, the school placed near the bottom quarter of all schools in the state in math achievement as well as in language arts. When we became aware of this, we requested permission for our kids to attend one of the higher-performing schools in the district. The schools, however, did not have enough space to accommodate our children. So we applied for our children to attend a school that was fairly close to our house and had better achievement scores than our residentially assigned school. The school ranked in the middle of all elementary schools in the district. In other words, it was an average-performing school in an average-performing district.

New School, New Math

At first, we were happy with our decision. It turned out that the assistant principal was a friend of a friend and we had heard wonderful things about our daughter’s kindergarten teacher. Our kids seemed to like the school and were making plenty of friends. However, all of our pleasant emotions soon changed. A few weeks into school, our son brought home a paper from his teacher describing how students would be doing math problems. Unfortunately, I did not keep a copy of this document, but I have reproduced it to the best of my recollection (see Figure 1).

The letter from the school told us that our kids would be working on word problems throughout the school year. The school would expect students to use a variety of strategies to solve these problems. As an example, the page displayed a typical word problem and described three methods children might use to solve the problem. In the first strategy, the student wrote tally marks for each object in the problem and counted the tally marks when more objects were added. In the next strategy, the student chunked the larger number into groups of five and added the additional five by counting by fives. The third strategy seemed even more sophisticated, as the student broke 15 into 10 and five and then added five. It seemed that these highlighted solutions were increasingly complex, with the third child showing the deepest understanding of place value and addition. I assumed that the next logical step would be to teach the standard algorithm for addition, whereby the numbers are stacked and added one column at a time (as students have been taught to add since time immemorial). Yet to my horror, the bottom of the page had the standard algorithm written with a big “X “over the top. The page encouraged parents not to teach their child to use this method.

Figure 1: Math Explanation Page That Our Son’s First-Grade Teacher Sent Home

“This is crazy,” I thought to myself, so my wife and I scheduled a meeting with the teacher. During the meeting, I brought up my concerns about our son not being able to use the standard algorithm to solve math problems. She informed me the district had adopted a math program where they were focusing on “deep understanding,” a phrase I would come to hear often in the coming months. In a very short period of time, I realized that I was not going to change her mind about the value of standard algorithms. Not wanting to make a fuss about a problem I believed I could solve, I decided to supplement my son’s math instruction at home. This plan absolutely backfired. Supplementing, it turned out, became a nearly impossible task. Our tutoring sessions become increasingly adversarial, with my son ending up in tears multiple times because I was telling him to solve the problem one way and his “teacher doesn’t do it that way,” because she discouraged him from using the standard algorithm. Clearly, this was not a sustainable solution

On November 14, 2011, I sent an impassioned email to my son’s teacher. Three days later, I received a reply. My son’s teacher thanked me for my concern and asked to schedule a meeting with me. When I confirmed the time, I received an email from the principal indicating we would be meeting in her office. In my email, I had requested information about the district’s math curriculum, which I again requested when confirming the meeting time. On November 18, the teacher sent home the information I had requested. The documents she sent included a two- page overview of the Common Core standards for first grade and a copy of a page from Children’s Mathematics: Cognitively Guided Instruction (1999). This page happened to be the final part of chapter one of the book, which highlighted what the book would discuss.

The Meeting, The Curriculum, The Frustration

Walking into my son’s school to talk math curriculum to his teacher and principal intimidated me. It kind of felt like I had challenged my son’s teacher on the content of what she was teaching and now I was being sent to the principal’s office. Now, I am not an average parent and I cannot help wonder what a parent who is not a professional educator might feel like under such circumstances. The school is comprised predominantly of minority students, many of whom are English language learners. If I felt intimidated, what about other, less informed parents? Still, I marched into the meeting full of optimism. My goal was singular: to make sure my children could use standard algorithms to solve math problems.

