Can parents save math?
A California parent group leader says more, better math is the equitable way to get more students into STEM
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Educator and math tutor Mike Malione was always accelerated in math—he was top of his class, studied physics at Harvard, and worked at Pixar in its early days. But when he got into teaching and tutoring math at the k-12 level in the Bay Area, he began to question what kids were being taught, and how.
A lot of what The Bell Ringer covers concerns students in the lower half of the achievement range—students who need more help solidifying their foundational skills. But what Mike, along with his California parent-advocacy group Save Math, has shared with The Bell Ringer is that problems with math curriculum and instruction reach beyond students who struggle.
Unlike the parent voices who played a significant role in helping bring awareness to the science of reading—the “dyslexia moms” of struggling readers in groups like Decoding Dyslexia—the parent math voices sound a little different. In states like California and Connecticut, it’s parents whose kids are at the top of the achievement scale in math and science who are sounding the alarm, as well as STEM professors who teach undergrads. Many, like Mike, have firsthand knowledge with STEM careers.
These parents worry that changes to math instruction meant to reduce gaps between students will actually do the opposite—make it harder for students who need public schools to provide them with the skills to get to lucrative STEM careers. Students can easily get locked out of STEM careers early. Poor instruction and curriculum decisions in math can become gatekeepers for students across both the income and achievement distribution.
“Many of the most promising STEM students have always been from modest means,” Malione said. Lack of math skills development can and does drive talented students away from STEM who might have a future there.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Bell Ringer: When did you first get concerned about students’ math skills?
MM: I taught ninth grade math in a public school for one year, and that was the year COVID hit. I'd done tutoring for years, always for high school, the AP crowd, AP Calculus or Physics—these topics at the level closest to which I knew them, because that was the niche for me, market wise. But during COVID, that changed.
My wakeup came in teaching that ninth grade curriculum. The course was Integrated Math I, and we were using the CPM (College Preparatory Mathematics) textbook. The whole book was so text-heavy. The math was so watered down, and the spiraling (where students go back and review previously learned skills) was so vague. What I saw was my students were actually pretty good at math, they knew their stuff. But the curriculum they were supposed to take part in was all this sort of scripted discovery. I was supposed to put them in groups of four and have them work together in groups. And I was thinking: I don't see how they're gonna learn what they need to know this way.
The primary tutoring I’ve been doing since then is what I call enrichment tutoring—they're coming to me because they already know the material cold in their class, and they're bored. These students are thinking more like: why am I going over things that I already know, without learning anything new, when I’m ready and eager to learn more? Teachers are being advised, often, not to accelerate these students. They claim that racing is bad for these students, and want to discourage these students from forging ahead in math, like you're racing to algebra, or you're racing to calculus.
What I discovered, as I came to know students across the entire range of grades, is that it was the highest achieving elementary and middle schoolers who were being restricted from learning at their own most comfortable pace. High school-level, high-achieving math students have already spent years going outside, either to private school or supplementary ed, such as Art of Problem Solving, Russian School of Math, local math circles, Kumon, or contest math venues, starting from a much younger age.
After COVID, I began tutoring a lot of fifth graders who wanted to be prepared for the district’s compression math (accelerated) program. Maybe 15 families approached me during the summer of 2020. They said, ‘Our kids didn't learn a thing all spring, my child's taking compression math in the fall. Can you help?’
Then that next year—it was the year that schools were closed, so everybody was home doing distance learning in the fall. I took on 45 clients. I'd meet with them, often in groups of three and four. And we would do enrichment, just to kind of keep them on their toes and make sure they were actually learning. But, what I saw that was different was this awareness from parents of elementary school students, that they're not getting enough math. It's not that they weren't having enough time at school spent on math. It's that the curriculum was doing pointless things that were huge time-wasters, for students who wanted and would need to actually learn and do math—which includes calculating.
The Bell Ringer: What were parents seeing specifically? What were you seeing concerning their math skills when you took them on as tutoring clients?
MM: Things like reaching for a calculator to do basic multiplication facts, like seven times three. They couldn’t do long division. And fractional awareness—they weren’t able to multiply and divide fractions effectively. Not having fluency and flexibility with multiplying and dividing whole numbers makes it much more challenging to raise, simplify, or do any computational arithmetic with fractions.
The Bell Ringer: In my reporting, I’ve found that students don’t get very much math practice. They don’t spend much time on multiplication tables, for example, before they’re onto another subject. A lot of kids never get good at long division, because they never got good at multiplication. And then those things all compound themselves over time.
MM: Yeah, that's right. There's not enough practice. There's too much spiraling around many, many topics instead of, ‘Okay, let's learn to add one digit, like your fingers in kindergarten, and then let's learn to stack add in first grade, stack, subtract in second grade, multiplications in third grade, etc.’ Long division isn’t even taught prior to sixth grade anymore.
THE BELL RINGER: So is the CMF part of the reason you created Save Math? What's the goal?
MM: The genesis of Save Math was a group of parents who wanted to oppose the new California Math Framework. (The state board of education began revamping its statewide guidance for math instruction in 2021, which included several notable and controversial changes, including attempting to put all students in Algebra I in 9th grade, create alternative math pathways lacking foundational content, and a few more items. Read more about them here.) There was a whole lot of opposition to the proposed changes to the framework.
The Bell Ringer: What did you as parents oppose, and what were you advocating for instead?
MM: Our understanding of the framework was that under the proposed changes, students of all backgrounds, motivations, and abilities would be limited to taking the same math classes until 11th grade.
