Bucks
Integrated Math Joy Hirokawa, Lawrence Handy, Lou Renshaw
Dear Friends,
Good morning. Are your children or grandchildren competent in math? Several parents in the Quakertown school district claim that the “Integrated Math” program isn’t effective. Joy Hirokawa and Lou-Ellen Renshaw are members of the Quakertown Community Advisory Committee (CAC). They’ve asked Superintendent James Scanlon to survey the math teachers to see whether they agree. The Quakertown and Pennridge school districts are using “Integrated Math,” a system that uses problem solving rather than learning by rote.
Lawrence Handy agrees with Hirokawa and Renshaw’s criticism. Handy is a retired math teacher from Perkasie and says that children can’t multiply and divide unless they have calculators. Dr. Robert Kish, the Pennridge Superintendent disagrees. “I assure you that students in Pennridge can add, subtract, multiply and divide with out calculators,” Kish told me a year ago.
Handy fought successfully to become a Pennridge school director but soon wearied and resigned after just three months in office. In a Herald article (April 6), Handy said that too many meetings about construction and finances and too few meetings on teaching and curriculum frustrated him.
One can understand Handy’s irritation. The state board of education orders local curriculum and teachers’ unions determine the budget (via threats of strikes). School boards have the lonely obligation to set the taxes and occasionally hire the superintendent. I wasn’t surprised that Handy threw in the towel.
But I stray.
I asked Scanlon whether he was surveying the math teachers anonymously? “Yes,” he replied. “I sent a questionnaire to all the math and science teachers in the district.” Scanlon told me that there are 22 math teachers in the junior and senior high schools, 75 elementary school teachers, and 20 science teachers. Scanlon says they are to fill out the answers anonymously and return them by the second week of June. “I’ve received several already,” Scanlon added. “We’ll know the results soon.”
The Quakertown district has been teaching Integrated Math for seven years and will decide at the end of the 2007 school year whether to keep or abandon the current method. “We’ve had good results in the elementary schools and the middle school,” he continued. But the math results haven’t improved dramatically in the senior high school.
Personally, I think that Scanlon is an excellent leader who wants his school to excel. But the Quakertown school board is facing the CAC, which has grown increasingly critical about the math program.
Hirokawa told me that the North Penn and Bethlehem school districts abandoned Integrated Math. The CAC will present its concerns to the school board on June 12. “Ten students will also attend the meeting,” Renshaw said.
She has a daughter in the twelfth grade at QHS who’s been accepted to Penn State. But she couldn’t answer 50 percent of the questions on PSU’s math placement exam, her mother told me. Renshaw’s not waiting for QHS to drop Integrated Math. For insurance, she’s hired a tutor to bring her ninth grade daughter up to speed. Renshaw claims that the tutor concluded that her daughter knew only 50 percent of the requirements to pass Algebra I.
Renshaw sent me a three page Email with quotes from recent QHS graduates. Now at college, they were critical and discouraged. “Integrated Math ruined them for college math and for considering a good career,” one of the comments read. “It scared them away from considering careers in technical or engineering fields because they are afraid of the Math.”
Studies show that America’s school children lag significantly behind their Asian and European peers. I believe that technology will determine which country will be the economic leader at the end of this century. One of the keys for America’s success will be producing mathematicians and scientists who surpass the foreign competition. Too many college math and science teachers rail at too many public schools, which fail to prepare their students.
“Don’t wait until your daughter or son graduates from high school to learn about the damage,” Renshaw warned.
We’ll just have to stay tuned. But a good first start is attending the next school board meeting on Monday, June 12.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith