Sing a Song of Sixpence - Just say NO to Reform Math and Common Core

Is your child’s math homework making you worried? It should.

Missouri parent tells of "insanity" in reform classroom:

Note from Laurie Rogers: “Reform math, excessive constructivism, and persistent administrative arrogance and interference are not exclusive to Washington State. Together, they have sunk this great country into a mathematical Dark Ages, severely limiting the futures of millions of children and devastating our supply of STEM professionals. (STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics.)

“Every week, I [Laurie] receive emails from perplexed, frustrated and angry parents, teachers and community advocates in states across America. Here is one sample, provided by a Missouri parent Dec. 8, 2010:

"Laurie,

"I think you will find it interesting that in my son's elementary school, the teachers are only allowed to teach reform curriculum Investigations in Number, Data, and Space....without any supplementation.

"When I found out that my son was sitting for 50 minutes per day during intervention time, allowed to draw, read any outside reading book, play games, or play on the computer -- I called the teacher and asked if I could send his math workbook from home that he worked in every night at home. I explained that it would be a much better use of his time during the day. I was told that I could.

"I sent the book, and quickly other parents were sending their children with the same books that were simply standard math practice with traditional algorithms. I was called to the principal's office. I was told that the book was not allowed. I was dumbfounded. My daughter, who was in that building the year before, had practiced in the same book the 2 years prior. She had the second highest score out of 400 of her peers on the math portion of the state standardized test.

"So, I clarified: 'You mean to tell me that my son can bring in a Stephen King novel, draw pictures, or play games, but you will not allow for him to better himself with math practice during math intervention?' I was told, 'That is true.' My husband and I walked out the door, and we decided to pull him out of that building that day.

"The crazy thing is that the 'games' were questions for no grade like, 'Write a chant or a song about a division problem.' Another was, 'If you met an alien who could not speak your language, draw portraits of what a multiplication problem will look like to them without using words.'

"INSANITY. Keep up the good work."

Stacy Shore, Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri

Later, Stacy Shore added a side note:

"The other very alarming element of what we have been through here as of late is what happened when one mom went in to ask for copies of the 'extension activities' (that involve the writing chants, and drawing portraits for aliens, to name just a few of the ridiculous 'activities' our kids are being forced to do). When asked if we can have copies of all activities being offered to our children, we were told that we can come in and look at them, but we cannot have copies to take outside of the school. Our kids do not bring home copies of this homework, and without a couple of us parents going in and reviewing the 'activity box,' no one would realize what our kids are being forced to do.

"Insanity. And, our children are absolutely NOT allowed to practice standard algorithms in their free time. When we realized what was going on in 'secret,' if you will, we pulled our kids and ran."

http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/2010/12/missouri-parent-tells-of-insanity-in.html.

Stories like this are occurring in many states across the U.S. I’m sure that most teachers are doing their best. The problem comes from higher up. We need to change what we’re teaching the teachers to teach. More from Laurie Rogers’ previous article, why administrators don’t listen:

“It takes a strong stomach to know the truth of how bad it is, and still speak politely with administrators who keep saying the most ridiculous things. It’s tough to keep pushing, to keep trying, and to somehow avoid sinking into despair. When we talk with district decision-makers, we often find their eyes are glassy. They’ve breathed in the smoke and mirrors, and can’t seem to hear anything but the twaddle from curriculum coordinators.

“Education’s decision-makers appear to be “firmly persuaded” – many will do whatever curriculum coordinators tell them to do. So we troop over to the curriculum coordinators, and we find they’re certain, too. They don’t care what we bring to the table, even if it’s the best information, the most pertinent research and the most brilliant arguments. It’s their table – not ours – and they’ll decide (thank you very much), what happens with it. Our evidence is swept off the table onto the floor. They walk over it on their way out. Later, it’s disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.

“Sitting through certain interviews and meetings, listening to the idiocy that passes for argument (for example, “How do we know a 45% pass rate isn’t good? It all depends on where that group began”), I develop headaches, jaw aches and an upset stomach. I’ve had dark moments where I felt that nothing would ever improve, administrators would never listen…

“The obliviousness of the education establishment is impressive. The deceit and the covering up of the children’s reality are immoral, if not technically criminal. I’ve sat at my computer and blanched at the cheerful destruction of so many children’s futures.

“Math advocate Mike Miller said: “A culture that embraces purposeful perversion will be more resistant to both exposure and change.” 

“Maybe the public-education establishment is already there.”

Ideas on what you can do at home to halt the educational decline for your child in future articles. Keep posted!

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Sing a Song of Sixpence: how parents can beat the odds of math learning with their children

Boost your child's math intelligence! How you beat the odds with your child:

               I was doing a radio interview in November 2009 when the radio host, Michael Ray Dresser (Dresser After Dark), made a parallel between phonics instruction and proper math instruction. Phonics teaches the WHY behind the reading and good math teaches the WHY behind the math. Much of the ‘reform’ math is like horrid sight-reading, where a child learns the sentence 3+4=7 by sight (or with a calculator) without learning the basic concepts underneath, that each number represents a specific amount and how those amounts regroup.

               It has come to my attention that the public educational system holds children back not only in reading, but in math as well. I strongly recommend that parents do math instruction at home long before, and during, school age. Parent involvement is absolutely necessary for our children to join the technology workforce of the future, regardless of using public, private, or home school.

               Obviously, ‘Reform’ philosophies have done for math what the Whole Language fiasco did for reading. [Note: Common Core has now ruined math exponentially more than reform math ever thought of!]

