Ann Marie Banfield

Letter To the New Hampshire State Board of Education:
 
Good afternoon.  I write to you today in opposition to the proposed implementation of the "ONE" curriculum in the New Hampshire public school system.
 
While poverty in Africa is certainly a global issue/problem deserving of attention from the citizens of the United States, I have grave concerns that adding to the curriculum would again, reduce the amount of time students spend on academic content.  One cannot expect to add anything to the curriculum without subtracting from another area. 

I’m also concerned as to how this information would be given to students.  This is a highly political issue and like any other political issue, one can certainly sway children into a political ideology adding biased information or by leaving out critical facts.  
 
Too often our classrooms are becoming an atmosphere of political indoctrination. This has real ramifications on student achievement.  
 
The article I read today referred to giving students a global competitive edge by exposing them to the "ONE" curriculum.  I beg to differ.  What gives students a competitive edge in the global economy is academic knowledge.  
 
Right now New Hampshire has some of the poorest math and science standards in the country, noted in a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.   
 
Our current Secretary of Education is looking to implement "Common Standards" to make up for this glaring deficiency in our public school system.  He’s been quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying:

"In too many places, including Illinois, we are lying to children now. [When] we tell a child they are meeting the state standards, the logical implication is that child’s on track to be successful. In too many places, including Illinois, if you are meeting state standards you are barely qualified to graduate from high school and you are totally unqualified to go to a university and graduate."  

This is the time for the NH School Board to look for ways to bring academic excellence to the classroom, not a political agenda.  This is a time to go back and look to the best international standards and duplicate those instead of looking to form our students into a political mindset.

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Parents are probably hearing how schools are committed to a "student-centered" approach to teaching.  But what does that mean?  In Constructivism it means that your child will be participating in "discovery learning." 
 
In this setting the students work in groups or with other students, and the teacher takes on the role of "facilitator" rather than "instructor."  The goal is to get the students to come up with their own solution to the math problems (although this approach is used in other subjects too); and if the students have problems, they would turn to another student before asking the teacher.
 
This is exactly what is going on in many of the New Hampshire classrooms.
 
Reform/Fuzzy/New Math programs are generally built around a Constructivist methodology.  In 1989 the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) called for this approach to be used in the classrooms. 
 
Supporters of Constructivism will often say that this approach gives the students a "deeper understanding" of the concepts.  Yet the critics argue that students become frustrated and that it actually can hinder the learning process.

An organization called Mathematically Correct provides an amusing explanation of constructivism:

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Bedford High School offers the International Baccalaureate program for Juniors and Seniors.  Other schools in NH are also considering adopting this program into their curriculum. 

Bedford school administrators and board members have given their approval of this program but what always seems to be missing is, the controversial baggage that comes with IB.
 
How will teachers deliver a program containing such extreme political overtones?  The IBO makes it clear that the Administration must be on board with the philosophy of the IB program.

Looking at the IB web site raises many concerns.  For instance at the 21st IB Asia-Pacific Annual Regional Conference (http://www.ibo.org/ibap/conference/2006regionalconf.cfm) members of the IB community gathered to present topics on "values education".  
 
American students lack the competitive edge in areas like math and science.   How does "values education" address lack of math and science skills?  Who’s values are they assessing and more importantly, what are the values of the IBO?

The conference included a presentation on "Values education and Becoming Fully Human".  Absent in the presentation is a focus on students achieving academic excellence.  What you will note is the reference to the increase of relativism and fundamentalism and the IBO’s need to address this problem.
 
On page 10, the IBO criticizes religious fundamentalists by mocking their religious beliefs, "The assertion that we alone have the truth about morality and religion and everyone else is wrong."
 
There is a definite implication, that fundamentalism is a problem that the IBO needs to address.  Address where?  In the NH classrooms?  Do the fundamentalist Christians know that the IBO sees them as a problem that needs to be addressed in the classroom?
 
On page 29 it states that

"fundamentalism is as much alive in the west as in the east". 

Oh really?  In what way?  Because I’m missing the American Christians committed to suicide bombings.
 
In the next paragraph it goes on to say:

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That seems to be the consensus among educators whenever someone addresses the problems in education.  The standard response always seems to be: education is under funded.  What many people do not know is, in one school district, this theory was put to a test. 

The Kansas City experiment is well known in the education circles however many outside probably never heard of it.  [Money And School Performance: Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment]
 
A judge in Kansas City suggested that the school district come up with a "cost is no object" education plan then turned to state and local politicians to fund it.  This would be the big test to either prove spending more money works, or it would disprove the theory that so many critics had discounted as a real solution.
 
Kansas City spared no expenses and did just what they were ordered to do.  They increased teacher salaries, opened several new schools, and even built an Olympic sized swimming pool.  They lowered the student/teacher ratio to 13 to 1 which was the lowest of any large school district in the county. 
 
When all was said and done, the amount spent was 2 billion dollars. 

One would think after doing all that "needed" to be done, there would be significant improvement.  Unfortunately that was not the case.  The results were dismal. 
 
This experiment ended up being a costly embarrassment to those who once spouted the NEED for an increase in spending to improve education.  Scores did not improve and the racial divide did not diminish.  This was a set back for those who believed money would solve these problems. 
 