The teacher explained that the district was using Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) as the method to teach the Common Core State Standards. I was a bit confused. In the CGI book, the authors clearly stated CGI was a professional development program and I knew that Common Core was the name of the standards being implemented in the state. So I inquired where the curriculum came from, to which the reply was the Common Core. After some back and forth, the principal chimed in that she had researched the answer to my question in preparation for our meeting. Why she did not know the curriculum being used in her own school ahead of time, I do not know. Nevertheless, she informed me that she had spoken with the assistant superintendent for education, who informed her that the Common Core standards were the district’s curriculum and they were using CGI to implement those standards.

I realized that I could spend all day going down that rabbit hole, but I remembered my goal so I asked point blank: could my son use a standard algorithm to solve a math problem in his class. The teacher responded, “We don’t do the algorithm in class.” When I asked why, she maintained that he needed to show his reasoning behind his thinking. I pushed the issue and asked if she would count it wrong if he explained he knew it was a difference problem, he stacked the numbers to subtract the ones and then the 10 and was left with the difference between the two numbers. She indicated she would not count this wrong, but she would make him show a way that he could demonstrate that he knew what he was doing. The principal also responded that he would have to illustrate his understanding.

Over the course of the next hour, we went through examples of my son’s work where he had used one of the “strategies” he had developed. To me, the strategies were inconsistent, cumbersome, and time-consuming. To his teacher, his strategies were “advanced.” The conversation went nowhere. I inquired as to what the next step might be; if he was already using advanced strategies, what was the next strategy he needed to learn? The teacher responded that it would just depend. Just depend? I thought, certainly there must be some end goal, some place she was trying to move all of the students in terms of math skills. She stated that the endpoint depended on each student and where they were in terms of understanding.

My kids’ school, by their own admission, had not taught my son or daughter how to solve any math problems in nearly half of the school year. Anything he had learned, he had discovered for himself. And what was perhaps most galling was their certainty that he could not use the standard algorithm, even though they had no idea where he was going or how he should get there. The rest of the conversation was not helpful. They threw out buzzwords such as “discovery learning,” but could never explain to me that all of these other methods that they endorsed were acceptable, while the standard algorithm was not. Perhaps because she realized that the conversation was not going anywhere, the principal suggested I observe one of these lessons to get a better understanding of how Cognitively Guided Instruction works. However, I should say that by the end of the conversation, I had convinced them that my son could use the standard algorithm, as long as he did each problem another way to show his thinking. Which meant he would have to do every problem the way they wanted and the way I wanted; still, this was no small feat.

The Observations

The principal scheduled me to observe math lessons in first-, second-, and third-grade classrooms on January 11 and 12, 2012. During each of the observations, the district math specialist accompanied me, and the principal joined for part of the time. The first observation was a first-grade classroom. The teacher was enthusiastic and had a great command of the classroom. I could tell she had experience and connected well with her students. To start the lesson, she read the word problem aloud with the students. It was a multiplication problem in which a boy had five bags and 12 cars in each bag. The teacher wanted to know the total number of cars. Students were reminded to use their strategies to solve the problem, but were not given any specific strategies. What struck me most was the labor-intensive nature of this form of instruction. Again, I have been in a lot of classrooms and have come to have a pretty good understanding of what a good teacher looks like. This was a good teacher, who had other adults in the room helping her. However, even this good teacher could not get around to every student and take the time to help them understand the nuances of every problem-solving strategy that they had developed. As a result, some students were copying, some students had no one-on-one instruction, and other students looked just plain lost. In the entire hour-long lesson, the students worked on only this problem, and by the end, several students appeared no closer to an answer than when they began. Three students were invited to share their strategies at the end of the class, but after they shared their strategies, the lesson was over. The teacher never explained how to solve the problem.

My experiences in the second- and third-grade classes mirrored the first observation. Some students developed strategies, some did not. Never once did a teacher directly teach students how to solve a math problem. At the end of my three hours of observing, I realized that this instructional method encouraged even those students with deeper understanding to work extremely slowly and absolutely left behind all other students. After that day, I had seen enough.

