Ep 25. Understanding math reform ideology with Tom Loveless

This transcript was created with speech-to-text software.  It was reviewed before posting but may contain errors. Credit to Jazmin Boisclair.

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You can listen to the episode here: Chalk & Talk Podcast.

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Ep 25. Understanding math reform ideology with Tom Loveless

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[00:00:00] Anna Stokke: Welcome to Chalk and Talk, a podcast about education and math. I'm Anna Stokke, a math professor, and your host.

 

You are listening to episode 25 of Chalk and Talk. My guest in this episode is Dr. Tom Loveless. Tom is an expert in education policy, and he knows a lot about the history of math education in North America. I wanted to have someone come on the show to talk about the origins of current math teaching philosophies, and Tom is the ideal person for that.

 

He even served on the National Math Advisory Panel. For those unfamiliar, The National Math Advisory Panel is akin to the National Reading Panel. It consisted of a group of experts commissioned by the U. S. government to summarize the best research available on how to teach math. Their 2008 report offered excellent concrete recommendations, but sadly, it doesn't seem to have had much of an impact on math education policy in the U. S. or Canada.

 

You can find a link to the report on the resource page. In the episode, Tom and I discussed that report, including its recommendations on conceptual understanding and procedural fluency. We discussed the history of the math wars, and whether some of the popular ideas about teaching math, like providing rich tasks, or teaching through open-ended problems, are really new ideas or not.

 

We talk about the influential 1989 NCTM standards, that stands for National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and their global impact on math education. I asked Tom for his opinion on the California Math Framework and whether its recommendations are aligned with those in the National Math Advisory Panel report.

 

We also discussed the importance of memorizing math facts and a whole lot more. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who teaches math, as well as parents and policymakers. Now, without further ado, let's get started.

 

I am excited to be joined by Dr. Tom Loveless today. And he is joining me from California. He is an education researcher and former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis on policy. Prior to getting his Ph.D., he was a classroom teacher. He was also a professor at Harvard University's College of John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he taught education policy courses.

 

He's an author of several books, he has written numerous educational policy documents, and he has written many articles for the public in publications such as Education Week. And he was a member of the National Math Advisory Panel, which we will hear more about today.

 

Welcome, Tom. Welcome to my podcast.

 

[00:03:10] Tom Loveless: Well, thank you for having me.

 

[00:03:12] Anna Stokke: So I just read your book, Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core. So, you know a lot about the history of education policy and the various math wars and how that's played out. I'd like to talk a bit about some of the history of math education in North America, reform math, the math wars, and how we got to where we are today.

 

So, we could go back to the 60s, or even further, but I think I'd like to start with 1989. So, there's an organization based out of the United States called the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, or the NCTM. They've been highly influential on the direction of K-12 math education in the U. S., and that generally spills over to Canada, so here's why I'm starting with 1989.

 

[00:04:02] Tom Loveless: Think that's a good, place.  

 

[00:04:04] Anna Stokke: In 1989, the NCTM launched a campaign to change the content and the teaching of mathematics. They published a document called "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics." And my understanding is that that document was highly influential and perhaps the beginning of the math wars can be traced back to the reforms stipulated. in that document.

 

So these NCTM standards, they de-emphasized memorization of number facts and procedural skills, disparaged standard algorithms, and teaching by telling. They encouraged the use of calculators, even in primary school, and promoted discovery learning. You can correct me if I'm wrong on this or if I'm missing anything. So what prompted the NCTM to publish this document?

 

[00:04:52] Tom Loveless: Well, in the 1980s, there was another document that came out in the United States called A Nation at Risk, and that really catalyzed a reform movement throughout the United States, including a push for standards. And so along comes in CTM when people were beginning to clamour by the end of the decade for standards along comes in CTM and says, “We have some standards,” and they offered a complete revision of K through 12 mathematics, especially actually in primary grades and in early secondary grades, what we call middle school in the United States.

 

So that's basically where it came from.

 

[00:05:38] Anna Stokke: And so why did the NCTM standards disparage basic skills and standard algorithms and teaching by telling?

