Contained here are links to various resources about the GO Math! curriculum developed and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. GO Math! was one of the four finalist textbooks selected by the LCHS 7/8 Mathematics Textbook Selection Committee in the 2016-17 school year in the La Cañada Unified School District (LCUSD.)
Basic Information:
- GO Math! at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – Publisher’s website at HMHCo.com. Includes information about the GO Math! K-8 curriculum for parents and educators, as well as home links for both. Included are links to studies purporting to show the efficacy of the curriculum over non-Common Core curricula.
Reviews of GO Math!:
- EdReports Review of GO Math! – EdReports.org is an independent, non-profit organization that “increases the capacity of teachers, administrators, and leaders to seek, identify, and demand the highest-quality instructional materials.” It reports on the alignment of K-12 instructional curricula to the Common Core State Standards and assess the quality of said programs as well. About the GO Math! grade 6-8 materials, EdReports’ summary states:
The instructional materials reviewed partially meet expectations for alignment to Common Core State Standards. For focus, the instructional materials for Grades 6 and 8 meet the criteria for the time devoted to the major work of the grade, but the Grade 7 material does not. For coherence, supporting work is clearly connected to the focus of the grade and is done in a meaningful grade. Coherence is also evident in the instructional materials, including problems and activities that serve to connect two or more clusters in a domain and that connects two or more domains in a grade.
- Better Living Through Math’s Review of GO Math! – This review of GO Math! is from the educational blog by Robert M. Berkman, who describes himself as “an educator who has taught math, science and technology for the past 30 years in New York.” About GO Math!, Berkman titles his review “Is it ‘No Go?’ Or is it ‘No Math?’ My Review of ‘Go Math!'” Berkman is rather harsh in his review of the grades K-2 segment of GO Math!
As usual, Go Math! features a veritable flotilla of icons and eye candy in its graphic design, all of which gives the impression that the minimum wage and per diem battalion of “content writers” actually knew what they were doing when they assembled this bloated excuse for a curriculum. It was all reminiscent of an early episode of “House of Cards” when a roomful of freshly minted graduates of various college poli-sci programs were instructed to write an education bill in less than a week. If you substituted the word “poli-sci” for “fine arts” and “education bill” for “common core aligned math curriculum,” we would essentially be talking about the same thing.
What could have been an opportunity for the Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt educational-industrial complex to set the bar a bit higher turns out to be a complete and utter failure. This new effort to scam unsuspecting school districts out of the taxpayers’ money is the same old stuff with the same cutesy covers and lots and lots of “correlations” to the CCSS.
- San Bernadino City School District’s Review of GO Math! – The San Bernadino City School District (SBSCD) reviewed GO Math! in 2014-15 as part of its K-6 elementary Common Core aligned textbook selection process. The other three elementary curricula SBSCD considered for adoption were Scott Foresman-Pearson enVision, McGraw-Hill My Math, and Houghton-Mifflin Math Expressions. It is not known which product SBSCD eventually selected.
Reports from Other Districts Using GO Math!
- Omaha Public Schools (Omaha, Nebraska) – The following excerpt is from the Omaha World Herald’s January 12, 2014 story on the adoption of GO Math! in the Omaha, Nebraska public schools entitled “Math Program Aligned to Common Core Doesn’t Add Up for Some“:
More than 28,000 OPS students in kindergarten through sixth grade are using a new math program, Go Math!, aligned to the controversial Common Core State Standards, even though Nebraska is one of five states that have not adopted those standards.
…
OPS officials say students this year are more engaged, enjoy math and understand concepts that in past years they had trouble picking up. Officials are confident Go Math! will ultimately raise achievement, calling it the district’s most rigorous instruction program ever.
But some teachers and parents have raised concerns that echo those in other states that adopted Common Core math: that it makes math more complicated than it needs to be, and that it introduces challenging concepts when kids are too young to comprehend them.
As a result, critics say, struggling students, and those in special education, may find math tedious and frustrating and some could become discouraged.