What Next?

My wife and I talked about my observations and contemplated our options. We could continue to pursue change in the school, but this was proving to be a futile task. We had already met with our son’s teacher, the assistant principal, the principal, and the district math specialist, who all had no intention of changing their instructional practices. Who should we meet with next? Would they be any more responsive? We could take matters to the school board, but would they listen? Even if pursuing these options may have led to change, how long would it take? We saw no light at the end of that tunnel. We may have been able to attend a different school within the district, but we were told each school used a similar approach for teaching math. This type of choice is no choice. Rather than subject our children to more math lessons devoid of content, and despite the heavy financial burden, we re-enrolled them in a private school.

On January 25, I sent the following email to my kids’ teachers and principals:

I am writing to inform you this Friday will be [my kids’] last day at [Your] Elementary. I want to thank each of you for the role you have played in my child’s education and for your commitment to kids. Due to irreconcilable differences of opinion on curriculum and instructional practice, we have decided to pursue other educational options for our children.

The private school welcomed our kids to start on Monday, January 30. It just so happened that their last day at the public school was the 100^th day of school.

Conclusion

Over and over my wife and I kept saying to ourselves, “If this is how they treat us, I can’t imagine how they treat the other parents.” If a teacher from that same school district and a former teacher finishing a Ph.D. in Education Policy cannot change what is clearly an absurd practice in their children’s school, imagine what happens when a less connected family has a problem that needs to be solved. Sending our children to private schools takes up an enormous amount of our household budget, and quite frankly, it should not. In the United State of America, all families, rich and poor, white and minority, should have access to a high-quality education for their children. Schools should be responsive to the wishes of parents. But, as long as the barriers for taking kids out of the school system are so high, very few families are going to be able to hold schools accountable.

This problem was and is real for us and it is real for families across the country. This is just one of the reasons states should expand school choice for all students. Though opponents wish to portray schools and school districts as bastions of democracy, they are not. The power is clearly stacked against parents, and it is stacked that way because it can be. Until we empower parents with school vouchers, tuition-tax credit scholarships, and charter schools, my family’s struggle, and the struggle of families similar to mine, will continue.

Examples of my children’s work

James V. Shuls holds a bachelor’s degree from Missouri Southern State University and a master’s degree from Missouri State University, both in elementary education. He is a PhD candidate in education policy at the University of Arkansas, where he has worked as a graduate assistant for Jay P. Greene, PhD, Gary Ritter, PhD, and Robert Maranto, PhD. James joined the Show-Me Institute as its education policy analyst in July 2012. James is a former teacher, having taught four years in southwest Missouri.

Comments

SteveH

January 17, 2013 at 6:08 am

Unfortunately for K-6, even having school choice does not guarantee having a choice over curriculum. We went through just about the same process with our son, but the Everyday Math he got at the private school was not much better than the MathLand curriculum he came from. We thought that at least, the private school would set higher expectations, but we were astounded when his fifth grade teacher told us that she had to slow down (not “trust the spiral”) because a number of (bright) kids still didn’t know the times table. Was this a school competence issue? No. Everyday Math talks all about understanding and critical thinking, but nobody is in charge of making sure that kids master ANY algorithm, lattice method or otherwise. Of course, I was teaching him proper math at home using Singapore Math. By sixth grade, we had him back into our (now) Everyday Math public school. Why pay for the same thing at a private school? (Only recently, has one private K-8 school trumpeted the fact that they use now use Singapore Math.) I was able to get the public school to let him skip EM in sixth grade to get to the proper Glencoe algebra series they started to use in 7th grade.

It was amazing to see the difference in pedagogical thinking between K-6 math and the Glencoe series. All of a sudden, it was OK to separate students and have proper homework sets. Besides, the requirements of high school math were pushing down into the lower grades. With the old CMP middle school math they were using, advanced kids were unprepared when they wanted to start with Geometry in high school. CMP just did not cover algebra well. It focused on understanding, which is usually a code work for lower expectations. The change to the Glencoe series was driven by the need to offer in eighth grade the exact same algebra course that the high school offered. The same forces also pushed our middle school to offer more rigorous Spanish classes so that some kids could start high school with Spanish II.

