MATHEMATICIANS TAKE ON
 FEDERAL EDUCATION
 ESTABLISHMENT
 SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS
 SERVICE

 Date: Friday, November 26, 1999

 Section: Source: By LINDA SEEBACH

 Scripps Howard News Service

 Memo: Advance for SUNDAY release

 Column
 (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service

 Edition: 

 Combatants in the math wars have brought out the heavy
 artillery.

 In October, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley
 announced his department's endorsement of 10 K-12
 mathematics programs selected by an "Expert Panel" of
 educators. Of 61 programs the panel examined, it
 nominated five as "exemplary" and five as "promising."

 This month, the mathematics community fired back with
 a blistering letter addressed to Riley, and signed by more
 than 200 mathematicians and scientists, including four
 Nobel laureates and two winners of the Fields medal, the
 most prestigious award for mathematical research. The
 letter, published as an advertisement in The Washington
 Post on Nov. 18, called the recommendations
 "premature" and asked Riley to withdraw them.

 "These programs are among the worst in existence," said
 David Klein, a professor of mathematics at California
 State University-Northridge, who helped write the letter
 and organize the signing campaign. "It would be a joke
 except for the damaging effect it has on children," Klein
 told the Chronicle of Higher Education.

 The programs listed as "exemplary" are Cognitive Tutor
 Algebra, College Preparatory Mathematics, Connected
 Mathematics, Core-Plus Mathematics Project, and
 Interactive Mathematics Program; the "promising" ones
 are Everyday Mathematics, MathLand, Middle-School
 Mathematics through Applications Project, Number
 Power and The University of Chicago School
 Mathematics Program.

 Several of them are widely used.

 Riley and his cohorts are unlikely to back down.
 Congress mandated the expert-panel process in 1994, and
 the math and science panel started its work in 1998.

 But the opposition shouldn't be counted out either. It's
 led by a group of working mathematicians and scientists,
 mostly located in California, on the Web at
 www.mathematicallycorrect.com.

 Alarmed by the proliferation of dumbed-down math
 programs in California, and the resulting slide in student
 performance, they set out to revise the state's 1992
 Mathematics Framework. The Framework embraced all
 the favored nostrums of the National Council of
 Teachers of Mathematics, chief among them that
 children should not be taught what adults already know
 about mathematics, but should be required to reinvent it
 for themselves - fine if the classroom is filled with infant
 Newtons and Eulers, but devastating for ordinary
 children.

 The council's philosophy dominated the Expert Panel. As
 one member, Steven Leinwand, had explained in a 1994
 article, "It's time to acknowledge that continuing to teach
 these skills (pencil-and-paper computational algorithms)
 to our students is not only unnecessary, but
 counterproductive and dangerous."

 That's why the criteria adopted by the panel allowed
 them to recommend math programs that didn't include
 how to multiply two- and three-digit numbers or how to
 divide fractions. The complete panel report is available
 on the Web at www.enc.org/ed/exemplary.

 Sanity prevailed in California, which adopted revised
 math standards in 1997. Nine of the programs just
 recommended by Riley's panel don't meet the new
 standards, and consequently, California schools are not
 permitted to use state textbook money to buy them.

 Mathematically Correct's Web site has links to detailed
 examinations of several of the recommended programs
 by professional mathematics. R. James Milgram of
 Stanford University reports a study of Andover High
 School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. - a high school where
 the average math SAT score is 600 - which found that 46
 of 48 students who had been in the Core-Plus program
 for four years had to take remedial math courses in
 college.

 Milgram also has a paper analyzing the flaws of the
 Connected Mathematics Project, which is intended for
 middle schools. In his local district, Milgram writes, CMP
 was used "in a sixth-grade class where the students had
 used MathLand in their earlier grades and had,
 consequently, extremely weak basic skills."

 For that remedial purpose, he concedes, it was quite
 effective. But that is hardly a ringing endorsement.

 I used to be a mathematician, and if my son were still in
 school, I wouldn't want him taught mathematics this way,
 or by teachers who believed it was the right way to teach.
 Parents should take a long, hard look at their children's
 math program - especially if it has been recommended by
 Washington's so-called Expert Panel.