Investigations Math Poll Results - The California Failure

If you've been reading this sequence of pages, you are aware that I attended a community meeting in the Spring of 2005 with our school district. Something I have just learned blows a hole in another of the school districts representations. I was curious about a statement that was made after a visitor brought up the point that schools in California tried to implement Investigations Math and then concluded it was dragging them down so they dumped it. The individual speaking for the school district at this meeting said that in California, they had only used Investigations Math for a year or two and it was showing promising results but they didn't have a full implementation of it. They never gave it a fair test. Those were essentially his words.

What I have learned, is that those words are completely false. Whether he was just ignorant of the facts or deliberately made those statements is unknown to me but here's the real story.

Not only did California implement Investigations and Mathland and other curriculum in this same genre of "fuzzy math," they ran it for over 7 years. From before 1992 to 1998 California ran this program and watched test scores drop. At California State University remedial math course enrollments went from 25% in 1992 for college freshmen, to over 50% of the student freshman population in 1999 (see study). That shows a completely different picture about the true effects of Investigations Math.

The following clip is from an article in the Los Angeles Times in 1999 written by two math professors (one from Stanford and the other from CSUN and on the state board of education in CA) (See L.A.'S MATH PROGRAM JUST DOESN'T ADD UP)

"LASI has promoted an experimental K-6 math curriculum, Mathland [precursor to Investigation's Math and roughly the same program], which has no textbooks for students. Its manual for teachers tells them not to explain the standard algorithms of arithmetic to children. In other words, children are not taught the traditional procedures for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Nowhere in any of these K-6 materials is the usual way to multiply two numbers, like 35 times 76, ever explained...

Mathland and IMP are not the only questionable programs implemented by LASI in Los Angeles schools. All of LASI's recommendations are problematic. The heavy emphasis on calculators is particularly damaging. This often results in students needing their calculators for even the most rudimentary figuring. It is our view that calculators should be used sparingly in grades 6-12 and not at all in grades K-5. The base 10 structure of our number system together with the standard arithmetic algorithms carry the seeds of algebra. Depriving children of mastery of arithmetic closes doors to more advanced mathematics courses in ways that district staff members do not seem to understand.

Statistics from the U.S. Department of Education show that success in secondary school algebra is the single greatest predictor of success in college--not just for engineering and science majors, but for majors in all fields."

Did you catch that? Algebra is the SINGLE GREATEST PREDICTOR OF SUCCESS IN COLLEGE FOR ALL FIELDS. When one district dropped this Investigations Math's program, it was reported (same article):

"Sacramento Unified School District abandoned the faddish LASI-style curricula for its multiethnic students and increased its first and second grade SAT-9 test scores by more than 16 percentile points this year."

From a news release by the HOLD (Honest Open Logical Debate) group in California that began fighting this fuzzy math program, the following information describes the true results of the "early success" some people quote when dealing with this program (see Parents' Math Group Says Test Results Distorted)

The California Department of Education released the scores on the 1994 California Learning Assessment System (CLAS) test Apr. 3, and, said HOLD steering committee member Bill Evers, Palo Alto school district officials are "already making misleading and wrongheaded comparisons." Evers referred to a statement of Associate Superintendent Barbara Liddell, who [San Jose Mercury News, 4/5/95] had compared the percentages of Palo Alto eighth-graders in the top CLAS rank in 1993 (1%) and 1994 (24%)...

But, Evers noted, such comparisons are "completely invalid -- district officials simply don't know how to read the results." The state Department of Education says that because the test has been changed and the grading procedure has been changed: "Comparisons between 1993 and 1994 CLAS test results should not be made." [Calif. Dept. of Ed., news release #95-19, 4/4/95]

When district officials make comparisons between 1993 and 1994 'proficiency level' numbers, according HOLD member Zeev Wurman, they "must not forget" to tell the public that in 1994 the grading criteria for mathematics were "significantly lowered. It became especially easier to get a high grade. To take a metaphor from the high jump or the hurdles, the state of California has 'lowered the bar.'"

The statewide percentages for reading and writing essentially did not change between 1993 and 1994, but the math scores in the highest CLAS rank (6) changed from 0.03% in 1993 to 3% in 1994, a hundredfold increase. Similarly in the second CLAS rank (5) the numbers increased statewide by a factor of two to five at various year-level grades. "Such astronomical improvements within a year," Wurman says, "can only come by artificial means. Concluding, as the district does, that these results show children ascending to higher levels of achievement is wrong."

Did you see that? The individuals responsible for the program took the opportunity to change top ranking percentiles and thus artificially boosted the scores by a factor of ONE HUNDRED. By 1997, the ELM exam (Entry Level Math) used in California showed a statewide average failure rate of 55%, with the school districts using Mathland at a failure rate of 78% (link).

Without solid math facts gained in younger grades, the children will not do as well in algebra. The reason is you have to be able to quickly compute with math facts when you do algebra problems (try 2x + y = 10, y = 4. Can you do it in your head?). If you can't do algebra, you are less likely to succeed in ANY field, not just math. Calculators should be banned from our schools unless you are in the most advanced math and science classes.

So when our school district officials say California didn't give this program a fair shake, don't believe one word of it. The program was a disaster and California math students went from tops in the nation to 3rd lowest. That's where Alpine School District is taking our children.

However, California has since recognized their problem and done an about face. According to a Fordham Foundation report entitled "The State of State Math Standards" California now has the number 1 curriculum in the nation and their test scores are coming up. Utah has gone from a "B" to "D" grade for our curriculum and we're ranked 35th in the nation for our math curriculum.

For a list of California's now approved top-notch math curriculum coursework, which by the way includes Saxon math, go to this site, then click on Adopted Report.

To try and improve your child's math knowledge, be sure to check out the Extra feature on supplementing your child's education.

Added 11/3/05

I have added an article by Wayne Bishop, PhD, Cal State Department of Mathematics where he studied California schools that adopted Saxon math when they were forced to drop Investigations math and he charts the improvement in math scores for the schools. It is a remarkable study showing incredible improvements across the board from low socio-economic schools (SES) as well as in high SES schools. Click below to view this Word document:
Four Years of California Mathematics Progress

Added 10/23/06

This document is a quick summary of how California's standards were weakened, parents got involved with professionals, standards were raised, the state is moving up and in time will regain it's place as one of our top mathematical states.
ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/white-paper.html

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