17 January 2008

Texas Education Agency and Chris Comer, Part 26

I'm not sure if this should be a new thread, as it only tangentially concerns Chris Comer, but it does follow directly from concerns about the Texas Board of Education, led by Don McLeroy. The Dallas News reports that the Board rejected a school math textbook:
Conservative individuals and groups that say they favor traditional math instruction have voiced several concerns about Everyday Mathematics.

In general, they say it relies too much on calculators and peer activities rather than focusing on more traditional approaches such as having students memorize multiplication tables for automatic recall.
Interestingly, there is some data about the book's performance:
In Dallas, officials rolled out Everyday Mathematics books in kindergarten through sixth grade at 19 schools with low math scores during the 2000-01 school year. By the end of the year, only two of those schools still had low scores; a year later, none of them did, said Camille Malone, DISD's director of mathematics.
If there's this sort of quarrel over math, which is about as cut and dry as it gets, imagine what's going to be happening over science textbooks.

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