This issue is really not about “deep understanding”. It’s about low versus high expecatations and about what constitutes a proper education. Clearly, there is a philosophical difference between that of the honors and AP classes in high school and K-6 classes. Seventh and eighth grades are enourmous transition years. Kids are forced to accept responsibility for their own learning and teachers start to really push content knowledge and skills. The pace has to really increase to ramp the kids up to the expectations of high school and then college. I know what I’ve done to ensure that my son made this nonlinear change in expectations and educational pedagogy. Many kids don’t have that advantage. In math, many kids end up on the slow track to nowhere. Their STEM career choices are over by seventh grade.

I still remember going to a math open house when my son was in first grade, sitting in little kids’ chairs, and listening to a teacher, in her best first grade voice, explain to parents, many of us engineers and scientists, the virtues of having little Suzie explain why 2 + 2 = 4. I still remember when my son’s first grade teacher told us that “Yes, he has a lot of superficial knowledge” when we naively told her that he loves geography and could find any country in the world. We called those comments preemptive parental strikes. Note that later that year, my son had to show the student teacher where Kuwait was on the map when they were doing a thematic unit on “Sands from around the world”.

I find it ironic that many educators in K-6 talk about how kids need to think and problem solve like real mathmaticians and scientists, while at the same time dismissing the concerns of parents who are mathematicians and scientists. We, apparently, only want what we had when we were growing up. Then, their ideas of math education disappear completely by high school. Only kids with help at home or with tutors can survive the transition. Many parents do a whole lot more than turn off the TV and model an interest in education. Nobody has asked us what we have done, but I’m sure they will point to him as an exemplar of their work when he graduates high school as one of the top students.

Reply
- RetiredNEA
  
  January 19, 2013 at 12:07 pm
  
  No, they never do ask. My kids are at least 6 years ahead of their age level…and do they ask?
  
  Well, one Russian immigrant – but that is all!! Americans are hopeless and I don’t even talk about it anymore.
  
  Reply
Rico

January 17, 2013 at 9:07 am

Really? You chose to move your son out of public school because they were teaching him how to understand and comprehend the end result of his math skills? Let’s be honest; you simply looked for any excuse to move your child out of the public school system and blamed it on the school’s and the state’s decision to implement a more advance method of learning.

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- James Shuls
  
  January 17, 2013 at 2:35 pm
  
  Rico,
  That couldn’t be the furthest thing from the truth. It was quite a financial hardship, one we did not want to bear. That is why we placed our kids in the public school in the first place.
  
  Secondly, as I mentioned at the outset of the article, you may not agree with my assessment of the math instruction. I think it was based on weak research and did not help kids develop to their full potential. You disagree, and we are not the first to do so in this regard.
  
  The bottom line is that without school choice, you force families to accept something that they may not be comfortable with. For us, it was discovery math instruction.
  
  Reply
- momof4
  
  January 19, 2013 at 7:23 am
  
  The results of that curriculum are not understanding, they are confusion and an ability to do basic arithmetic. I have had several recent encounters with graduates of such programs, who are unable to calculate sales tax with the assistance of a calculator, (1) because they don’t know how to create/enter the equation, (2) because they have no understanding that percentages can be expressed as decimals and (3) because their number sense is so lacking that they cannot recognize an answer that is wrong by a magnitude of 100 ($16? due for a purchase of $10, with 6% sales tax) They are also unable to use a digital scale to weigh 1/3 or 2/3 of a pound because they say the scale won’t do that, so have no understanding of the relationship between fractions and decimals. There is also the inability to make change for a purchase of $2.82, given $3.02. I could go on, but these are only the most recent examples that schools are not demanding mastery of basic arithmetic, which all kids of average IQ should be able to learn by the end of grade 6. I should add that these people (20s-30s) came from middle-class families and attended local schools (both public and Catholic) with good reputations. Educational malpractice.
  
