Math program foes conduct protest

More than voting occurred Tuesday at the McCoart Administration Building, as one Prince William parent-turned-activist took advantage of the expected crowds to set up shop and solicit signatures for a petition that denounces an elementary-level math program.

Called "Investigations in Number, Data and Space," the curriculum from the Cambridge, Mass., group TERC has been phased into kindergarten through fourth grades countywide since 2005. Critics find its methods "fuzzy," as it places less emphasis on algorithms—seen as the building blocks for algebra and advanced mathematical learning—and more focus on the likes of drawing, or otherwise illustrating, how an answer is derived.

"I'm really trying to raise awareness about this," said Alexis Miller, at the edge of McCoart's parking lot Tuesday for the 2 to 7 p.m. petition drive. "There [are] still a lot of people who don't know about it, who don't know what's going on."

Miller, mother of two, is part of a growing consortium of parents that has asked the School Board for more than a year to abolish the program—or to at least allow teachers to supplement its use in school with a more traditional approach that includes, for instance, the perceived tried-and-true memorization of basic math facts.

Over the months, the School Board has held various work sessions and meetings on the curriculum to gauge its support level within the schools and community, its success with bolstering student test scores, and its reputation among other school and math field officials.

To date, the board still supports the program's continuance.

In March, Prince William Schools Superintendent Steven L. Walts assured parents and the community at a board meeting that the county's math curriculum "sets out what children should know and be able to do at every grade level, and that curriculum is aligned with the Virginia Standards of Learning."

Walts also likened the Investigations program with whole language and the initial parental shock over a concept of teaching reading that replaced phonetics and the sounding-out of syllables and words.

"I recall a time when some folks were horrified that they would see student writings displayed that didn't have all the words correct or perhaps didn't have all the punctuation," he said, according to a written record of his March 5 comments. "Best practices showed up that we should show the evolution of a piece of student work from the draft stage to its final product where you can see the progress and the learning that has taken place."

Walts also added that teachers were allowed to supplement Investigations as they saw necessary.

But that's not true, detractors of the program have said for months, and some parents have reported the need to undo math lessons from school with supplementation at home because teachers are bound to the single-approach method of Investigations. Regardless, the program isn't even supported at the state level, they add.

"Of all the elementary school math programs listed by the Virginia Department of Education," the petition to remove the TERC program read, "Investigations least adequately supports the [state math SOLs] and is excluded by [the Virginia DOE] for grade five due to its inadequacy. Investigations has an ongoing record of failure across the United States."

Moreover, the petition continues, some math experts from Stanford and Harvard shun the program as "reformist" and "falling short of giving students the essential mathematics skills to reason accurately."

Fifty-seven signed the petition Tuesday, Miller reported. This brings the total signatories to 1,350. Hopefully, she said, the School Board will respond with action.

"We've been really frustrated with the lack of responsiveness of our School Board," she said, speaking to the past year's push for board members to adequately address parents' concerns. "They're supposed to be elected officials, but they're ignoring 1,300-plus signatures and they're ignoring parents' complaints to bring this to their attention."

Staff writer Cheryl Chumley can be reached at 703-670-1907.