<p>But even for those kids that don't need more practice, more repetition/revisiting of concepts is good. It builds speed and depth of knowledge.</p>
<p>The Saxon program offers several of the same problem type in each set of exercises, but its beauty lies in the fact that it continues to repeat problem types from earlier lessons over the course of future lessons throughout the entire book. So you never just see the concept once or twice then forget it...like you do in so many math books. That's why Saxon kids do so well on standardized tests and why they retain so much of what they're taught. What I like about Saxon is that it is both intuitive and process driven, which fosters creative thinking and logical, repeatable outcomes.</p>
<p>Sadly, I know very few (no) students who have had a positive experience with Everyday/Chicago Math.</p>
<p>marmat103 ~ Everyday Math is very random and does not build conceptually. At the end, you do not feel like you have learned a body of knowledge like you would in a more traditional math curriculum. Its topics are very scattered and in the end you have difficulty pointing to what you have learned.</p>
<p>Conceptual sophistication is an creative approach to problem-solving. Problem-solving is the ability to see how data presented in English and in numbers in a problem relate to each other and can be combined together in an equation or series of equations to produce meaningful results. Saxon frees the mind to soar mathematically by creating that hopper into which all that beautiful data is thrown to be crunched. There is no anguish. There is process...pure and reliable and repeatable. Freeing the child to go out and be the observer, armed with the tools to solve very sophisticated problems.</p>
<p>And for the good of the order...the Chicago Math link (fox guarding the hen house) can be countered with </p>
<p>Pre-college math education or the lack of it contributes to SAT/ACT scores. I wanted opinions from somewhere other than my own town.</p>
<p>Here's my gripe. When there is no reasonable option but the public school, and they use a program that doesn't work, the kids pay the price. The kids have a higher risk of performing poorly on national exams. I'd rather not have my kid be part of a failing experiment. Believe it or not, the fact that our school system has so much money already invested has being cited as a reason to continue! We can pretend we're in our own little utopia, but these kids have to compete with the rest of the country and world!</p>
<p>Maybe my son did well IN SPITE OF Chicago math. Maybe he would have done even better in some other program....</p>
<p>Each program has its advantages and disadvantages. I submit that a large part of the reason kids in this country don't do as well as they could in math is that the subject is not taught correctly. Teachers are pretty much left to their own devices to run their classrooms as they wish, and frankly there are not a whole lot of excellent math teachers. (Flash back to the discussion about attracting good people to the profession.)</p>
<p>Everyday Math works great in the schools that use it, and use it well. But that means....a) full teacher training in the program; b) school resources to purchase manipulatives; c) school dedication to math such that it will consume 90 minutes per day in the classroom. Of course, there's the rub....it's the rare teacher that can teach the other subjects AND devote 90 minutes and more to math each and every day.</p>
<p>lkf725 - the upper levels are much better from what I have heard. </p>
<p>S#1 had EM for 1-2, then Math Central (even worse!) for 3-6 and that is when I yanked him from school and hsed him. I can bet $100 if I had not done that, he would not be taking AP Calc now and have a 31 on the math section of the ACT. This S is also one who was in the whole language experiment. </p>
<p>S#2 is in 7th and had EM 1-6 so it still remains to be seen how he does. </p>
<p>How to change what your school uses? I don't know. I think it would take lots and lots of parents working together presenting solutions. That will take time and may be too late for your younger ones. If public school is your only option, an alternative is to research material that you can use to afterschool them. There is lots of good stuff out there.</p>
<p>The lament of every failed educational program "it wasn't implemented properly." </p>
<p>In my S's middle school the (brilliant) math teacher hid the old text books when the school was mandating the new math. The books are falling apart, they are taped up, and the kids religiously take care of them for use by the students to follow. This teacher teaches two years ahead of the curriculum, and his students all score very high on SAT / ACT test (most in the 700's). He had a tougher time each year because of the kids coming in with poorer and poorer math skills. Finally, he met with the elementary faculty at a couple feeder schools, and showed them ways to get around the mandated curriculum, he reports things are improving.</p>
<p>eulenspiegel--I was commenting on the hiding of books to subvert the system, but I agree that Russians are well-educated in math. I don't have stats in front of me, but I'll bet they far surpass Americans. I think we're 12th, or worse, in math worldwide.</p>
<p>
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The Saxon program offers several of the same problem type in each set of exercises, but its beauty lies in the fact that it continues to repeat problem types from earlier lessons over the course of future lessons throughout the entire book.