  Reply
Jenni White

January 17, 2013 at 3:17 pm

God bless you, you poor man. I have had the EXACT same situation in our family. Our answer was to home school. Yes, it’s a labor-intensive, often-frustrating, situation, but I am convinced, after guiding my kids through a number of years in public school, that I am NOT making a mistake and that (so long as I can remain sane!) my children will not only be better off for it educationally, but as citizens as well.

I truly believe that it is stories such as yours and mine (and all the other frustrated parents out there for whom public education is not working) that will (hopefully) change the hearts and the minds of those that will listen.

http://restoreoklahomapubliceducation.blogspot.com/2012/02/one-oklahoma-teacher-do-i-teach-to-test.html

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SteveH

January 17, 2013 at 7:43 pm

“… you simply looked for any excuse to move your child out of the public school system and blamed it on the school’s and the state’s decision to implement a more advance method of learning.”

Can’t be talking about me because I brought my son back to the public schools once they decided to offer a different philosophy of teaching math and many other things. And in what universe was MathLand advanced? It was so bad that it was wiped off the face of the web. Only the bad reviews remain. Everyday Math is almost as bad. I call it repeated partial learning. Schools pump kids along until not even their “Math Boxes” can fix the problems. Then they blame the kids when the big seventh grade math tracking filters them out of any potential for a STEM career.

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tired teacher

January 18, 2013 at 8:04 am

i think perhaps rico’s qualification of the author isn’t fair, i do believe they wanted to try and were willing if school conformed to their expectations.

to me the greater issue here is the idea that algorithm memorization is superior to understanding.

as a science teacher i learned a long time ago, that my students, even my brightest AP students will remember very few facts. but the connections between ideas, the reasoning used to draw conclusions is what they must learn.

we live in a world with every piece of information available out our fingertips, algortihms are meaningless, we need to teach what it means, why things happen, how they occur, because they facts can always be found later.

This is jarring for those that disagree.

unlike most posters, whose thoughts on education i disagree with, this individual has offered something that could create discussion, and it is very clear where the disconnect is.

I do agree with the poster about one thing, they should be able to send their child to private schools, private schools are a wonderful structure. But i would argue the way to fix their issue is not vouchers, but to make sure everyone makes a better living wage so more people could afford the private school.

Reply
A Teacher Speaks Out Against Common Core Math: James Schuls « COMMON CORE

January 18, 2013 at 10:16 am

[...] http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/james-shuls-why-we-need-school-choice/ [...]

Reply
Bob Rose

January 18, 2013 at 2:23 pm

Great essay!! Thank you, James!!!

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SteveH

January 19, 2013 at 4:31 am

You got us. The author and I made up these incredibly detailed stories (that say about the same thing) just to cover up our elitism or whatever. Then again, I brought my son back to the public schools in sixth grade. Did I change or did the teaching and curriculum change? Let’s see. Fluff MathLand and Everyday Math in K-6 versus a rigorous Glencoe Pre-Algebra and Algebra I sequence in seventh and eighth grades, followed by the Geometry to AP Calculus classes in high school.

“… and blamed it on the school’s and the state’s decision to implement a more advance method of learning.”

“Advance method”?

You obviously don’t have a clue about math.

Reply
wintertime

January 19, 2013 at 6:51 am

Steve H.

Indeed, no one is measuring the hard work done by the parents, private tutors, and the child IN THE HOME! “Good” School? High standardized test scores? Blue Ribbon School? NONSENSE! What is happening here is blue ribbon “afterschooling” done by very concerned and caring parents.

By the way, my three homeschoolers were admitted to college by the ages 13, 12, and 13. All finished all college general courses and Calculus III by the age of 15. The two younger students earned B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of 18.

