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Some links and statements from national leaders in mathematics: "Students brought up on the TERC [Investigations]
program are simply not prepared to go on to a good middle school program, though it seems to them they are very successful
at "math."... "The trouble is the lack of real math. The style of teaching is not the problem; it's
the material. If experience in education has any lessons to offer, it is this: Children
tend not to learn what they are not taught."
- Ralph Raimi, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, University of Rochester.
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From
a joint statement - Wilfried Schmid, Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University and R. James Milgram,
Professor of Mathematics, Stanford University.
"...The NSF-funded curriculum generally encourage the overuse of
calculators, do not give students sufficient support to achieve automatic recall of basic number facts, do not teach algorithms
properly, and pay insufficient attention to the arithmetic of fractions.
We regard
the K-5 program, Investigations in Number, Data, and Space – TERC as especially deficient.”
-
R. James Milgram and Wilfred Schmid
"My personal view is that TERC
is the second most mathematically illiterate and damaging program I have ever seen. The first, Mathland, was one of the main reasons I got involved in the issues of mathematics education.
But Investigations is so little better than that
horror that it is scarcely possible to discern the difference between the results of the students subjected to these programs."
- R. James Milgram, Professor
of Mathematics, Stanford University
Dr. Wilfried Schmid, Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University and Panelist on the National Mathematics Advisory
Panel:
"A TERC teacher doesn't
explain, and a TERC teacher doesn't teach! I don't want to be misunderstood: group learning and discovery learning are parts
of the tool chest of every accomplished teacher, but it is folly to turn these techniques into an ideology. If we mathematicians
had to re-discover mathematics on our own, we would not get very far! And indeed, TERC does not get very far.
By the end of fifth grade, TERC students have fallen roughly two years behind where they should be." Dr. Wilfried
Schmid -"Remarks on Investigations in Number, Data and Space (TERC)." NYC HOLD Math Forum: Are Our Schools' Math Programs Adequate? Experimental Mathematics Programs and Their Consequences. New York
University Law School, NYC, June 6, 2001.
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Dr. E.D. Hirsch - brilliant educator and best selling author on the subject of
education has written THE book on math curriculum. His book, "The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them" is a
landmark work taking every major educational study into account and listing the findings of each one. When viewed as a whole,
Dr. Hirsch says, "experience has shown
that 'discovery learning' is the least effective method in the teacher's repertory." (page 246). Discovery
learning is the same thing as Investigations Math where the students "discover" their own solutions to problems. Opposite
this line of thinking is where teachers actually teach students. Dr. Hirsch says "Saxon
math's approach is reasonably close to what research is telling us about how students learn--much closer, than are the progressive
methods advocated by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics." (page 131)
“The TERC authors
are also opposed to the teaching of the traditional algorithms of arithmetic, such as long addition, subtraction with borrowing,
and the usual pencil-and-paper methods of multiplication and division. Not only do they refuse
to teach the algorithms, they make clear their preference not to have the students learn them outside of the classroom, either.”
http://www.edspresso.com/2006/11/school_math_books_nonsense_and.htm
- Wilfried Schmid; Professor of Mathematics,
Harvard University
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