UPDATE (11/99)

REFORM VS. TRADITIONAL MATH CURRICULA:

PRELIMINARY REPORT ON A SURVEY 

OF THE GRADUATING CLASSES OF 1997 OF

ANDOVER HIGH SCHOOL AND LAHSER HIGH SCHOOL,

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,

CONCERNING THEIR HIGH SCHOOL MATH PROGRAMS AND HOW

WELL THESE PROGRAMS PREPARED THEM FOR COLLEGE MATH

A lot has occurred since I issued this preliminary report one year ago.First and foremost, Professor R. James Milgram of Stanford University completed an analysis of my data.His report is entitled “Outcomes Analysis for Core Plus Students at Andover High School: One Year Later”, and it was issued around January of this year.The “One Year Later” refers to the fact that I surveyed the graduates of Andover and Lahser High Schools one year after they had graduated.Appendix 6 in his report, which is of more recent vintage, gives the ACT scores of Andover students and compares them with Lahser students and other groups of students.

I want to emphasize that Professor Milgram used the actual data I collected (minus the names) and not the “Comments in Context” which I had in my original report and which were extracted from the data[2].Subsequently, the following column by Debra Saunders appeared in the March 12 edition of The San Francisco Chronicle:[3]

“High School Students and Lab Rats”

MELISSA LYNN was shocked when she discovered that she placed in the bottom 1 percent of the University of Michigan math placement test. She had graduated from the affluent high-achieving Andover High School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., with a 3.97 grade point average and A's in math. 

Lynn blames Core Plus, an experimental math program -- with an emphasis on writing about math and working in groups -- funded by the National Science Foundation. ``It had very good intentions and wanted you to apply real principles to real life scenarios, but it was missing the crucial element of algebra, '' Lynn said yesterday.Gregory Bachelis, a math professor at Wayne State University and parent of a student in Lynn's school district[4], wanted to know if Lynn's experience was typical. He decided to do his own survey. He sent questionnaires to all 1997 graduates of Andover and the other Bloomfield Hills high school, Lahser, which has similar demographics but a traditional math program. 

Bachelis heard from 112 out of 228 Andover grads, 67 of whom were Core Plus alumni; 30 percent of Lahser students responded.R. James Milgram, a mathematics professor at Stanford University, has written a paper on Bachelis' findings. Milgram found the following. 

-- Only two Core Plus grads (out of 67) reported taking calculus in their first year of college, 11 out of a similar group of 41 Lahser grads took calculus; 46 Core Plussers ended up in remedial math, compared to 18 Lahser grads. 

-- The average math GPA for the Core Plus grads was 1.9, 2.6 for Lahser students. 

-- The average SAT Math score for Lahser grads was 59 points higher than Core Plus. 

As one Core Plus survivor who was placed in remedial math wrote, ``I am the epitome of mathematical ignorance in a Top 10 high school in the country with a 4.0 in math.'' Student comments paint a picture of students who worked hard but foundered in college math. Andover Principal John Toma takes great exception with the study. He attacked Bachelis' bias. Bachelis was a critic of trendy math before the survey. Asked about Melissa Lynn, Toma responded, that the University of Michigan ``admits that they're going to change the placement exam because it's flat out outdated.'' 

Andover allows students to opt out of Core Plus. Only 55 out of 840 do so, which shows that someone must like Core Plus. Although Lynn says she didn't opt out because she would have had to take a bus to Lahser for math and that conflicted with her schedule. 

Toma noted that studies should not rely on students to give their SAT scores and grades, that the more reliable studies get that data directly.He sent me a University of Michigan memo that reportedly checked grades and found that ``reform'' math students scored ``nearly half a grade higher`` than traditional math grads. But the survey failed to differentiate between reform students and non-reform students, lumped them by school, provided no specific GPAs, no school names and no number of students tested -- it lacks credibility. 

That is not to say that the Bachelis/Milgram study is without problems. It could be that only the angrier kids responded. Some may have misstated their scores. 

Still, the anguish that one reads in the student comments should not be ignored. ``I cannot even do basic math calculations,'' wrote one grad.Wrote another: ``Although I did well in high school math, I feel I don't understand basic math concepts well enough to keep up in college.'' Some had to take math courses for which they could not even receive college credit. 

Milgram is most appalled at the ethics behind Andover's math experiment. He believes that parents should have been warned and students given more opportunity to get out. Instead, public schools too frequently give students about as much choice as lab rats have. None. 

Although the Detroit Free Press has the option of carrying Saunders’ columns, they chose not to carry this one.However, the following article appeared in the Oakland (County) section of the March 19 Free Press.[5]

NEW MATH DOESN'T COMPUTE WITH STUDENTS, SURVEY FINDS 

It inflames national debate on memorization vs. critical analysis 

BY TAMARA AUDI Free Press Staff Writer

The latest strike in the war between new and traditional math has hit Bloomfield Hills in the form of a fiercely disputed survey.

A study released by a Stanford University professor shows that students who were enrolled in the Bloomfield Hills district's Core Plus program --the math curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking over traditional memorization -- are having problems succeeding in math in college.

The Core Plus program is used, in varying forms, at roughly 80 Michigan schools -- including Southfield-Lathrup and West Bloomfield high schools -- and in 200 schools nationally.