 

[00:05:49] Tom Loveless: Now we go back before 1989, that is a mainstay of progressive education. Progressive educators have complained about the teaching of mathematics for at least a century, goes back to the 1920s, and NCTM is a very progressive organization in terms of believing in progressive principles.

 

I'll just give you one little taste of it. The word arithmetic, which had been really the primary duty of elementary K through six teachers, the teaching of arithmetic, the word arithmetic almost wasn't even mentioned in the ‘89 NCTM standards. And when it was talked about by NCTM leaders, it was done so disparagingly.

 

Like for instance there's a speech that was given by an NCTM president. I think it was 1995, you can find it on the internet still, and arithmetic is referred to as shopkeeper arithmetic. And that term does two things. First of all, it says it's old-fashioned, you don't need to do that anymore, we have calculators and things that can do all that for us.

 

And so, this whole idea of something being out of fashion, not needed anymore, really was one of the major points of contention that later led to the math wars in the 1990s.

 

[00:07:17] Anna Stokke: What was the impact after they published this document? What happened?

 

[00:07:22] Tom Loveless: Well, one of the ways in which there was impact was in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP. It's also called the, referred to as the National Report Card in the United States. And NAEP gives a reading test and a math test. The NAEP math standards, the NAEP math framework, use the NCTM standards for the way in which it organized and presented mathematics for assessment.

 

And so, for example, there are five strands of learning that are recommended in the NCTM ‘89 standards, NAEP adopted all those five strands and NAEP reports five different scores and it also reports a composite score. So it was influential among policy leaders, especially leaders in Washington. The states, which have much more power over curriculum than the federal government of the United States, they use the NCTM standards as a template for the development of their own standards.

 

I mentioned that whole push for standards and accountability in the 1980s, well in the 1990s it actually started happening on the state level. You had states developing tests, holding schools accountable. And for the most part, they used, at least in the beginning of the 1990s, they used the NCTM standards as their kind of guiding light.

 

[00:08:54] Anna Stokke: So, first of all, these weren't really new ideas as you just kind of explained, like this sort of thing had been, you know, a mainstay, as you said, of progressive education for, many years. Now my understanding is that based on these NCTM standards, several programs were developed.

 

The one I kind of remember people always talking about was TERC. Does that ring a bell?

 

[00:09:17] Tom Loveless: Yes.

 

[00:09:17] Anna Stokke: Everyday math? Is that one?

 

[00:09:20] Tom Loveless: Everyday math is another one, yes. Everyday math came from the University of Chicago math project, and TERC came from Boston.

 

[00:09:28] Anna Stokke: So, my understanding is that there was public backlash. Parents were upset, they couldn't understand the math their kids were doing, kids probably weren't learning that well and there's a lot of criticism from mathematicians.

 

The programs were, often described by critics as “fuzzy math.” There were open letters at the time by prominent mathematicians, they were published and calling out the programs and, you know, and parent advocacy groups were formed. So, some people refer to this as the math wars, these differing perspectives.

 

So can you say a bit about that? Like what were the two sides of the math wars saying and how did things play out at that point?

 

[00:10:11] Tom Loveless: And by the way, the two sides that I'm going to mention, and they go by shorthanded terms of progressives on the one hand and then traditionalists on the other, like I said, they go back to the 1920s. They've been arguing about how to teach math and how to teach reading as well for at least a century.

 

And it continues today, actually, the argument between those two camps. The alliance between parents and mathematicians was really, truly different, though. That was unique, and that kind of bubbled up in the 1990s. You had a group of parents in California, they founded a website called “Mathematically Correct.”

 

And it was a terrific website that documented all of these grievances against the math programs and published some of the most, you know, the silly problems that kids were getting and, and that kind of thing. And mathematicians really formed an alliance with parents. And by mathematicians, I don't mean math educators.

 

Math educators are, they are in NCTM. but mathematicians, actual mathematicians, and math departments, they formed an alliance with parents and it became a very powerful alliance, at least in two states, California and Massachusetts, where the NCTM-backed standards were thrown out and discarded.

