California Dreaming: Reforming Mathematics Education

Rating:
Summary: Scholarship and objectivity?
Review: California Dreaming by Suzanne Wilson is a well-written history of math education reform in the State of California during the last half of the 20th Century. This focused and objective look at one state's attempt at educational reform should be a revealing read for anybody who wants to know why the process of educational reform resembles the production of chorizo [Mexican sausage] and often fails to work. As a science [and math] teacher in California for the last 18 years, I found it an often frustrating experience to relive this process. In education today, there are too many groups with too many acronyms producing too many and often conflicting mandates [make the material more rigorous and more enjoyable AND reduce the failure rate]. Most classroom teachers try to absorb anything good from the reforms while they are teaching as well as they know how. I like Wilson's suggestions for fixing the reform process at the end of the book, but I fear the teachers in California and elsewhere are in for more of the same.

Rating:
Summary: Alphabet Soup To Suck Out The Math Teachers Soul
Review: California Dreaming by Suzanne Wilson is a well-written history of math education reform in the State of California during the last half of the 20th Century. This focused and objective look at one state's attempt at educational reform should be a revealing read for anybody who wants to know why the process of educational reform resembles the production of chorizo [Mexican sausage] and often fails to work. As a science [and math] teacher in California for the last 18 years, I found it an often frustrating experience to relive this process. In education today, there are too many groups with too many acronyms producing too many and often conflicting mandates [make the material more rigorous and more enjoyable AND reduce the failure rate]. Most classroom teachers try to absorb anything good from the reforms while they are teaching as well as they know how. I like Wilson's suggestions for fixing the reform process at the end of the book, but I fear the teachers in California and elsewhere are in for more of the same.

Rating:
Summary: Scholarship and objectivity?
Review: I opened this book believing the jacket hype - that it was a scholarly work which fairly represented all sides in the California math wars. The author does make some platitudinous (and true) statements about balance, but the overall tone of the work is biased and the research (much of which came from personal interviews and observations) is stunningly incomplete. Important issues are, consequently, completely overlooked. The story which emerges is one of the failure of "wondrous" reforms, led by teachers, reforms which failed only because the reformers failed to communicate with all stakeholders (e.g. parents and mathematicians). We are presented with a saga detailing the "disastrous" end of something great, derailed due to the efforts of a few disgruntled "critics" who refused to enter into civil debate.

I am one of those critics. The author never spoke to me. I recently canvassed most of the key "traditionalist" players. Nobody whom I know received my question reported speaking with her either, although there is evidence in the book that she did interview a couple of the mathematicians. Readers are presented with glowing biographical pages about various math reformers, but "traditionalists" are often quoted one-dimensionally from their writings, and only to provide a platform to attack their arguments. If the author had spoken with me (and yes, I have conversed with several prominent members of the reform community at some length in the past) she'd have picked up on a real concern about the level of material which purported to teach "higher-order" thinking. It is clear from the "authentic assessment" items included in the book itself that the issue of content level never crossed her mind. A good problem for second graders (such as explaining how to make fifty cents in US coinage) is a ridiculously limiting target for high schoolers. High school graduates deserve an equal shot at all career choices, many of which require honest, generalizable, algebra. And there isn't much math concept in a lot of these quoted test items.

If she had spoken with me (or any of a number of my friends) she'd have discovered that it is precisely issues of equity and excellence for all that motivate many of us to oppose NCTM reform. I learned a lot from the years of discourse, and one thing which is now clear to me is that disadvantaged students benefit most in school settings which are less progressive, more structured, more advanced, richer in content. So much of the "less emphasis" content in reform documents is just a listing of topics perceived as hard. I'm not a fan of "traditional" math education either, but I think the reformers correctly diagnosed the disease while getting the treatment entirely wrong. Anecdotal to be sure, but the best programs I've seen build the fundamental skills and concepts in a highly organized way (insisting on mastery) and add interesting problems and applications as they go. I believe that's a big part of the lesson from the Asian countries, too.

If the author had spoken to us, she might also have replaced innuendo -- "rumors were flying" comments -- with some facts, and with the view from the other side of the room. She'd have avoided some (often trivial) errors in fact which crop up from time to time. She more importantly might not have overlooked the role of site and district administrator (reform) zealots, who in some cases made it difficult for teachers to act on their natural pragmatism. I see my own stance, in part, as an effort to protect good teachers. But I see it mostly as a deep equity issue for American society - the parents in Palo Alto and other wealthy communities can always find the resources to overcome watered-down programs.

Also missing from this book (copyright 2003) is any follow-up on the progress of the counter-reforms in California. Rank-and-file teachers tend to speak highly of the new framework. Several have told me it's the "first one they can really use." And those pesky standardized test scores, at least in elementary school - a good start - have crept upward steadily since the new textbooks were adopted. It remains to be seen if secondary performance will improve as those children advance in their educational careers, but I have hope.

One thing the book did well was detailing the pre-history of the California math reform, recounting the things that happened before I saw my first (misnamed) College Preparatory Mathematics text. [...]