The Great Curriculum Debate: How Should We Teach Reading and Math? PDF
Preview The Great Curriculum Debate: How Should We Teach Reading and Math?
THE GREAT CURRICULUM DEBATE: How Should We Teach Reading and Math? Tom Loveless, Editor BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS GREAT the CURRICULUM DEBATE This page intentionally left blank GREAT the CURRICULUM DEBATE How Should We Teach Reading and Math? T L OM OVELESS Editor Brookings Institution Press Washington, D.C. Copyright © 2001 the brookings institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 www.brookings.edu All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data The great curriculum debate : how should we teach reading and math? / Tom Loveless, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8157-5310-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8157-5309-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Education—United States—Curricula. 2. Curriculum planning—United States. 3. Reading—United States. 4. Mathematics—Study and teaching—United States. I. Loveless, Tom, 1954– LB1570 .G72 2001 375'.001’0973—dc21 2001004199 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials: ANSI Z39.48-1992. Typeset in Sabon Composition by Stephen McDougal Mechanicsville, MD Printed by R. R. Donnelley and Sons Harrisonburg, Virginia the brookings institution The Brookings Institution is an independent organization devoted to non- partisan research, education, and publication in economics, government, foreign policy, and the social sciences generally. Its principal purposes are to aid in the development of sound public policies and to promote public understanding of issues of national importance. The Institution was founded on December 8, 1927, to merge the activities of the Institute for Govern- ment Research, founded in 1916, the Institute of Economics, founded in 1922, and the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Gov- ernment, founded in 1924. The Institution maintains a position of neu- trality on issues of public policy to safeguard the intellectual freedom of the staff. Board of Trustees Cyrus F. Freidheim Jr. Michael H. Jordan Bart Friedman Marie L. Knowles James A. Johnson Stephen Friedman David O. Maxwell Chairman Ann M. Fudge Mario M. Morino Leonard Abramson Henry Louis Gates Jr. Steven L. Rattner Michael H. Armacost Jeffrey W. Greenberg Rozanne L. Ridgway Elizabeth E. Bailey Brian L. Greenspun Judith Rodin Zoë Baird Lee H. Hamilton Warren B. Rudman Alan R. Batkin William A. Haseltine Leonard D. Schaeffer James W. Cicconi Teresa Heinz Joan E. Spero Alan M. Dachs Samuel Hellman John L. Thornton D. Ronald Daniel Joel Z. Hyatt Vincent J. Trosino Robert A. Day Shirley Ann Jackson Stephen M. Wolf Lawrence K. Fish Robert L. Johnson William C. Ford Jr. Ann Dibble Jordan Honorary Trustees Robert A. Helman Charles W. Robinson Rex J. Bates Roy M. Huffington James D. Robinson III Louis W. Cabot Vernon E. Jordan Jr. Howard D. Samuel A. W. Clausen Breene M. Kerr B. Francis Saul II William T. Coleman Jr. James T. Lynn Ralph S. Saul Lloyd N. Cutler Jessica Tuchman Mathews Henry B. Schacht Bruce B. Dayton Donald F. McHenry Michael P. Schulhof Douglas Dillon Robert S. McNamara Robert Brookings Smith Charles W. Duncan Jr. Mary Patterson McPherson Morris Tanenbaum Walter Y. Elisha Arjay Miller John C. Whitehead Robert F. Erburu Maconda Brown O’Connor James D. Wolfensohn Robert D. Haas Donald S. Perkins Ezra K. Zilkha Andrew Heiskell Samuel Pisar F. Warren Hellman J. Woodward Redmond This page intentionally left blank Contents 1 Introduction 1 Tom Loveless 2 The Roots of the Education Wars 13 E. D. Hirsch Jr. 3 Mathematics Education: The Future and the Past Create a Context for Today’s Issues 25 Gail Burrill 4 Research and Reform in Mathematics Education 42 Michael T. Battista 5 A Darwinian Perspective on Mathematics and Instruction 85 David C. Geary 6 The Impact of Traditional and Reform-Style Practices on Student Mathematics Achievement 108 Roger Shouse 7 Beyond Curriculum Wars: Content and Understanding in Mathematics 134 Adam Gamoran 8 Good Intentions Are Not Enough 163 Richard Askey vii viii contents 9 A Tale of Two Math Reforms: The Politics of the New Math and the NCTM Standards 184 Tom Loveless 10 It Is Time to Stop the War 210 Diane Ravitch 11 Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children: Precursors and Fallout 229 Catherine E. Snow 12 Contemporary Reading Instruction 247 Margaret Moustafa 13 Does State and Federal Reading Policymaking Matter? 268 Richard L. Allington 14 The Politics of the Reading Wars 299 William Lowe Boyd and Douglas E. Mitchell Contributors 343 Index 345 chapter one Introduction tom loveless For the American school curriculum, the twentieth cen- tury ended like it began, with an intense debate over what schools should teach and how they should teach it. In 1902 John Dewey, who would eventually become the twentieth century’s most fa- mous advocate of school reform, wrote about two “sects” fighting over the curriculum. One group sought to “subdivide each topic into studies; each study into lessons; each lesson into specific facts and formulae. Let the child proceed step by step to master each one of these separate parts, and at last he will have covered the entire ground.” The other camp, ob- served Dewey, believed “the child is the starting point, the center, and the end.” Because this view focused so intently on the child, Dewey concluded, “It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both the quality and quantity of learning.” A student-centered approach required a particular type of pedagogy, Dewey noted with approval, a teaching style recogniz- ing that “learning is active.” Dewey’s observations could have been written in 1999. Nearly a century had passed, but neither side had surrendered. Cease-fires had been fleeting. Decade after decade the conflict that Dewey had observed—and later be- came an important participant in himself—kept recurring. The terms education progressive and education traditionalist arose as labels for its partisans, who usually kept their squabbles within the walls of the nation’s schools of education. Occasionally, however, the disagreement burst into 1
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