My objections to the California Math Framework were that it short-changed STEM, it wasn't going to give the average public school student enough of an introduction to math and what they’d need to know. I specifically noticed that many of the things I’d objected to in the CPM curriculum I had taught were being called for on a much wider scale in the new framework.
I call it math appreciation. Others have said that too, but the framework changes would mean that kids were learning math appreciation, instead of learning actual math. Math appreciation is never going to get you into STEM. So if all you've ever learned from kindergarten to middle school is math appreciation, and you’ve avoided the actual nitty-gritty of doing it in an attempt to keep all students together, it puts everybody in one slow lane. It's like being stuck on a freeway in traffic that's barely moving. And that doesn't bring out the best in anybody.
Our direct ask was to keep the existing 2013 framework in place, and then draft a new framework that was more focused on the content.
The Bell Ringer: So the Save Math group was going to raise awareness to these proposed changes? Or was it something bigger?
MM: Originally, we were really just getting a group together, let's put up a website, let's share information. And basically try to elicit support, get parents aware. We were aiming to get something like 10,000 parents to send letters to the California State Board of Education, let's try to rally a lobby and tell politicians that this is not a good idea. We believed our time frame was very limited. Then they delayed making the changes, first for a month, and then for six months.
If you look at the Save Math website, we kind of came together really quickly thinking our mission was just, let's defeat this thing (the CMF proposed changes). And then we had more time because it dragged on. We didn't have a lot of admin resources, everybody was doing this as a volunteer thing. Everybody just sort of jumped in and said, ‘how can I help’?
There was also a political piece to it. People in charge of the framework seemed to be calling for social justice instead of math. The framework supporters were calling anybody who had any criticisms about the framework right-wing.
The Bell Ringer: Were the ideas between better math instruction, more kids being able to do advanced math and social justice ever connected, or the idea that math achievement could lead to social justice?
MM: I don't remember who actually said this directly, but, ‘You want to achieve social justice? Teach kids math.’ Encourage everybody to advance as much as they can.
The Bell Ringer: Did Save Math push back on the framework successfully? The board of ed has made some changes recently, right?
MM: Our effort was, not only us but a few others, because we were present and making noise, was enough that for whatever reason, they delayed the adoption of the framework. And they delayed it a lot. The final revisions did not appear until June of 2023, with adoption in the following month.
We wrote up some talking points on our website and made a conscious decision to try and draw participation from parents, but above all else, to provide accurate critique. We wrote our public comments to the framework, we just really hammered on them. So the committee had to change things. They literally had to change things because it was being pointed out to them—our website and public comment and all this advocacy was saying, ‘This won't stand if you go forward with this. We've shown you.’
We had a lot of outside help from Brian Conrad (a math professor and director of undergraduate studies at Stanford). I would say he single-handedly accomplished more than we as a group were able to—we're all allied in this—but his public comments, and his citation misrepresentations helped a lot.
The Bell Ringer: What have you learned from Save Math? Do you think parents in other districts will follow your lead?
MM: We're building a support network, a think tank, and trying to determine what that looks like. That's sort of the next step. A standing place to network people, especially as this happens all over California and the country, to try to spread more awareness of the science of math, and make a case as to why this is the better way to teach. The thing we've determined for the state of California is it's going to be district to district, so each district needs to be informed. What's wrong with the framework? And what can they do? And so that's kind of where we are now.
The Bell Ringer: Who is the think tank aimed at? Is it for parents? Politicians? Everybody?
MM: It's for everybody. But primarily, it's for organizing parents who care and have the drive and dedication to kind of see it through. Like a tree branching out, an active parent in each state with an active parent in each district, working cooperatively with the schools. We would provide information that these parents can take to other stakeholders—to teachers and administrators and school boards, as to why not to do this. And research to back it up, provide, ok here's the research.
The Bell Ringer: A lot of the parents involved in this math fight are affluent, are you worried at all that they will get sick of fighting about it, and just sign their kids up for Kumon, pay the $400 a month or whatever?
MM: Well, yeah, absolutely. I'm in that space, I’m a tutor. And some people have said—why are you doing this? Just take the money, right? But there's just this principle that public education is supposed to teach you things. There's something wrong when I go from helping struggling high school students who are taking advanced classes, to just giving the basics that the school is supposed to give, and families have to spend money on that.
Kids have to spend their after-school time, you know, spending an hour or half hour doing things they should have been doing in their math period during the day, and there's no reason not to. It's not a money issue. It's not a resource issue.
I would like to make a model of effective tutoring that works for students of all levels—tiered so that the students who are really capable and want more challenge can get what they need, but also it would work for students who need more help in math.
Deacon John Wilson, who's a member of our Save Math group, he's been doing this kind of tutoring for a long time, it's out of a church in LA. It's an after-school program, it's basically the kind of career foundational resources that a private school would have. But it's out of a church and he works with Title One students. I would love to find a way to bring this kid of tutoring to everybody, as needed.
Hi we’ve been fighting this nonsense up in Canada for over a decade. I’m a parent advocate who was involved in lobbying local school districts and provincial math reforms for over a decade. Lots of media interest generated on this issue but our Ed leaders continue to push on with their backward thinking reforms. Would be great to connect. My blog www.wisemathbc.blogspot.com or on Facebook WISE Math BC
I agree. For the most part math instruction is an insult to the students. Families can develop not only the common sense appreciation of math (after all, you need fractions to measure ingredients to bake chocolate chip cookies) but bring the elegance and creativity of math in analyzing solutions to important problems and growing a life style of systematic process to bring plans to reality.