Now one would think that this issue would be put to rest given the glaring results that showed education did not improve when spending was drastically increased.  Unfortunately that is not the case.  Even today politicians and school administrators continually cite money as the main source of their problems. 
 
I would suggest that much of the problems in education boil down to a few major issues.  Sure there are others, but when you look past the "lack of funding" excuse, what you find are, curriculum problems, lack of discipline in the schools, and the loss of local control as some of the main problems.
 

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Families and companies all around the country are cutting expenses in these tough economic times.  Surprisingly, many state governments are doing the same.  I guess they figured out that spending like there’s no tomorrow gets us in a financial mess. 
 
I’m wondering if our New Hampshire schools will be doing the same? 

Taxes have increased in many towns and now many residents are cutting their expenses.  It would only be reasonable for our school districts to do the same. 
 
Next year Bedford implements a new program in the high school called The International Baccalaureate Program (IB).  Other schools in New Hampshire are also considering the adoption of this program too.  IB comes at an extremely high cost to the tax payers and may benefit a small number of students.
 
Some schools report an annual expenditure of over $100,000 for this program while other schools have reported over $500,000 as their annual expense which includes hiring additional staff like an IB Coordinator. 
 
The Bow school district is considering this program right now, and hosted a meeting with the parents and taxpayers to determine whether or not they should go forward and adopt the program.  The community was invited and many expressed genuine concerns on whether or not this program was a good idea for the students given it’s high cost and controversial political nature.  
 
The Concord Monitor reported in April that Bow had suspended the application after hearing from the "outraged" community.
 
Outside New Hampshire at www.Cherryhill.com in the article titled Debate Heats Up, the Superintendent is recommending phasing out the expensive program. Their annual expense is over $500,000.00 per year. The article goes on to report only 19% of the residents support it. 
 
In an article titled "Broughton’s IB program to end soon",  the Wake County School district in North Carolina voted to also phase out the $500,000 plus program citing they could offer a quality education without the extravagant price tag.
 

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I wonder how many parents are sitting around the kitchen table trying to  help their children with their math homework.  It used to be that children in elementary school could come home and if they needed help, they could turn to their parents.  With the infusion of New or Fuzzy mathematics in many of the New Hampshire classrooms, many parents have no idea how to help their kids.  
 
First let’s look at WHY this seems to be sweeping this state like the plague.  For those who do not know how the No Child Left Behind Act works, essentially schools are now held accountable to state standards.  Not a bad idea to have accountability among our public schools.  The problem is that many of our states have set poor academic standards, mathematics included.  The NH assessment (NECAP) is based on poor math standards per the Mathematicians at the Fordham Foundation.    
 
New Hampshire set the math standards and geared them in a New/Fuzzy direction.  Another name for this approach to learning is: Constructivism.  This is an ideology where the student essentially is left to discover math rather than giving them direct instruction.  In addition to believing children can discover math on their own, these programs introduce children to confusing and time consuming algorithms that many parents never learned.  There was no need to learn them, the traditional algorithm worked well.  What changed?  Some people think that learning four different ways to add, subtract, multiply and divide is a good idea. 
 
The problem is, many students become confused and often times, never fully master one of those concepts, leaving them deficient in basic math skills.  In addition to these common problems and because this is so time consuming, these student begin falling behind their peers who use a more traditional systematic approach to learning math.  Of course you also have the issue of parents who are unable to help their children with their homework.  This is even more of an issue for children who maybe in a situation where parental involvement is lacking or simply not there. 

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Should students be able to graduate after completing 10th grade?  That is now being discussed in the New Hampshire Dept of Ed, as reported by some of the NH papers.  I sit here amazed that anyone would ask that question.  What’s more bothersome is that we have adults, paid by NH residents, who think this is a good idea. 

NH Education Commissioner Lionel Tracy is now floating the idea of graduating some students upon completion of 10th grade.  He says that the test, which has not been produced yet, would be a difficult test modeled after the AP or IB tests and that 10th graders would have to pass this exam in order to graduate early.  Isn’t the NH Education Department the same branch of government that thinks the NECAP is a good indicator of proficiency in math and science?  Yet we have some of the top mathematicians and scientists who have given their expert analysis indicating our standards are some of the worst in the country.  How can we trust the validity of this test when our own standards lack substance? Thomas B. Fordham Institute – Publication Detail

The article goes on to say that those who want to go on to prestigious universities can still graduate after 12th grade and take an even tougher exam.  That translates to lower expectations and standards for the graduating 10th graders.  On one hand Tracy says these 10th grade students who graduate would be held to high standards and have to pass a rigorous exam.  Then he goes on to say that the bar is higher for those graduating 12th grade.  If the bar is set higher for 12th graders with a more difficult test, logic dictates it’s lowered for 10th graders because less would be required of them.

Why would parents want to subject their child to missing out on two years of education?  Especially since it is their taxes that have paid for it?  I did not notice anything about Tracy saying taxpayers would get a refund on those tax dollars saved.

This sounds like a cost cutting measure that once again, does nothing to help the students of NH.  It does sound wonderful for companies out there looking for full-time, unskilled workers making one wonder who Governor Lynch is working for:  the New Hampshire students and parents or simply trying to meet the needs of a global workforce.

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