 

And then a group of mathematicians in California, there were four mathematicians from Stanford who were instrumental in developing a new set of standards. And the same thing happened in Massachusetts where a new set of standards was developed. And again, it was influenced very heavily by mathematicians in that state.

 

[00:12:02] Anna Stokke: A lot of the controversy you mentioned was in California and we're kind of seeing that again today, right? So, why California? Why does California often seem to be the center of these debates?

 

[00:12:16] Tom Loveless: I think it's historical. Historically, it goes back to the way education is structured in California, the way public education is structured. Historically in California, districts and schools have tremendous power except for curriculum. And things like standards and selecting textbooks.

 

California has had state-adopted textbooks. So the state actually says, here are the books that you use. And it used to be mandated. Now it's just suggestions, “Here are the books we recommend.” But, for a very long time, going back to the 19th century, shortly after California became a state in the 1850s, it adopted state textbook adoption. That became the law of the state.

 

So, California has always had a very important role for the state to play in curriculum. And that's not true in other states. In the state of Massachusetts, for example, districts decide They decide what they're going to use, with some state guidance, but it's only guidance and it can be rejected. In the state of Illinois, they even allow schools to select textbooks, separate textbooks.

 

You can have schools just a few miles apart that have different textbooks. So, each state in the United States differs in the state role. And in California, because it's been a state role to pick textbooks and by the way to assess students, the California assessment program started in the early 1970s, long before other states were doing much assessment.

 

All those things, because they're at the state level, are very political, they're debated, public hearings are held, and that's why these controversies often start in California.

 

[00:14:13] Anna Stokke: And I just want to mention too that those 1989 NCTM standards also impacted math curricula in Canada. And I've researched that shift. So here in Canada, we started to see the impact in the 90s. So de-emphasizing of times table memorization, more emphasis on multiple strategies, disparaging practice as drill and kill, and then in many provinces like mine, doubling down in around 2006 or so. So it certainly spilled into Canada and we still see the impact today, I think.

 

[00:14:49] Tom Loveless: Oh, yes. And it was worldwide. So, these reform movements, both the math reform movement and in the United States it was in CTM math. I just call it reform math, and it was a worldwide phenomenon. It happened in, in countries throughout Europe, it even happened in Asia where mathematics has a completely different, more revered status than it does in the United States.

 

So it happened worldwide.

 

[00:15:18] Anna Stokke: And I just want to read something from an article that you sent me that you wrote. This is a 1997 article, and it's a great article called "The Second Great Math Rebellion," October 15th, 1997. This is a quote from the article. “We've been through this before. In the 1960s, the curriculum known as the new math was rooted from classrooms by angry parents and teachers. Parents didn't recognize the mathematics that children were bringing home from school, and teachers found it almost impossible to instruct students on the strange new topics recommended by reformers.”

 

So, there's nothing new. This is, it's the same idea. And I think you would find articles today that said the same thing about the math that's being taught in schools today.

 

[00:16:07] Tom Loveless: Yes. I edited a book, it was published by Brookings in 2001 called The Great Curriculum Debate, and half the chapters were devoted to mathematics and half were devoted to reading. And it was about the 1990s arguments that went on over both of those subjects.

 

But I wrote the introductory chapter and I started with some quotes from John Dewey back in 1901. I think they, the quotes were from, and it was going on then. When I hear people complain about these huge debates or wars or whatever you want to call them, they went on a hundred years ago. They're going to, be going on a hundred years from now. These are long-time things.

 

[00:16:49] Anna Stokke: Definitely. And there's nothing new about teaching by open-ended problems and, rich tasks, discovery learning. They just bring it back under a new name.

 

[00:17:00] Tom Loveless: Yes.

 

[00:17:01] Anna Stokke: You mentioned 1997, the California State Board of Education adopted a new set of math standards, which were written with the help of four Stanford mathematicians.

 

So how did that happen?

 

[00:17:14] Tom Loveless: Well, the state of California didn't like the fact that when the first state NAEP scores came out, again, that's often referred to as the National Report Card, it's the first time that states were broken out before just a national score was reported or sometimes some regional scores, but California scored terribly in both math and reading on this NAEP assessment.

