NYT: Former University of Texas President Will Lead U.S. Math Panel

[DeepModem Mom]

Former University President Will Lead U.S. Math Panel
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
Published: May 15, 2006

WASHINGTON, May 14 — The Bush administration has named a former president of the University of Texas at Austin to lead a national panel to weigh in on the math wars playing out across the country. The politically fraught battle pits a more free-form approach to teaching math against the traditional method that emphasizes rules and formulas to solve number problems.

The former president, Larry R. Faulkner, who led the university from 1998 until early this year, will be chairman of the National Math Panel, which President Bush created by executive order in mid-April.

The panel is modeled on the National Reading Panel, which has been highly influential in promoting phonics and a back-to-basics approach to reading in classrooms around the nation. Though that panel has been criticized by English teachers and other educators, its report has become the guide by which $5 billion in federal grants to promote reading proficiency are being awarded.

The new panel reflects a growing concern by the Bush administration that the United States risks losing its competitive edge as other nations outpace its performance in math and science. Citing figures from a report by the National Academies in his State of the Union address in January, President Bush unveiled an American Competitiveness Initiative to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into research in the physical sciences, and some $250 million into improving math instruction in elementary and secondary schools.

The panel is to examine the numerous ways the nation's 15,000 school districts teach math, and to make recommendations intended to improve American achievement in math and get students to tackle more advanced math earlier....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/education/15math.html

[quiet.american]

1. It just keeps comin', doesn't it. n/t

[Jackpine Radical]

2. What is it about Phundies & Fonix anyway?

There used to be (may still be) all these Hooked on Phonics ads on local Fundie radio & some Fundies seem so insistent on teaching kids via phonics, as if it were some kinda Holy Cause.

[trudyco]

5. I'm not a fundie and I support phonics

The whole language approach doesn't work. Phonics does. However, there are better phonics programs out there, ones that don't emphasize rules (that tend to get broken) but instead just presents the primary orthographic tendency, and once that is mastered, then presents the next most likely, and so on. It also requires phonics controlled books. So if you are learning "e" says eh you get several books with eh sound words in it.

Rules come in later for spelling, if necessary.

Both my kids needed help with reading. The whole language approach used here, where they tell the kids to look at the picture and guess what the story may be saying, is bogus. Even with intensive reading intervention one hour a day every school day in groups of 4 or less, the school can't do even 75% literacy proficient. This is not a poor or ESL challenged school. It is a sucko reading program. The right kind of phonics can do better than 75%. This is NOT hooked on phonics. This is ReadAmerica's phonographix, Spaulding, AabeceDarian, etc. Also, Orton Gillingham and LindaMoodBell have good intensive programs for problem readers which includes phoneme manipulation.

What I found as a parent seeking help for my kids is that EVERY tutor I approached used a phonics based program. Once I became a homeschooling parent I learned about the wonderful fluency and comprehension programs out there. The only schools using any of these in our district are charter schools. They get good state test scores.

The president's readning panel is correct. I'm glad its influencing schools, just not ours.

As for math. Some math should be basic fact memorizing like addition/subtraction/multiplication/division. There should be plenty of review. Saxon has a good program. Some students don't need as much review and a good math program should allow them to jump ahead. Just like reading groups of differing abilities there should be math groups of differing abilities. However, thinks like more manipulatives and mental math are excellent "new math" ideas. Montessori has a great program for this. What I've seen though, is the erosion of visual math for very auditory, language rich math. It is good to be able to do story problems. I contend you should know the basic concept first. Doing lots of math problems on paper is good. 3/4 of every math session being a lecture is bad. Particularly for boys in third grade. I wonder if the school has tried to save money by getting rid of textbooks and workbooks.

So not everything Bush does is bad LOL. Just most.
Of course I haven't seen the reading panel being effectual but hey the MSM says it is so it must be so LOL.

[yellowcanine]

6. No one method works for all kids. The whole language approach does

work for many kids. It worked for both my kids and they are both excellent readers and national merit finalists. We also read to both kids from day one until well after they were able to read on their own. We also did not enroll either one of them in a pre-school or kindergarten that emphasized learning to read. Our youngest daughter's first grade teacher was appalled that our daughter and several of her cohorts from the same kindergarten did not know how to read - guess what, by Christmas that group of kids was at the top of the 1st grade class in reading. What is critical, imo, is getting kids ready to read by reading to them and teaching them organizational and classification skills in pre-school and kindergarten. The kindergarten my kids went to had games where the children had to put things into groups, find the object that didn't "fit", etc. These were mostly "free play" games. Something about practicing these skills seems to translate over to reading and math. Pushing kids to learn to read and do math before they are ready just frustrates them and teaches them that math and reading are chores to be done rather than something that is enjoyable. There is nothing bogus about looking at pictures and telling what story they tell. This helps kids to begin to connect the symbols on the page with the story in the pictures. Nearly any reading program will work if there is a competent teacher who can give enough individual attention to the kids that have more difficulty and also identify the best way to teach reading to that kid. Any teacher who just relies on what is in the program - phonics or otherwise, is not going to be successful with the kids who are having difficulty. 75% doesn't impress me - there is no reason why nearly 100 % of kids can't be reading at or above grade level by third grade. Also, most successful reading programs employ a mix of techiques - look/say, phonics, and whole language. Also kids can teach each other a lot when it comes to reading or anything else. That is my biggest problem with homeschooling or tutoring if it is simply an adult/child interaction. Homeschooling and tutoring are not panaceas - there are good teachers and bad teachers and it will work better for some kids than others.

