When the math wars win, kids lose

A new report + a new petition call for schools to stop quibbling and use the 'science of math'

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Today’s letter is an important one, with new reporting on math instruction. Researcher Ben Solomon pushes back on New York State’s new guidance for math teachers, asking for a retraction on the Chalk and Talk podcast and through a public petition. Solomon says the guidance mangles—or totally ignores—the available evidence on how to teach math. “I use this word very carefully—but it’s pseudoscience,” Solomon told me in an interview.

The Center on Reinventing Public Education is also focused on math; their new “State of the Student 2025” report is out this week and calls out the math wars as a big hurdle to student math achievement.

Are we beginning to see movement toward evidence-based math teaching? Will everybody be throwing around the term “science of math” soon? You’ll have to read on below and let us know what you think in the comments section.

This week, Tes Magazine published my report on the state of special education inclusion in the US and England. Inclusion is the term for whether and when special education students learn in general education classrooms, or are provided their own “special provision” (it sounds better when the Brits say it)—whether that’s a special classroom, often called a resource room here in the States, or a special school, to support their needs.

My story looks at what the two countries are doing to improve special education services, and what the research says about what’s best for students. Britain has declared the system overwhelm, lack of trained teachers and spots for students a “crisis,” and appointed a government commission to investigate the system and come up with solutions. In the US, we have pretty much the same thing going on here, but have done little to nothing about it.

For the last few decades, the general feeling has been that full inclusion is always best—but Vanderbilt researcher Doug Fuchs recently turned that assumption on its head with a new analysis of decades of research. Randomized controlled trials comparing special education students in small group instruction and those in regular classrooms showed that separating students, even for a portion of the day, may have clear academic advantages.

This doesn’t mean that inclusion isn’t beneficial to students, Fuchs is quick to add. Some families want their students in mainstream classrooms for social reasons, to learn together with peers, and they should be allowed to choose. But families (and policymakers) who want academic acceleration for their children need to consider the more methodologically sound evidence. Some students do well in mainstream classrooms, but many more are struggling, he says.

Read the whole story here.

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What to read now:

4 ways to get explicit instruction right

4 ways to become a more effective teacher using the science of learning

Being explicit with parents about explicit instruction

Which science matters most to students in classrooms?

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Researcher calls for retraction of fuzzy math guidance

Math researcher Ben Solomon, a psychologist at the University at Albany in Albany, New York, has launched a public petition to retract the New York Math Briefs, a guide for instruction issued to educators and schools as part of the New York State Department of Education Numeracy Initiative to improve math achievement in the state.