 

And the legislature got very concerned and appointed task groups to take a look at the standards and the curriculum in the state. There was a distrust of educational bureaucrats who might work in the State Department of Education to be in charge of the writing of new standards.

 

So they just, the State Board turned over this new project to these Stanford professors.

 

[00:18:08] Anna Stokke: Wow. that's got to be kind of unprecedented. Is that right?

 

[00:18:12] Tom Loveless: Yes, very unique.

 

[00:18:14] Anna Stokke: So what was the response? How did that play out? Did it go well?

 

[00:18:19] Tom Loveless: It's hard to say. I mean, there was a mixed response. The people who were rebelling in the 1990s, the parents and mathematicians, they were quite pleased. However, the whole progressive agenda in both math and in reading, and it spills over into science and social studies too, they have their own groups like this

 

Progressive educators are very influential. Most teachers are trained under those principles. And so I think the response of teachers in the classroom was, “Oh, we'll just cope with this,” and they didn't necessarily follow. I mean, I think standards are a very weak instrument to change what goes on in classrooms.

 

You really have to convince local educators, “Here's a better way of doing things, and we have evidence that kids will learn more if you do it this way, instead of the way you've been doing it.” And to use any kind of state policy as an instrument to change what schools do, it just doesn't work.

 

[00:19:29] Anna Stokke: I've actually looked at that set of standards from 1997. and I thought it was really great. I would be very happy if we had that, what I call a curriculum here in my province. But it sounds like maybe they didn't have buy-in necessarily from all the players like the teachers. Is that what you were saying?

 

[00:19:50] Tom Loveless: Yeah, I mean, you're not going to take people who believe in open-ended tasks, for example, or who believe in mathematical mindsets and suddenly get them to, “no, you should be” for example, “you should make kids memorize basic facts. That's a good idea.” They've been trained that's a bad idea. So to get to get teachers to see that that's a good idea or that learning standard algorithms to the point of automaticity where you don't have to stop and think, “Now, what do I do now,” that that's a good idea, well, they've been trained that that's not a good idea. So, it's hard to affect change that goes against what teachers are used to doing.

 

[00:20:41] Anna Stokke: How long were those, that set of standards from 1997, how long was that set of standards used?

 

[00:20:49] Tom Loveless: Until Common Core. Common Core was released in 2010.

 

[00:20:54] Anna Stokke: So, let's talk about the National Math Advisory Panel. That's another report that I've read very closely. So, can you discuss the National Math Advisory Panel, listeners might not know what it was, why it was established and what exactly it did.

 

So, can you tell us a little bit about that?

 

[00:21:14] Tom Loveless: Yeah, it was created by executive order of the president of the United States George W. Bush in 2006. And we, the panel immediately went to work. The panel, I think had 22 members, somewhere in that area. Immediately went to work and then released a report in 2008. The basic objective of the panel, and it was modelled after an earlier panel in reading, earlier in the decade, around 2001 there was a national reading panel.

 

The objective of the panel was to summarize the best research that we had. And by that, I mean, essentially, either experimental or quasi-experimental studies of how kids learn, what they should be learning in preparation for algebra. So, in other words, what they should be learning in K through seventh or eighth grade.

 

And then a definition also of “what is an algebra course?” What does a real algebra course, Algebra One course, what topics does it teach? So that was the, that was the basic thrust of the panel. We met for two years, all over the country, held public hearings and released the report in 2008.

 

[00:22:34] Anna Stokke: So, what were the qualifications of the people on that committee?

 

[00:22:38] Tom Loveless: Each brought different qualifications. I'm not a mathematician, nor am I a math educator. I'm a policy analyst, so that was kind of my role. There were cognitive psychologists on the committee, there were math educators, including the president of NCTM at the time, Skip Fennell.

 

That pretty much covered it. So, math educators, there were mathematicians on the panel, which a lot of panels historically have been dominated by math educators and have not included mathematicians and they really have different training and totally different views on mathematical topics.

 

And there was one classroom teacher on the panel also, Vern Williams.

