Controversy follows math program to Kyrene

The saying, ‘there are two side to every coin' may not be true for all situations, but in the case of mathematics instruction in Kyrene School District classrooms, that statement holds a very strong truth.

The first thing to realize is that there people on both sides who care about one thing: the progression and advancement of mathematical knowledge in the children that attend Kyrene schools.

Parents, like the heads and tails of a coin, are on opposite sides when it comes to the math program in question. The program, known as Investigations in Number, Data and Space, is used as a primary resource at schools like Kyrene de la Sierra, where the heart of this controversy currently beats, to implement district curriculum.

At a January 13 Parent-Teacher Organization meeting held at Sierra, more than 50 parents attended to listen to Pricipal James Verrill talk about Investigations. There were many parents present who voiced their concern about the direction the school was taking with the new program.

Investigations was adopted by the Kyrene Governing Board in 2003 and its implementation in the classroom began during the 2004-2005 school year.

Investigations is currently used with the Scott Foresman math program, making up the adopted resources, which are utilized by teachers to instruct their students in district curriculum, which are based off of the Arizona state curriculum.

But therein lies the problem for some parents. Arizona has extremely low standards for mathematics, some parents have said, and that the district curriculum is too similar to state curriculum.

Some feel that while Kyrene should have the majority of their students up to the "exceeding" level in math when it comes to state standardized testing, they see the district as accepting the current levels.

"Kyrene, an excelling school district by all means, should not want to align its standards with Arizona, a state near the bottom in education," Anita Grierson, parent of two Kyrene students, said.

If you break them down into philosophies, how a student learns math with Investigations is fundamentally different from how they would learn with traditional math, such as with the Scott Foresman program which teaches algorithms through repetition first.

At its core, Investigations promotes conceptual understanding of mathematics. For example, in a classroom math activity, a "word problem" is posed to students with little instruction in what steps to take, as in what algorithms they should use.

The students are asked to solve a problem, such as "if Sally feeds her dog two-thirds of a cup of food a day, how many days can she feed him if she has 15 cups of food?" Examples of work showed that students are drawing pictures of bags of food, breaking them up into separate days and then counting the days to find the answer. The focus of such a problem is to create an understanding of what they are doing to solve the problem. Afterwards, the teacher is supposed to show the algorithm related to dividing by a fraction.

"(With Investigations) we want students to understand what it is exactly they are doing," Verrill said. "We want them not just to know the steps to take, but also the ideas behind the steps so they know why they are doing what they are doing."

Verrill, along with district administrators see a bright future for students, not only in terms of their understanding, but also their excitement about doing math.

"Right now, everywhere, kids are being lost in math," he said. "The current program puts math in a context that students enjoy and is also meaningful to their understanding."

Wendy Blair, parent of two Sierra students, said that she has been impressed with her children's reaction to math under the Investigations program.

"I feel that the program and what it is helping do for kids, is that it is teaching them how to be problem solvers rather than just number-pluggers," Blair said. "This is actually promoting them to think. For the kids, its about ‘how do I think about this problem?' Everyone can think about it differently and come up with the same answer. From what I have seen, I think the teachers are excited about teaching it and they bring excitement to the kids."

But a reoccurring concern for parents is the fact that their child is not being allowed to undertake more advanced work if they are find themselves ahead of the rest of the class. This does not bode well for parents who want to see Kyrene schools journey farther up into the "exceeding" school level in the state.

"We have brought our concerns to the school that our child isn't being challenged," Kelly Brown, mother of a Kyrene student, said. "She was hardly ever bringing homework home and we feel that homework is a very important tool in education. When we spoke with her teacher, she just said that they teach homogenously in that everyone does the same thing."

Another parent attributed this to the fact that previously, the traditional program had four levels of instructions for each grade level. Investigations only has one.

"Teachers are not giving additional resources or differentiating their teaching for students who already know the concept," Grierson said. "It's frustrating because my child comes home and says ‘this is boring, it's the same thing again.'"

It should be noted that Kyrene de la Sierra is piloting a program using the 2nd Edition of Investigations as the primary resource of instruction with Scott Foresman being used to supplement.

Thus, Verrill said, the balance between traditional, algorithm-based math and Investigations math is still being fine-tuned.

"There is room to grow, we want to continue to beef up our program," he said. "We currently have an outstanding percentage of students who either meet or exceed state standards. But we want more exceeding students and I think that the current program will help us get there."

As the program adapts and teachers continue to tighten their grasp on the fundamentals of Investigations, parents like Brown, who supplements her child's school activities with Singapore math, Grierson and others say they will continue to pursue outside resources to advance their children's understanding in math.

Investigations has seen its share of controversy around the country for many of the same reasons that Grierson, Brown and other parents have expressed. One of the larger concerns is that Investigations aides underachieving schools in getting them up to state standards, but not helping already passing schools reach exceeding levels.

Grierson said that while Investigations is not a good choice for a primary resource, it could be utilized much better as a supplement to traditional, algorithm-based math instruction.

As the district continues to modify their curriculum and the programs used to teach it, it is apparent that the Investigations controvery will continue to swirl. Parents, teachers and district administrators may break off onto opposite sides of the coin but they are all united under the common goal of increasing their children's mathematical knowledge.

For some parents, however, math understanding is a coin that should always be flipped with caution.