Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Whisleblower Suit
Livonia:
School officials hit with lawsuitLivonia Public Schools Superintendent Randy Liepa and Finance Director Lisa Levesque were served with a "whistleblower" lawsuit from the district's former controller last week. Margaret Flower, who served as controller for 21 years, has been on a medical leave of absence since November 2006, when she was suspended for three weeks on insubordination claims. Her suit claims she was suspended for speaking out about improper accounting practices. A spokeswoman for the district denied the claims and said Flower continues to receive medical benefits and can apply for other vacancies when she returns from her leave. Her job has been absorbed by others.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...D=2007712190359
School officials hit with lawsuitLivonia Public Schools Superintendent Randy Liepa and Finance Director Lisa Levesque were served with a "whistleblower" lawsuit from the district's former controller last week. Margaret Flower, who served as controller for 21 years, has been on a medical leave of absence since November 2006, when she was suspended for three weeks on insubordination claims. Her suit claims she was suspended for speaking out about improper accounting practices. A spokeswoman for the district denied the claims and said Flower continues to receive medical benefits and can apply for other vacancies when she returns from her leave. Her job has been absorbed by others.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...D=2007712190359
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Every Day Math, an every day disaster.
Superbug in the Classroom
A mathematical epidemic.
By Michelle Malkin
Do you know what math curriculum your child is being taught? Are youworried that your third-grader hasn't learned simple multiplication yet?Have you been befuddled by educational jargon such as "spiraling," which isused to explain why your kid keeps bringing home the same insipid busyworkof cutting, gluing and drawing? And are you alarmed by teachers whoemphasize "self-confidence" over proficiency while their students fallfurther and further behind? Join the club.
Across the country, from New York City to Seattle, parents are wising up tomath fads like Everyday Math. Sounds harmless enough, right? It's cleverlymarketed as a "University of Chicago" program. Impressive! Right? But thenyou start to sense something's not adding up when your kid starts secondgrade and comes home with the same kindergarten-level addition andsubtraction problems - for the second year in a row.
And then your child keeps telling you that the teacher isn't reallyteaching anything, just handing out useless worksheets - some of which makeno sense to parents with business degrees, medical degrees, and Ph.D.sspecializing in econometric analysis. And then you notice that it's theUniversity of Chicago education department, not the mathematics department,that is behind this nonsense.
And then you Google Everyday Math and discover that countless moms and dadsjust like you - and a few brave teachers with their heads screwed onstraight - have had similarly horrifying experiences. Like the Illinois momwho found these "math" problems in the fifth-grade Everyday Math textbook:
A. If math were a color, it would be -, because -.
B. If it were a food, it would be -, because -.
C. If it were weather, it would be -, because -.
And then you realize your child has become a victim of "Fuzzy Math," the"New New Math," the dumbed-down, politically correct, euphemism-fillededu-folly corrupting both public and private schools nationwide.
And then you feel like the subject of Edvard Munch's The Scream as you takeon the seemingly futile task of waking up other parents and fighting theedu-cracy to restore a rigorous curriculum in your child's classroom. NewYork City teacher Matthew Clavel described his frustration with EverydayMath in a 2003 article for City Journal:
The curriculum's failure was undeniable: Not one of my students knew his orher times tables, and few had mastered even the most basic operations;knowledge of multiplication and division was abysmal....what would you do,if you discovered that none of your fourth-graders could correctly tell youthe answer to four times eight?
But don't give up and don't give in. While New York City remains wedded toEveryday Math (which became the mandated standard in 2003), the state ofTexas just voted before Thanksgiving to drop the University of Chicagotextbooks for third graders. School-board members lambasted the mathprogram for failing to prepare students for college. It's an importantsalvo in the math wars because Texas is one of the biggest markets forschool textbooks. As Texas goes, so goes the nation.
Meanwhile, grassroots groups such as Mathematically Correct(mathematicallycorrect.com) and Where's The Math? (wheresthemath.com) arealerting parents to how their children are being used as educational guineapigs. And teachers and math professionals who haven't drunk the p.c.Kool-Aid are exposing the ruse. Nick Diaz, a Maryland educator, wrote aletter to his local paper:
As a former math teacher in Frederick County Public Schools, I have astrong interest in the recent discussion of the problems with the mathcurriculum in our state and county. . . . The proponents of fuzzy mathclaim that the new approach provides a 'deep conceptual understanding.'Those words, however, hide the truth. Students today are not expected tomaster basic addition, subtraction and multiplication. These fundamentalskills are necessary for a truly deep understanding of math, but fuzzy-mathadvocates are masters at using vocabulary that sounds good to parents, butmeans something different to educators.