 

[00:23:21] Anna Stokke: But the panel did, they collected a lot of opinions from teachers of algebra, though. Isn’t that right?

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[00:23:28] Tom Loveless: Yes, I was the chair of that task force actually. So, and all the way along, I insisted that we do some kind of survey of algebra teachers. You know, we need to hear from the field. This is an algebra-focused project and we need to hear from the field of teachers about what are the obstacles they face. You know, and I think that was very enlightening, and especially for some of the weaknesses of the math reform movement I think it was enlightening.

 

For example, tracking and ability grouping has been disparaged for a very long time by progressive education educators. And, and yet, the algebra teachers identified as one of their biggest obstacles the vast array of abilities and preparation of their students that they face on day one.

 

It's very hard to teach linear equations at the same time you're teaching addition of two-digit numbers or subtraction with borrowing. This is just impossible. It can't be done. And so, teachers listed the heterogeneity of the preparation of their students as one obstacle.

 

They listed other obstacles, such as the quality of instructional materials they were getting, which is what we call curriculum. The survey was really important.

 

[00:24:52] Anna Stokke: I seem to recall that the panel looked at something like 16,000 research articles, but you had standards for which ones actually were considered. And I mean, this kind of ties into an earlier episode, I had, “Red Flags in Education Research,” because a lot of education research actually isn't that well done, and some studies are good studies and some are not at all, right?

 

So the committee then went through those and determined which sort of met the standard to be included. When making recommendations, is that correct?

 

[00:25:28] Tom Loveless: Yes, that's exactly right. There were, in fact, there was actually, we subdivided, as I said, into these different task forces and subcommittees and subgroups. There was a group that was just dedicated to standards of evidence. And we were influenced by the What Works Clearinghouse in the United States because it has standards of evidence and also by the standards of evidence that the National Reading Panel earlier in the decade had adopted.

 

And so, we gave more prominence and more weight to experimental work and quasi-experimental work that had a comparison group that had objective measures of student outcomes and that focused on achievement as opposed to other outcomes.

 

[00:26:14] Anna Stokke: And my impression was that the National Math Advisory Panel was formed almost to settle some of these debates. So, for instance, there’s sometimes an idea that conceptual understanding is more important than procedural skills or that they're at odds with each other, but to quote the report, “Debates regarding the relative importance of conceptual knowledge, procedural skills, and the commitment of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts to long-term memory are misguided. These capabilities are mutually supportive, each facilitating learning of the others.”

 

And the report also addressed automatic recall of basic facts and standard algorithms. So, another quote, “Computational facility with whole number operations rests on the automatic recall of addition and related subtraction facts and of multiplication and related division facts. It requires fluency with the standard algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Fluent use of the algorithms not only depends on the automatic recall of number facts but also reinforces it.” And I do encourage listeners to take a look at the report.

 

It also lists benchmarks for the most critical topics to cover in grades 3 to 8, and by what grade level students should be proficient with each topic, so it's really helpful.

 

[00:27:45] Tom Loveless: And basically, the idea was that in grades one through four or kindergarten through four that students would learn whole number arithmetic. And so the four operations with whole numbers would be the main job of grades one through four. And in grades five through eight, it would be rational numbers.

 

So fractions, decimals, percents and how to manipulate fractions, decimals, and percents. And you mentioned the false dichotomy, and the panel report really did emphasize, it's actually more than a dichotomy, it's a trichotomy. It's, it's three things, and that is computation skills, conceptual understanding, and problem-solving as the third.

 

And all three of these can be developed simultaneously, they're mutually reinforcing. And so that's the best that we know about teaching kids mathematics, that all three of those things need to be included.

 

[00:28:45] Anna Stokke: Exactly. So, it's really quite a good document. And with the idea being that we want students to be prepared for algebra because algebra is kind of the gateway to higher-level math. I mean, these days we have, we now have people trying to claim that algebra isn't important and that's just lunacy, right?

