Everyday Math Makes Me Want to SCREAM
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I don’t normally loathe things. But I loathe Everyday Math for the hell it put my daughter through and the poor math foundation it gave her.
Thank you so much.
You Don’t Know How to Subtract, Mom
My breaking point came one Tuesday evening. My sobbing seven-year old daughter told me I didn’t know how to subtract. To learn, I needed to read the four page Powerpoint presentation on her teacher’s website. (Here’s another teacher’s Power Point.) Four. Pages. ABOUT SUBTRACTION. (But, um, I do know how to subtract, don’t I?)
So, like any normal parent, while opening up the file, I ranted on Facebook.
(Did you know there’s a Facebook support group for people like me? –Parents Against Everyday Math.)
Her subtraction was backwards.
It looked like this:
Now, this kind of method is fine for mental math, sure. But NOT for pencil and paper algorithms – it’s confusing and takes too long!
To make matters worse, it’s certainly NOT a good foundation if the math curriculum doesn’t continue like this through middle and high school. A Facebook friend wrote, “After 6 years of homework battles in elementary school, kids get to un-learn [Everyday Math] in middle school with traditional math. How does that make sense to anyone other than the self-appointed Einstein raking it in?”
Everyday Math Leaves Kids Behind
It was bad enough in first grade when AJ didn’t learn money in the one week it was taught, or time in the one week that was taught, or the addition facts when they were taught. She fell farther and farther behind with the promise that the curriculum would spiral back around eventually.
Her teachers through out these years reassured me that, she’d catch on when she was ready and that the research on Everyday Math was extensive, and it was a really a good way to teach math.
[Insert bad word here that starts with BS.]
Because those statements weren’t true. Not good research. Nor did she catch on eventually. (Google EM research and you’ll see, I’m not going to go into it here.)
Since AJ hadn’t learned the basics, she couldn’t catch on to the next spiral months or a year later.
She believed she was stupid.
Conversely, students who excelled in math weren’t challenged at their ability level and were bored. Herein lies a big problem with Everyday Math — it teaches to the middle so you hit the middle kids and leave out the rest.
Blame the Teacher?
An Everyday Math trainer told my friend that it must be because the teachers were incorrectly implementing the curriculum.
Is the curriculum that easy to mess up?
I don’t think so.
. . .
New Math
In a recent phone conversation, Audra Haskins, Director of Lower School at Aspen Academy in Colorado, explained this about Everyday Math, “It doesn’t go deep; there’s not a lot of repetition, review, or application.”
A teacher friend of mine from Twitter added, “The material jumps around so much that mastery is not achieved on any level (at least in second grade.) It doesn’t make sense. I hate it! I am worried about the future of my students because I felt like I didn’t teach solid math this year.”
Investigations is another curriculum in the New Math genre.
Haskins said, “Investigations is designed to assume the kids are good at math and know the skills and apply them. If kids don’t know it, they’re never going to get there.”
Mom of eight and blogger, Gretchen White commented on Facebook, “I LOATHE Investigations. I’ve ranted about it extensively. It’s the main reason we left our former school. I remember our 2nd grader having to count the pockets in our family for homework one night and I realized it was failing him as a mathematician. I’ve been happy with Saxon, although I know there are plenty of Saxon critics. It seems like “real” math, for lack of a better word.”
Want to read more concerns about Everyday Math? Try Concerned CT Parent, Ed Weekly Blogger, Rational American, Amy Johnson, Andrea Merida, parents on this forum, Rox Dover, and Parent Pundit.
To summarize,
3 Reasons I Hate Everyday Math
- Everyday Math does not teach basic number sense.
- Everyday Math makes simple math operations harder than necessary.
- Everyday Math does not differentiate for kids who need longer time or kids who need to move faster.
Cue Music, Enter . . . Singapore Math
We moved schools to one with a FANTASTIC math curriculum — Singapore Math. It goes deep into twelve concepts and teaches to mastery (meaning that kids learn it before moving to a new concept.) Tomorrow I share my happy experiences with Singapore Math. 🙂
What does your school use for math? Or homeschool? What do you like or dislike about it?
My son had EM for 1st grade after having an excellent Montessori foundation – he believed he was good at math and EM knocked it out of him. We are homeschooling for 2nd grade and have resisted any 1 curriculum – we make it up as we go, and use Montessori approaches and materials whenever possible. Please please help – after the rant, we need OPTIONS. What are good curricula for 2nd grade math. Need guidance. Thanks.
I taught using EM. First, I had to teach it to myself before I could teach it to the kids. I agree that things like subtraction (& multiplication) are very convoluted – requiring many steps.
Kids were confused by the process. So how could they learn the concept? They didn’t.
It jumped around, A LOT! I did not like that AT ALL. No room for mastery when you are on to the next topic so quickly.
I did my best to review concepts we had already worked on, added supplemental material to help struggling learners. I even held after school “tutoring sessions”.
I honestly think had the curriculum been better it wouldn’t have been so hard for these kids to learn math basics!
Great post!
It’s funny… we talked about this in my Math Methods class when I was doing my studies to become a teacher (this is my first year teaching). The instructor was showing a video for explaining division, and I asked “Why can’t we just teach the children to do division the old fashioned way we used?” I was told kids MUST learn the concept on their own, they must DISCOVER what division is in order to understand it. Well, my now 5th grader is completely confused about math now. I believe that we are adding too many steps in math that just don’t make sense. A four page PP on how to subtract? That is just insane!
Karen, I’m a teacher too, and it is important for them to understand the math, but they can’t just “discover” it on their own as a lot of “new math” methods are suggesting. It requires teacher support and very purposeful planning and implementation of math tasks. For years, it’s been acceptable to be math “illiterate”, but in today’s job market, grads need to have the problem solving and analytical skills that come with learning math on a deeper level.
Everyday Math is the bane of my math existence. It was introduced when my son was in 2nd grade in our CA school district. His very experienced and excellent teacher refused to teach it in favor of his tried-and-true curriculum until the district threatened to fire him. Introducing new methods like left-to-right math just for the sake of a new method is a waste of time. Learning and internalizing math concepts is best done with consistency and repetition, not mixing it up and teaching something different every day. My very bright son now struggles in college calculus because he got no foundation in the early years.
Eventually, we moved to another state and thought we would escape it only to find them introducing it there the year we moved. Ugh. So glad my kids are in high school now and no more Everyday Math.
I am a former 1st grade teacher and we had just started using EM before I “retired” to stay home with my kids. It was awful to teach and very confusing to students!! I am worried about our future generations with the direction that public schools are going!