Comments on: Response to “PSU Math Professor’s Oppose Investigations”

By: Kathy Hennessy

Kathy Hennessy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:47:27 +0000

And it does align with washington state standards very well. No one curriculum aligns 100%. Investigations aligns well. It is a stretch to say it aligns poorly.

By: Kathy Hennessy

Kathy Hennessy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:46:01 +0000

Investigations was on the recommended list on the state review, just not at the very top. It scored well in reviews. It has been used with success by many schools. It has never been meant to be used as the one and only math curriculum in any classroom. Any teacher who is using investigations alone is failing their students. I taught with this program in Seattle Public Schools and we also used Saxon math as a supplement. Saxon math was too rudimentary to enable the students to fully comprehend mathematical thinking and concepts. But it did help them to memorize and use the standard algorithms.

Now, I am not teaching but my child is in first grade in Bellingham schools and I am as pleased as punch in her math learning. She is learning so much about how numbers relate to life and mathematical problem solving and thinking. Her teachers use mainly Investigations but they also supplement with other products. They are excellent teachers. They are happy with Investigations, and for good reason. It is an excellent product.

Children need to be able to be fluent in math and there are many ways of teaching it. In my experience, this means using a variety of math products. But there is no reason Investigations cannot be the main curriculum product used in Bellingham schools. Bhammer and his blog have been on a negative rant about Investigations for more than a year. I have never understood why he does not put his time and energy into his classroom at Happy Valley elementary, learning more ways to successfully implement and supplement Investigations, rather than spending his time writing all this negativeness about it.

But thank you, Tia, for pointing out the truth.

By: bhammer

bhammer — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:42:25 +0000

I don’t think Investigations should be used anywhere as the core math curriculum. As a supplemental program it has some value, but it is an especially poor fit for schools in Washington State. As far as the PSU professors are concerned others from Harvard, Stanford and Michigan State have shared the same concerns. Conceptual understanding is important, but procedural fluency is essential too. Investigations does not produce computational efficiency because the authors oppose teaching standard algorithms. It’s a fatal flaw in their elementary math program.

By: Tia

Tia — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:19:32 +0000

bhammer, thank you for your comments. I very much want to stimulate discussion in the math community because I feel that we are failing our kids in teaching them math. I don’t know what the right direction to go is. You are right that Investigations had the lowest test score results. I guess I inserted my own bias against tests when I made my comment. What I was remembering from reading the study last summer is that there were multiple factors including Saxon Math teachers spending substantially more time on math and the study so far being just among first grade teachers, but you’re absolutely right, I remembered what I wanted to remember. Maybe what you are saying in your post is not that Investigations as a curriculum isn’t unreasonable but because it doesn’t align with WA state standards it is unreasonable? Anyway, thanks for reading!

By: bhammer

bhammer — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:07:28 +0000

Using Investigations to teach math is like using Whole Language to teach reading.

By: bhammer

bhammer — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:01:43 +0000

When it comes to educating kids, I’ll take research and data over pedagogy any day of the week. The bottom line is simple. Investigations does not align well with Washington’s math standards. It does not teach efficient procedures that have been used by mathematicians for over a thousand years. Moreover student achievement has declined as a result of its deficiencies, and the achievement gap has widened.

You claim that Investigations “falls neither at the top nor the bottom” of the IES study on curriculum effects. The only way you can believe that is if you haven’t read the study. After all the main finding was, “Student math achievement was significantly higher in schools assigned to Math Expressions and Saxon, than in schools assigned to Investigations and SFAW.” It really doesn’t get any more clear than that.

But if that isn’t compelling enough then just look at the book “Visible Learning” by John Hattie. He analyzed over 50,000 studies on achievement and compiled them in one place. What did he find? That inquiry based programs like Investigations are less effective than those that include teacher directed instruction. That’s exactly why the Fulton County SD in Georgia recently dumped TERC, it’s not because they didn’t understand how it works. Rather it’s because it didn’t work, and student performance was suffering.