 

So, but in any case, I mean, if we can at least stick with the, the idea, which is fairly clear to me that we have to think about preparing students for algebra. If they're to have any hope of continuing on in higher-level math, the idea of the recommendations in the National Math Advisory Panel's report is how do you prepare students for algebra?

 

[00:29:28] Tom Loveless: That's right. I'm going to hold this up to you since you'll be able to see it, but here's the report. It's fairly slim. It's not huge and you can download it. You can also download, and this is much different in size, these are the reports of the task force. It's like Oxford Dictionary, it's massive, but you can go through and find different aspects of the report laid out and elaborated in the reports of the task groups.

 

[00:30:00] Anna Stokke: Tom, about that big document you have there, I'd love to look at it, but I have a question, and maybe you'll refuse to answer it, maybe not, but I've always wondered about the Kamii and Dominick article that claims standard algorithms are harmful and how the National Math Advisory Panel rated the quality of that research. Can you comment on that?

 

[00:30:23] Tom Loveless: I won’t answer that in terms of any specific.

 

[00:30:27] Anna Stokke: Okay, okay. Fair enough, fair enough, but I do have a podcast episode where we discuss that article.

 

[00:30:34] Tom Loveless: Did you read Steven Leinwand's op-ed in Education Week, which appeared right around the time of the one that I sent to you that I wrote? He called it abuse to pencil, paper, arithmetic, he called it a form of abuse, actually because we don't need to be computing like that anymore.

 

We have little calculators that can do it.

 

[00:30:55] Anna Stokke: Right. And that's a, that's a ridiculous assertion. I mean, we're talking about doing math using pencil and paper. How could that be abuse? It just doesn't make any sense. But in any case, I have a great podcast discussion about standard algorithms with Ben Solomon. So people can go back and listen to that one if they want to. It's called “Red Flags in Education Research with Ben Solomon.”

 

So my next question is, how was the National Math Advisory Panel's report used? Did the NCTM incorporate any of the report's recommendations into their guidance?

 

[00:31:31] Tom Loveless: No, and the report in general, just collected dust on bookshelves. I mean, the report, it's pretty disappointing how the report was received. A publication of the American AERA, the American Educational Research Association called "Educational Researcher," shortly after the National Math Panel report came out, devoted an entire issue to the National Math Panel.

 

There was not one article that was supportive of the National Math Panel report. They were all critical. Jo Boaler wrote an article for it. They were all critical of the National Math Panel's findings.

 

[00:32:14] Anna Stokke: I mean, that's really depressing. The entire point of the panel was to bring people together, to bring experts together, to review the best evidence for how to teach children math and this was ignored.

 

[00:32:27] Tom Loveless: Yeah, but if I can add one thing, and this will, this will be a little more conciliatory towards the other side, and obviously I do have a point of view in this, I mentioned Skip Fennell was on the committee and he, on the panel, and he was president of the NCTM at the time. Under Skip Fennell, the NCTM published, I think, the best document they've published in a hundred years, and it was called the "Focal Points" and it came out, I think, in 2006. The National Math Panel did refer to the focal points.

 

So the influence actually went a little bit in the other direction because we praise the focal points. The focal points were great, the focal points essentially presented this idea of okay, we're telling teachers to teach all these things in third grade. What are the really important things that kids need to know?

 

You know, what are the critical things that kids need to know in mathematics in third grade? And they did that for each of the grades. So that was an important development on the part of NCTM. And in my view, they haven't published anything like it since. And they certainly didn't before that either.

 

There's this whole idea of, you know, if we just get people in the room with opposing points of view, we can compromise and come up with a document that represents that compromise. And again, I'm skeptical of that endeavour. I don't think it quite works that way.

 

[00:33:58] Anna Stokke: I also think that compromising between good instruction and bad instruction, why would you do that?

 

[00:34:05] Tom Loveless: It doesn't get you anywhere.

 

[00:34:07] Anna Stokke: You should use good instruction, and you can't compromise between things like, “Well, I think that children should be prepared for algebra and I think that algebra isn't important.

 

You can't compromise between things like that. When there's one thing that's clearly correct and backed by evidence, that's the thing you have to go with. So, I mean, these are complicated issues, but yes, it's very unfortunate the way things played out there.