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I agree with this evaluation. My kids used the Saxon method in Minnesota, and I thought it was wonderful. I really liked the way geometry was included in the earlier texts (Math 54, Math 65 etc) and I think the iterative nature was helpful in ensuring that kids did not forget previous lessons.</p>
<p>Or course, if a child is some combination or talented, gifted, interested, bored, etc., the appropriate curriculum is accelerated, traditional. (not necessarily enriched). Don't let the educational establishment dissuade you with jargon like "developmentally appropriate." Just insist on being assigned to classes with older children (Down with ageist tracking!) or, better yet, sign up with a distance learning program such as Stanford's EPGY.</p>
<p>Our public schools have been using Everyday math in the elementary schools for about 5 years with good success. We score well above state and national averages on standardized tests. We were also using CMP in the middle schools -- CMP was a disaster. This year they have switched to Impact in the middle schools. Seems to be much better. My son struggled in CMP Algebra in 8th grade, then did fine in Honors Geometry & Honors Algebra II in high school. My daughter now has Impact Algebra in 8th grade and is having no trouble whatsoever -- and she has the same teacher her brother had. I think Impact is working out much better than CMP in the middle schools, but as I said our elementary schools have had good success with Everyday Math. The parents don't like Everyday Math because it's not what they grew up with. Well, nothing in the real world is what we grew up with either. For example, I spent all of 4th grade drilling long division and multiplying 3 digit numbers by 3 digit numbers. With calculators available for $1.49 at the checkout at Walmart, kids don't need that drill work anymore. They need to understand the concept of what division is, what it means, and if their calculator gives them an answer does that answer make sense (the much maligned "estimating".) They need to understand how to solve a word problem, which Everyday math teaches. And there are different ways to crunch numbers, even different methods of multiplying multi-digit numbers and doing long division. With Everyday math, each child has the opportunity of figuring out which method works for him or her. It may not be the method mom and dad used, but if it works who cares?</p>
<p>After being told for years that calculators make math computation obsolete my S arrived at UChicago to find that students were prohibited from using any type of calculator for the calculus placement test. He then found they weren't allowed for the calc tests during the year either. Relying on calculators may not be the best policy.</p>
<p>As for everyday math a close friend's daughter and all her classmates needed intensive math remediation after everyday math. It was found that few of the students who had early on been labeled gifted, could preform 4 digit division upon entering high school. They soon caught up with good instruction, but it was not fun.</p>
<p>My S's school has been using Everyday Math apparently with good results. I say apparently because S was so accelerated he did not personally experience that curriculcum.
But with regard to learning times tables, it was his dad, Physics Ph.D., educated in a very traditional math curriculum, who refused to force him to memorize times tables. "He would learn soon enough," said dad. By 4th grade, S had indeed memorized the times tables. More importantly, he was able to do pre-algebra problem because he'd been interested in logic. He knew how to set up a problem and what operation was needed to solve it-as important, if not more so, than knowing times tables by heart.
By the time a student enters university, s/he no longer needs a calculator to do simple computations. One has to assume that the problems that were posed on the placement test did not require the use of a calculator. In S's math and physics classes, the use of Mathematica is encouraged.</p>
<p>I think that both idad and Marite have good points. Some kids rely too much on calculators, through elementary and high school. Not only do they use them to perform the arithmetic, but they use them to solve equations by programming their graphing calculators. "Drill and kill" is not enough when you get to algebra and trig, and many kids will learn multiplication tables and basic arithmetic facts through applications. But it's difficult for some kids to move into algebra or calculus if they don't have those facts at hand. From what I understand about my older son's AP calculus and physics classes, I don't think they used calculators at all -- I don't know if he uses one in college. By the time you move into higher math, it's not about the arithmetic. But it's hard to get there if a student is still struggling with multiplication or division. </p>
<p>I'm not the math person in our family, and I thought the kids should focus on basic skills when they were younger. H, the math guy, thought more like Marite's husband. I still think that some of their success, though, is due to the fact that the arithmetic was second nature. I will point out that the use of calculators is still relatively new -- I remember when H bought his first calculator in college. It cost a fortune, and really only did arithmetic, if I remember correctly!</p>
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I still think that some of their success, though, is due to the fact that the arithmetic was second nature.
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</p>
<p>I agree. And S learned arithmetics while doing logic problems rather than focusing on arithmetics per se. For the record, I'm not a math person. S beat me at an algebra problem in 3rd grade. It involved multiplications. More importantly, it involved knowing how to set it up. S set the problem up faster than I did. :(</p>
<p>---With Everyday math, each child has the opportunity of figuring out which method works for him or her. </p>
<p>Not true in S's school. Everyday math was what they taught and that was all. There wasn't time to teach additional methods. It was very confusing to S in the early grades to have teachers teaching one method and parents teaching another.</p>