Letters from Our Readers

This year in my children's schools, once again, I am voicing my disgust over the use of the University of Chicago School Math Project textbooks.

The latest my oldest son brought home, Euclidean Geometry, begins with a test of reading comprehension and a question regarding the painter of a piece of artwork.

This should be a joke, but sadly, it is not. After the knowledge I've been gaining, it just adds to the frustration over this silly and useless program.

I have four children, one of whom I home-educate. My oldest son, who is entering ninth grade, and I have had an exhausting summer. Let me preface this by saying that my son is not "slow" in math or in any other subject. His recent Iowa Basic Skills Tests results showed a 98 percentile composite score, with a math composite in the 90s as well.

However, strangely, the math computation score is 20 percentile points lower. This child began sixth grade here in transition math and ended the year with an A-minus.

We then moved to New Hampshire for a year, where he was not allowed to take Algebra I. They maintained his computational skills, while above those of the average seventh grader, were not strong enough to take Algebra I (although he was recommended for this class in Fayette County).

By the way, this particular child took the SAT as a 12-year-old as part of a Johns Hopkins program and scored higher overall than the average college-bound high school senior.

What could this school be saying, then? I was so angry at their gall, until I actually sat down with my son and discovered that the school in New Hampshire was right. Fifth grade skills including basic work with fractions were very weak, although he had received As at the time. The truth about UCSMP began to dawn on me.

Last year we returned to Fayette County. Algebra I was begun easily enough, but the results were inconsistent. At times, the entire class was clueless. An intelligent boy began to lose his confidence in his ability to do math.

In spite of ending the year with above average results, I decided to do a little experiment myself. Using the Saxon Algebra I course, which utilizes an incremental approach, comprehensive coverage, above-average depth and, most important, practice, practice, practice, I decided to find the weak spots in the UCSMP program and spend a little time filling them in.

What we found overwhelmed both my son and me. The sheer volume of information that had been missing in the UCSMP program or was never taught nor learned to the point of competence was astounding.

In addition, I had to literally take my son's calculator from him. He had been taught to rely on the calculator to solve the most basic of multiplication and division problems, and felt, for example, that he never had to actually multiply the numeric equivalent of pi by the squared radius of a circle nor did he have to "work" a problem with exponents or square roots if a button on a calculator could do it faster.

The results I had matched those cited in reviews of the UCSMP Algebra I text, which incidentally received only a C rating overall from Mathematically Correct, a lobby group for common sense in math (www.mathematicallycorrect.com).

The criticisms include inadequate depth, superficial treatment of factoring, inadequate attention to radicals and radical expressions, too few word problems and not enough practice problems.

The review also maintained that a student who might do well in the UCSMP course would still have a less-than-comprehensive grasp of Algebra I concepts due to the inadequate coverage.

I further found that the spiraling approach of UCSMP along with lack of practice is an obstacle to the internalization of math concepts, a fact supported in a 1997 review of selected mathematics textbooks for the Core Knowledge Foundation by Wayne Bishop, Professor of Mathematics at California State University, L.A. (This is also available through the aforementioned web site).

The incremental approach and breadth and depth of the Saxon program we used this summer didn't just fill in the gaps; it provided the understanding that UCSMP algebra failed to impart.

It isn't right that a much brighter than average student, or any student, should have had to devote an entire summer to learning things he should have learned during the school year. However, he must learn these fundamentals in order to do well on the SAT again in two years.

My son is a little discouraged at our findings, as am I. He feels cheated, and rightly so. The generation of children who began the University of Chicago program in elementary school is yet to take the SAT.

Up to this point, the SAT scores in this county have been proof of very little as there are too many mitigating factors. The future SAT scores may provide the "proof" that the UCSMP instruction is inadequate, yet that will be too late for our children, the victims of this experiment with "new math." I'm convinced time will tell us what we suspected all along.

Well, I for one refuse to let this boy be a victim any more than he already has. I will continue to teach him outside school hours, at home, with a curriculum that will give him the comprehensive coverage that our children will need to be successful in the outside world.

Frankly, the need for supplementation stinks. As far as I'm concerned, the Board of Education and anyone else responsible for this curriculum should be down on their knees, begging the forgiveness of the children and their parents for wasting our children's time, their future and our money and depriving our children of the quality foundation in mathematics that they deserve.

Meg Harris
defiantbostonian@juno.com