"The study represents the first glimpse, to the best of our knowledge, of how students trained in this new way perform in a university environment, and, frankly, the results are not encouraging," Stanford's R. James Milgram wrote in a forward to the survey.Researchers questioned[6] 67 Andover High School graduates who had been enrolled in Core Plus for four years, and compared them to 41 graduates who studied traditional math programs at Lahser, the district's other high school.

Among the findings:

46 Core Plus graduates enrolled in remedial math in college, compared to 18 traditional math students.

The average college math grade-point average for the Core Plus grads was 1.9, compared to 2.6 for traditional math students.

Core Plus graduates also had a lower average score on the math part of the SAT than traditional students.

But the study has been called biased by local educators and Core Plus developers.

"It's a trash study," said Bloomfield Hills school board president Mindy Nathan, who said her daughter's math skills have improved because of Core Plus. "They went after kids they knew were dissatisfied."

Nathan and others say the study is part of a nationwide political movement to stop math reform.

Christian Hirsch, the director of the Core Plus Mathematics Project at Western Michigan University, said the Stanford study is suspect because it is based on self-reporting by students, not official school records.

In addition, Hirsch said, Core Plus has included more traditional elements of math since 1997.

The study has sparked a national debate on math reform. Almost as soon as the study was posted on the Internet last month, its results were trumpeted on a Web site run by Mathematically Correct, a San Diego-based parent group opposed to Core Plus.

Core Plus proponents hit back with a Web site of their own. Proponents noted other studies that showed Core Plus students out-performed traditional math students on at least two standardized national tests.

The conflicting information has left local school districts hungry for an objective assessment.

West Bloomfield Superintendent Seymour Gretchko said: "The university community is split, the parents are split. But we'd be anxious to see any data that are out there."

The Stanford study is available on the Internet at ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/andover-report.htm

The Core Plus program and response to the study is at www.wmich.edu/cpmp 

Needless to say, Mindy Nathan had no evidence to back up her charges.I sent the report to Gary Doyle, the superintendent of BHSD, but as far as I know, the Board never discussed it at any of their meetings, nor did Doyle ever retract his earlier statement: “Our community and our educators have been maligned and I think we have the right to see the complete information," after he had seen the report.[7][8]The Core Plus directors did respond to my report and Milgram’s analysis, as well as to Saunders’ column reprinted above, in The Bachelis-Milgram Study at a Michigan High School is Seriously Flawed and Draws Invalid Conclusions and When Political Agendas Get in the Way of the Facts....

They make the point that the sample was self-selected.True enough.I tried to get every one of the year 1997 graduates of Andover and Lahser High Schools for which I had valid addresses to respond to my survey.Only those responded that chose to do so; I had no way of forcing them to.So does that invalidate the responses of the 50% of the Andover graduates who replied, or the 30% of the Lahser graduates?The Core-Plus directors also state that less than 40% of the Andover Core-Plus students responded to the survey.I do not know how they arrived at that figure.[9]

As for the way the SAT and ACT scores were reported in the “Comments in Context”, I converted the date to intervals to help preserve confidentiality, as I explained at the time.As I said above, Professor Milgram had access to the actual data.

I have decided not to respond to the personal attacks of Hirsch & Co.impugning my integrity.

As for the current situation at Andover High School, we have the following article which appeared in the August 29 edition of the Traverse City Record-Eagle:

Math controversy rages in Bloomfield Hills 

Record-Eagle staff writer
      TRAVERSE CITY - When it comes to measuring the effects of Core Math, Bloomfield Hills offers both test and control groups.
      The school district has two nationally ranked high schools - Andover and Lahser.
      Andover adopted the Core-Plus Math Project curriculum in 1993. Lahser stuck with traditional math.
      This wealthy Detroit suburb also has seen the most heated debate in Michigan over the idea of reform math.
      "I'd call it a full-fledged controversy," Andover Principal John Toma said.
      The first class of Core students graduated in 1997 with more than 90 percent going on to college.
      Conflicting studies evaluated the effectiveness of Core for those first graduates and did nothing to settle the community debate.
      And so, Andover began offering an alternative to Core Math in the 1998-99 school year.
      About 100 of 900 students opted out of Core then. About 150 will this year, Toma said.
      "We are running dual curriculum," Toma said. "In three to five years, I'd like to see only one program that borrows from each.
      "The traditional are going to move toward integration. The integration people are going to go toward the traditional. I believe we will end up somewhere in the middle and that will be best for everybody."
      This already is starting to happen, Toma said.
      Like other Core-Plus schools, Andover has placed increasing importance on developing basic algebra skills.
      At Lahser, they've started using graphing calculators.
      The debate over Core Math in Bloomfield Hills and Traverse City are not the only ones. Similar disputes have surfaced in Alaska, California and Texas.
      The debates, however, are still isolated incidents, said Christian Hirsch, director of the Core-Plus Mathematics Project.
      "It certainly hasn't happened everywhere Core-Plus is," he said.

I find Hirsch’s remarks about “isolated incidents” to be rather ironic.Apparently his evaluation process, headed by co-director Harold Schoen, does not include surveying Core Plus alumni after they have been out of the high school “nest” for one year, as my survey did; so how does he know whether the results of my survey are representative or not?I should add that I was not paid anything for the six months I worked on the survey, except for reimbursement for the stamps on the return envelopes. 

I mention in closing that the West Bloomfield School District, where I live, has abandoned Core-Plus in favor of a three year Integrated Math sequence from McDougal Littell, written by Rubenstein et al, to be followed by a pre-calculus text, as yet to be chosen.