Although our children were featured in our town newspaper and even had a full page article in the university newspaper no “educator” has ever contacted our family to ask about our methods. On the other hand, engineers, scientists, and the professors of mathematics at the university were **very** interested.

One more thing:

I helped at our church’s tutoring center. The children who came to the center almost always had **more** “homework” assigned than my homeschoolers ever did during their entire day! So? Question? If the institutionalized kids are doing more “homework” than homeschoolers where is the **REAL** teaching and learning happening?

My guess: IN THE HOME!

The only thing the government schooling is doing is sending home a very expensive curriculum for the parents and child to follow IN THE HOME. Then when the parents and child do all the hard work the school functionaries take all the credit.

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KAB

January 19, 2013 at 7:31 am

This is why the focus of education reform should not be on the way our schools are organized or how we pay our teachers. The focus must be on our failed colleges of education who brainwash our teachers-in-training in order to make themselves continue to seem relevant. Do away with education degrees and make everyone have a subject area degree. Then have one year of classroom supervision to obtain certification. The state of Indiana made changes to requirements for 5th grade teachers and above a few years ago. I would also by statute ban district-wide implementation of a particular textbook series. Let each teacher choose his or her own materials–especially if we are to continue heading toward some form of merit pay. You would quickly see which teachers know their content areas and which ones are completely reliant on what is in the textbook.

Reply
- wintertime
  
  January 19, 2013 at 10:21 am
  
  KAB.
  
  Not only should colleges of education be abolished and a degree in a solid subject be required, I would go one step farther.
  
  Government teachers should be required to pass Calculus with grade of B or better. They should sit in the same Calculus I classes as the math, engineering, and science students. Yes, I know that calculus is not needed for most K-12 courses, but insisting on this course for teachers would do several things:
  
  1) Help assure that the teachers were not math phobic .
  
  2) Exposure to calculus for science, engineering, and math majors would help teachers see the foolishness of some these air head approaches to teaching arithmetic.
  
  3) Would help assure that teachers were smart enough to deserve their generous paychecks, pensions, and benefits. As it is now, teaching majors have one of the lowest SAT/ACT scores on campus and these scores correlate directly with IQ.
  
  Reply
momof4

January 19, 2013 at 10:52 am

Tired Teacher: The issue of what kids remember after taking an AP science is not the issue; having the essential background knowledge to do the coursework and pass the AP test is the issue. My older kids’ HS had and has a deservedly strong reputation, particularly for its AP classes and especially in the math/sciences. I assure you that no kid lacking mastery and automaticity of standard algorithms would get anywhere near the honors/AP math track and therefore not to the AP sciences, all of which require the same-subject honors course first and all of which are double-period every day. At least 85% of kids get at least a 4 on the AP test. Honors pre-calc is a co-requisite for AP chem and AP calc BC is a co-requisite for (calculus-based) AP physics. Due to course size limitations, the possibility that someone could even get into AP bio without taking honors algebraII/trig or honors pre-calc is essentially non-existent, since there are plenty of kids taking those courses who also want AP bio. Given the demand, the kids with the strongest academic record have priority.

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Larry1356

January 19, 2013 at 11:13 am

In response to the recent school shootings, schools will no longer teach “trigonometry” but will instead be teaching lines and angles (with the restriction that the angles not be so sharp as to qualify as weapons)

Reply
RetiredNEA

January 19, 2013 at 11:52 am

“It kind of felt like I had challenged my son’s teacher on the content of what she was teaching and now I was being sent to the principal’s office. Now, I am not an average parent ”

A couple of comments:
1) Yes, you attacked the curriculum. You are an EVIL entity and you must be dispensed with. You are more than welcome to help out with bake sales and fund raising – but NEVER, EVER, get involved with curriculum selection – that is simply not permitted, and I’m somewhat surprised that they didn’t have a “Resource Officer” ready to take you to the cooler, just for bringing up the subject.

