No Everyday Math for the Beaverton School District

At their March 9, 2009 meeting, the Beaverton School Board voted 5:1 to approve the adoption of Everyday Math. An implementation timeline will be finalized later. Thank you everyone who supported this petition and the cause of better math for our district.

To:  Beaverton School Board

We, the undersigned residents of the Beaverton, Oregon, School District, request that the Beaverton School Board reject the purchase of Everyday Mathematics for use as its core elementary mathematics curriculum.

It is the opinion of many district residents that now is not the proper time for such a large budget expenditure. In a year or two, when the budget situation is more favorable, the district may once again examine the curricula options and choose.

It is the opinion of many district residents that the criteria matrix used by the Math Cadre and the Math Project Team to evaluate possible mathemtics programs was biased in favor of programs with a specific pedagogical approach, rather than programs with the best mathemataics content. The district should evaluate and select mathematics programs based on a focused, coherent progression of fully-developed mathematics topics, and allow individual teachers to decide which pedagogical approach is appropriate for their individual students.

It is the opinion of many district residents that Everyday Mathematics is not the best choice for the district’s sole elementary mathemtics curriculum under any budgetary circumstances. Some of the concerns are as follows:
* Its spiraling method of content presentation is no longer considered a best practice;
* It presents too many math topics each year, and in too little depth;
* Its emphasis on discovery-method teaching style is unbalanced and not well-suited to the educational needs of many students;
* It does not provide students the opportunity to achieve computational fluency, despite the fact that unbiased experts have explicitly emphasized the necessity of computational fluency in order to achieve conceptual understanding;
* It promotes students’ inappropriate calculator dependence;
* It leaves many students inadequately prepared for higher mathematics in later years.

For one, or more, of the above reasons, we request that the Beaverton School Board reject the purchase of Everyday Mathematics.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The No Everyday Math for the Beaverton School District Petition to Beaverton School Board was created by and written by Kristin Parks (kwparks@att.net).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.