Background
As explained on the Everyday Mathematics at LCUSD page on this site, the parents of the La Canada Math Parents group decided to conduct a survey of LCUSD elementary parents in May and June of 2017 because LCUSD administration declined to conduct such a survey, in spite of repeated requests by parents on the Elementary Math Adoption Oversight Committee.
The survey questions and detailed results are presented in a Google Slides presentation here:
http://bit.ly/lcfmathsurveyresults
Survey Results
A summary of the results are below:
- 42%, not 2%, of K-5 La Canada public school parents have problems with Everyday Math.
- Only 34% of parents believe K-5 math education is above average in LCUSD.
- Only 29% of students receive differentiation.
- 57% of students are tutored or supplemented outside of school.
- 51% of those spend two or more hours tutoring in math per week.
- Over 60% of those started tutoring in the last two years.
- 67% of those tutoring in math do not tutor in any other subject.
The raw survey results are contained in a Google spreadsheet and available for analysis here:
http://bit.ly/lcfmathsurveyraw
Presentation of Survey Results to LCUSD Officials
Before the survey results were made public, members of the La Canada Math Parents met informally with LCUSD officials on Thursday July 20, 2017 to let them preview the results. Superintendent Wendy Sinnette, LCUSD Governing Board President Dan Jeffries, and Board member Ellen Multari spent about two hours discussing with parents the survey results, other parent concerns about the state of elementary math instruction in the district, and ideas for improvements. A copy of the slides used by LCMP parents during this discussion is located here:
( Click to see the presentation slides. )
LCMP parents showed that the District’s Elementary Math Adoption Oversight Committee (disbanded in April of 2017) failed to conduct sufficient outreach to parents and severely understated the level of student and parent struggles and concerns with Everyday Math. The tone of the meeting was constructive, and the District officials appeared to take the LCMP concerns seriously, although Superintendent Sinnette stated that the K-6 math textbook selection would likely not be revisited by the Board for another four years and the current adopted material needed to be utilized “with fidelity.” On the positive side, Sinnette and the Board representatives indicated a willingness to further consider the following measures:
- Creating an LCUSD Board subcommittee which will hold periodic public meetings to provide ongoing oversight for issues relating to K-6 Math, including Everyday Mathematics implementation, successful transitions to Grade 6 (Math In Focus) and 7/8 curricula, opportunities for differentiated instruction and/or homogeneous groupings, and other programs and policies to encourage excellence in math education.
- Reminding teachers that they are free (and encouraged) to use supplemental instructional materials in addition to Everyday Math (K-5) and Math In Focus (6th Grade).
- Implementing LCUSD Elementary GATE Specialist Gregg’s suggestion to coordinate student math schedules to allow for homogenous group instruction by ability across grades (e.g. advanced second and third-graders could attend math class with 4th graders learning 4th grade material, etc).
- Inviting the director of the Pasadena Unified School District’s highly-accelerated Math Academy program to speak here publicly and share his experience with our parents, teachers and Board members.
At the meeting, parents also summarized the conclusions of a recently published paper on what cognitive science tells us about math education. In short, the results indicate that the method used by Everyday Mathematics is exactly the opposite of what should be done when teaching a secondary knowledge domain like mathematics to novice learners.