2) Sorry, you actually are an “average parent” because you assumed that the public schools had your kid’s education in mind. The above average parents are those like myself that would NEVER let their kids get in that mess (i.e., by teaching them math, long before the schools have a chance to do the same).

Reply
RetiredNEA

January 19, 2013 at 11:58 am

Oh yea, and by the way…when you are ready, we’ll be glad to explain the entire philosophy behind WHY they are doing this to our children.

But first you must publicly promise not to send us to the looney bin, because what we tell you will hurt, and will tear down a lot of (understandable) beliefs that you’ve had all your life.

Reply
Parents fight for 2 + 2 = 4 — Joanne Jacobs

January 19, 2013 at 11:35 pm

[...] and his wife, a Spanish teacher in the local school district, wanted their first-grade son to learn standard math algorithms, he writes on Education News. The teacher said the math program focused on “deep [...]

Reply
Reader

January 20, 2013 at 8:30 am

I am an English teacher, but I have seen students at my high school struggle over math problems when the solution is obvious at a quick glance.
I can add that there are two categories of students who don’t need to “show understanding,” and this contributes to the counterproductive practices the author describes: The first category is students who understand and have the right answer, and the second category have the right answer but they got it some wrong way. Somehow the teacher needs to be able to sort this out, which used to be called “showing your work.” A similar issue is the requirement for “pre-writing” and thinking maps for students who don’t need them because they have the plans and maps in their heads. As for the algorithms, I was taught them and I recall my teachers demonstrating why they worked. I can “do math in my head” to the amazement of my students sometimes.

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InDefenseOfLiberty

January 20, 2013 at 9:40 pm

Our children are deliberately being dumbed down. Please check out the videos on Common Core, Agenda 21, and the Miseducation of America by Charlotte Iserbyt at http://www.indefenseofliberty.tv/index.php/category/education-system/

Reply
Rotten to the Core: Obama’s War on Academic Standards (Part 1)

January 23, 2013 at 7:48 am

[...] This must-read piece by James Shuls connects Common Core, math corruption, and the need for school choice. [...]

Reply
Rotten to the Core: Obama’s War on Academic Standards (Part 1) | Tony Johnson

January 23, 2013 at 11:43 am

[...] Phyllis Schlafly, as always, sounded the alarm here. This must-read piece by James Shuls connects Common Core, math corruption, and the need for school choice. Heritage resources on Common Core. Videos: APP’s full video series on Common Core here. [...]

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Rotten to the Core: Obama’s War on Academic Standards (Part 1) « Sally's Political Blog

January 25, 2013 at 10:17 pm

[...] This must-read piece by James Shuls connects Common Core, math corruption, and the need for school choice. [...]

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James Shuls

January 30, 2013 at 2:14 pm

Thank you all for your comments. I wanted to make you aware that School Reform News read this story and found it very interesting. We recorded a podcast, released Jan. 27th, which you can find on itunes or at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/school-reform-news-podcast/id359373516

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Victoria M. Young

February 8, 2013 at 10:22 am

Sadly I read your essay last night.

Your story is J. Martin Rochester’s story (Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence) is my story (The Crucial Voice of the People, Past and Present).

But I have come to a different solution, in a way. Unfortunately, my proposal doesn’t lend itself to a one word explanation like “choice.” It’s more like two words – another choice. We have another choice.

If we listened to each other, the answers become clear. On math curriculum, we split between two camps but the reality probably lies between – we need solid mastery of the basic number functions and a conceptual understanding. On reading curriculum – we need to have been taught phonetic strategies along with being encouraged to use the holistic concepts of word recognition. (Please excuse my lack of usage of proper ed terminology – I’m just a parent. Hope you get the point I’m trying to make.)

Again listening to one of your respondents, look to how teachers are taught. But I don’t go so far as to say eliminate schools of education, my choice is to see us strengthen and improve the existing system.

James, you did an excellent job diagnosing what is wrong with the system – it is frustrating and unresponsive – be we can fix that!

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