[trudyco]

16. obviously your kids fall into the 70% or so that learn reading

no matter what. So you can't really compare reading programs for kids with reading problems based on your childrens' personal experiences! Of course we did all the things you did. Bedtime stories every night from a very early age. I'm an avid reader so the kids have close to a thousand books at home to choose from. Library visits weekly. You name it.

My kids have a language based learning disability, probably due to being born prematurely. Guessing at the words by using pictures, other than maybe the first year of learning to read, has no value. This is the third year where our school is still using this. Guessing activates the wrong part of the brain. They aren't learning to decode, they learn to guess. This can form a really bad habit as the words get complicated and they guess a wrong but similar looking word. In one of my children it caused the inability to create mental pictures from the text (she just used the pictures as a crutch) which was really bad for comprehension.

About 70% of kids learn to read no matter what you use. Good phonics programs in schools can up that to 85% or so. A good phonics program with some fluency work (like QuickReads) and comprehension work (like Beyond the Code or Visualizing and Verbalization) and intense phonemic awareness for those who need it can up that past 90%. The rest probably need vision therapy - their eyes aren't working right.

The only way we were able to get what the kids needed was tutoring, and in one case homeschooling. I used to think just about any reading program would work with a small enough class and a dedicated teacher. Now that I've had kids that fall into the other 30% of the population my opinion has changed. Public schools don't get it. Most parents don't get it, either.

[Tesha]

8. Fundies are agin anything that might lead to thinking.

Fonix is a set of hard-and-fast rools; this is the sort of thing fundys
are comfortible with.

The fact that the rools don't seem to apply to many of the wordz
we yooz every day duzn't seem to faze them.

(All spelling mistakes are striktly fonetik.)

Tesha

[Jackpine Radical]

11. Eye no.

"(All spelling mistakes are striktly fonetik.)"

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. They like nice sounding solutions that don't really work.

Like Star Wars, or abstinence education.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Hey, UT rejected W. They're not dumb! nt

[kskiska]

4. New Math II

Been there, done that. It didn't work.

[jobycom]

7. UT fell in academic standards during the 90s, but they built a helluva

football team! I was happy to see Faulkner step down at UT, since his priority, or at least the priority of the university while he was in charge, was clearly athletics and not academics. At a school with almost no parking for students, they plowed up parking lots to build a field for the kicker to practice, and another to install a large inflatable gym for the football team to practice in. The kicker field is a small, narrow football field with a goal post. Apparently, kickers can't practice on the real field. Meanwhile, UT fell from a low top tier school to a middle of the pack second tier school in most academic areas.

So to me Faulkner is an odd choice, going on academic history alone. But Bush decidered, so oh well.

[Writer]

13. Actually UT has exceeded in academic standards since I left ('97)...

It's business and law schools are ranked in the top tier. It's computer science and engineering programs are some of the best in the nation, and it's communication school ;) is among the top 25. Routinely it's ranked as one of the top 50 schools in the nation in US News and World Report.

If you want to see where UT used to be, look at UT-Arlington. :)

Hook 'em!

Writer.

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. Another texas moron out to save the world.

[Divernan]

12. Has a couple of out-of-date degrees in chemistry; no math/education creds

Faulkner became UT's 27th president on April 13, 1998. Before receiving his doctorate at UT, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Southern Methodist University. He served on Harvard's faculty as an associate professor, and was provost at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign prior to becoming UT-Austin's president.

Hard to find formal bio on the guy; most I could come up with was this paragraph from an article in a UT newspaper.

He does not appear to have any current science knowledge; having gone in to administration early in his "academic" career. He got his Ph.D. from UT. Anyone know if he ever got tenure at Harvard? I doubt it, because he'd never have left Harvard for Illinois. And it's most unusual for anyone to move from being an assoc. prof to being provost. Lotsa gaps in the old bio.

So let's think how Bush et al could make money out of a Math Panel. I know! One of Bush's ne'er do well brothers has some kind of educational company right - the one that evil Babs specified her hurricane relief money must go to. So guess who will get a big fat consulting contract?

[nsd]

14. He didn't go from being an associate professor ...

to being provost at Illinois. He moved in 1973 and worked as a professor of chemistry until 1994, which is when he became provost. I'm a biologist not a chemist, but I'm under the impression at Illinois is quite strong in all of the natural sciences. So his academic record is actually quite good.

[eppur_se_muova]

15. Save us from educators with "new ideas" about teaching. nt