 

[00:34:33] Tom Loveless: You're quite right. So, you either, you either believe children need to memorize basic facts, the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts, or you don't, or you, you know, you just don't think they're very important to know by heart. You know, to the point of automaticity and there, there really is no kind of middle ground there.

 

[00:34:57] Anna Stokke: No, there, there isn't. It's just like, you should teach children to read using phonics. There's evidence that this is the case. If there are some people out there who refuse to believe that, we should not cave to them because they're wrong.

 

There are similar issues in mathematics. I just don't think they've received quite as much attention. Right.

 

[00:35:18] Tom Loveless: They haven't. You're right.

 

[00:35:19] Anna Stokke: So let's talk about Common Core. what precipitated that? Why was there the need to develop the Common Core State Standards?

 

[00:35:30] Tom Loveless: Well, I mentioned two states that kind of went their own way and rejected NCTM standards, California and Massachusetts. Every state, in a way, went its own route, defined mathematics and reading, and the objectives that go, you know, under those two subjects in their own way. And so people started complaining about, you know, we have 50 sets of standards.

 

We have 50 states, and so we have 50 sets of standards. We have 50 different tests to measure where the kids are learning those standards and this should be, we don't need that. We should just have one set of standards. Let's agree on a set of standards, make it a national set of standards. United States has a very mobile population, people move around a lot.

 

And the complaint was, you know, you have kids moving from state to state and suddenly they're getting the same thing over and over again sometimes. So that was the impetus for Common Core.

 

[00:36:33] Anna Stokke: So how many states use Common Core?

 

[00:36:37] Tom Loveless: Well, originally. Over 45 states signed on to the project, so almost all of the states. There were, there were five holdouts that said, no, we're not interested in that, 45 states signed on. After the Common Core was written and adopted by the states, they started falling away.

 

And eventually, particularly in the red states, the Republican-dominated states of the United States, there were, again, parent rebellions against the Common Core, there were people coming on television and on the internet circulating really absurd, mathematics problems, and Common Core just got a bad reputation.

 

States began saying, “Well, we don't want that anymore,” and adopted their own standards. Today, it's somewhere between 18 and 25 states that still use Common Core. But let me say why that number is so fuzzy, is you had states that said we're rejecting Common Core, we want nothing to do with it anymore and we're going to write new standards.

 

And then they would just tinker, just make trivial changes in the Common Core standards and say, “Okay, here are our brand new non-Common Core standards.” And they looked basically the same as Common Core.

 

[00:38:02] Anna Stokke: In your book, you mentioned that Common Core emphasizes that conceptual understanding, procedural skill or fluency, and applications should be pursued with equal intensity. But you also point out that no one involved with writing Common Core could ever provide evidence for this. So can you elaborate on that a bit?

 

[00:38:25] Tom Loveless: That comes out of the National Math Panel. National Math Panel said all three of those things are mutually reinforcing. What the Math Panel didn't say is you should, you should teach them with equal intensity or anything like that. We honestly don't know if you should teach them with equal intensity.

 

My own view as a school teacher, former school teacher is you should not. I always taught, I began with computation. So I would begin with, you know, here's how you add fractions. You make sure they have a common denominator and you add the numerators and then I would explain why it works that way. You know, why is it that fractions can be added together that way?

 

And then maybe towards the end, once kids had mastered the computation of fractions, and once they understood why it worked the way it works, then we could take fractions and solve problems with them. Very often today what you get, and this was one of the arguments of the California Math Framework, very often today you get people who want to start with the problems.

 

Give kids a rich task and have them struggle productively. Productive struggle is one of the terms that's used. And have them figure out how they would solve this problem. Well, how would you solve it? How would you solve it? And how would this third kid solve it? And then they talk about that, and they decide the best way of solving it.

 

To me, that's a very inefficient way of teaching. But that's one of the ways in which all three of the ideas, computation skills, conceptual understanding, and problem-solving, devote where one-third and one third and one third of time is devoted to them. And that's not necessarily going to bring about better learning. 

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