Members of the West Puget Sound Chapter of the Washington Society ofProfessional Engineers also stepped forward in their community:
For 35 years, we have been subjected to a failed experiment, 'new math.'Mathematics depends on individual problem-solving ability to arrive at thecorrect answer. Math does not lend itself to 'fuzzy' answers. The solutionis to recognize the failure of the Constructivist Curriculum as it relatesto mathematics and science, eliminate it and return to the hard core basicsusing texts like the Singapore Math.
If Fuzzy Math were a color, it would be neon green like those Mr. Yuklabels warning children not to ingest poisonous substances. Do not swallow!
A mathematical epidemic.
By Michelle Malkin
Do you know what math curriculum your child is being taught? Are youworried that your third-grader hasn't learned simple multiplication yet?Have you been befuddled by educational jargon such as "spiraling," which isused to explain why your kid keeps bringing home the same insipid busyworkof cutting, gluing and drawing? And are you alarmed by teachers whoemphasize "self-confidence" over proficiency while their students fallfurther and further behind? Join the club.
Across the country, from New York City to Seattle, parents are wising up tomath fads like Everyday Math. Sounds harmless enough, right? It's cleverlymarketed as a "University of Chicago" program. Impressive! Right? But thenyou start to sense something's not adding up when your kid starts secondgrade and comes home with the same kindergarten-level addition andsubtraction problems - for the second year in a row.
And then your child keeps telling you that the teacher isn't reallyteaching anything, just handing out useless worksheets - some of which makeno sense to parents with business degrees, medical degrees, and Ph.D.sspecializing in econometric analysis. And then you notice that it's theUniversity of Chicago education department, not the mathematics department,that is behind this nonsense.
And then you Google Everyday Math and discover that countless moms and dadsjust like you - and a few brave teachers with their heads screwed onstraight - have had similarly horrifying experiences. Like the Illinois momwho found these "math" problems in the fifth-grade Everyday Math textbook:
A. If math were a color, it would be -, because -.
B. If it were a food, it would be -, because -.
C. If it were weather, it would be -, because -.
And then you realize your child has become a victim of "Fuzzy Math," the"New New Math," the dumbed-down, politically correct, euphemism-fillededu-folly corrupting both public and private schools nationwide.
And then you feel like the subject of Edvard Munch's The Scream as you takeon the seemingly futile task of waking up other parents and fighting theedu-cracy to restore a rigorous curriculum in your child's classroom. NewYork City teacher Matthew Clavel described his frustration with EverydayMath in a 2003 article for City Journal:
The curriculum's failure was undeniable: Not one of my students knew his orher times tables, and few had mastered even the most basic operations;knowledge of multiplication and division was abysmal....what would you do,if you discovered that none of your fourth-graders could correctly tell youthe answer to four times eight?
But don't give up and don't give in. While New York City remains wedded toEveryday Math (which became the mandated standard in 2003), the state ofTexas just voted before Thanksgiving to drop the University of Chicagotextbooks for third graders. School-board members lambasted the mathprogram for failing to prepare students for college. It's an importantsalvo in the math wars because Texas is one of the biggest markets forschool textbooks. As Texas goes, so goes the nation.
Meanwhile, grassroots groups such as Mathematically Correct(mathematicallycorrect.com) and Where's The Math? (wheresthemath.com) arealerting parents to how their children are being used as educational guineapigs. And teachers and math professionals who haven't drunk the p.c.Kool-Aid are exposing the ruse. Nick Diaz, a Maryland educator, wrote aletter to his local paper:
As a former math teacher in Frederick County Public Schools, I have astrong interest in the recent discussion of the problems with the mathcurriculum in our state and county. . . . The proponents of fuzzy mathclaim that the new approach provides a 'deep conceptual understanding.'Those words, however, hide the truth. Students today are not expected tomaster basic addition, subtraction and multiplication. These fundamentalskills are necessary for a truly deep understanding of math, but fuzzy-mathadvocates are masters at using vocabulary that sounds good to parents, butmeans something different to educators.
Members of the West Puget Sound Chapter of the Washington Society ofProfessional Engineers also stepped forward in their community:
For 35 years, we have been subjected to a failed experiment, 'new math.'Mathematics depends on individual problem-solving ability to arrive at thecorrect answer. Math does not lend itself to 'fuzzy' answers. The solutionis to recognize the failure of the Constructivist Curriculum as it relatesto mathematics and science, eliminate it and return to the hard core basicsusing texts like the Singapore Math.
If Fuzzy Math were a color, it would be neon green like those Mr. Yuklabels warning children not to ingest poisonous substances. Do not swallow!
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