Math advocates such as Laurie Rogers of the Safer Child organization http://www.saferchild.org/ have been trying to put the WHY back into public school math, but the curriculum coordinators, college boards, textbook publishers, and government aren’t listening. Parents are the key to turning around the education fiasco for our children. Laurie Rogers is absolutely brilliant about the problems in public math instruction. To quote from her article, Rogers, Laurie. (July, 2009). "Why administrators don't listen." July 5, 2009, on Education News at http://ednews.org/articles/why-administrators-dont-listen-.html:

               “A common complaint among math advocates is that the education establishment continually rejects pertinent data and valid research on how ‘reform’ mathematics curricula are deeply, fatally flawed.”

               “It’s like watching a completely preventable traffic accident,” I’ve said. “How do they not see it? Why won't they listen to reason?”

               “Many a public schools persists with its ‘reform’ math curricula despite all contrary evidence from the district, state and nation – and despite distressing results (a scary, black hole of dropouts, remediation and failed tests).”

               “If the data and research don’t support these curricula, and the entire nation has found that a steady diet of ‘reform’ leads to math incompetence… what is the real reason for their continued use? …Infiltrate public education, teach the children to think conceptually about nothing, and then pretend to fret as the country falls to its knees. It’s the perfect crime: Infiltrate public education, teach the children to think conceptually about nothing, and then pretend to fret as the country falls to its knees."

               Everyone loves the word ‘change,’ but change is not always for the better. To quote the experts:

               “Another lesson of [Project Follow Through] is that educational innovations do not always work better than what they replace. Many might say that we do not need an experiment to prove that, but it needs to be mentioned because education has just come through a period in which the not-always-stated assumption was that any change was for the better. The result was a climate in which those responsible for the changes did not worry too much about the consequences. The PFT evaluation and other recent evaluations should temper our expectations.” (p. 179-181, Wisler, Burns, & Iwamoto, 1978).

               “The most expensive educational experiment in the world [PFT] showed that change alone will not improve education. Yet change for the sake of change is the major theme of the current educational reform effort. Improving education requires more thought than simply making changes.” (Bonnie Grossen, editor, University of Oregon).

               Giving children the foundation of the WHY behind numbers and letters in a direct manner is the best way to guarantee that they will grasp the concepts easily and progress rapidly, not only to competency but to excellence and intelligence. Wise parents who want to raise successful children will start at home before kindergarten to give their children a good foundation in mathematical concepts, patterning, and the WHY behind the math.

Laurie Rogers also wrote, “No advocate has the answer [to public education acceptance of reform math], although there are suspicions. Some of the possibilities I’ve heard include these:

·        Kickbacks from [textbook] publishers

·        Overly friendly relationships with publishers

·        College Board pressure

·        Ignorance

·        Stupidity

·        Herd mentality

·        Indoctrination

·        Ego

·        Habit

·        Personal comfort

·        Political philosophy

·        Ennui

What better gift could a parent give a child? Only parents can turn education around for their children, and they must start at home. Yes, even busy working parents. If I did it with a full-time job and 15 children, anyone can do it. Let me show you how. More to come!

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Thursday's Child - how to help struggling children

How to help struggling children:

           There are many ways to help struggling children, as presented in Vol. 2, 4, 5, & 7 of It's Not Rocket Surgery! I recommend hiring a private tutor – or the home-bound tutor from your school district – rather than subjecting your child to the humiliation of remedial classes. In your area, there are many good therapists for behavioral and/or learning difficulties. Do some research online to find the best choices. Or ask your doctor for referrals. I would personally suggest a behavioral therapist who is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA).  More ideas further below.

However, there is something even easier that parents can do beforehand to prevent speech and dyslexia problems: turn off the TV for a while and teach phonics early. Teaching phonics the right way (starting before the child is 2 years old - if possible) will help your child’s brain hear the individual sounds and then put them together properly. The brain neurons will learn to distinguish the different sounds and decode the words, mapping them in the proper cortex. Sight-reading cannot do this. Phonics can help clear up speech problems as well. The child learns them slowly at first, then speeds up with practice over time.

               Again, wouldn’t it be much better to prevent dyslexia (and possibly autism & ADHD) by starting phonics early at home rather than having to try to fix it later? Wouldn’t it be better to help a savant be well-rounded in all areas of intelligence from the beginning? Proactive, purposeful parents may never realize how much damage they spared their child. The worst thing possible would be to wait until school age and let the schools do the teaching. The best ‘window of opportunity’ would be lost.

Besides commercial tutors like Sylvan Learning Center or Kumon, there are also:

               The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential: by Dr. Glenn Doman, http://www.iahp.org, or for his products, http://www.gentlerevolution.com.

               Scientific Learning: by Dr. Michael Merzenich, who was featured in, The Brain That Changes Itself, by Dr. Norman Doidge, chapter 3. www.scilearn.com or www.brainsparklearning.com. Or call TOLL FREE 888-358-0212 ext. 1239.

               In the previous chapters of It’s Not Rocket Surgery!, we discussed the roles of infant sensory overload, brain temporal lobe timing, hearing (auditory) processing difficulties, and speech difficulties, in contributing to dyslexia. Now we will discuss how these problems affect reading.

               Did you know that according to Dr. Glenn Doman of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, brain-damaged children can be healed? His definition of brain-damage also includes dyslexia, ADHD, and autism. Dr. Doman has shown that the same methods that heal brain damage can increase IQ in normal children, too. His methods include using flashcards with young children to teach ‘Bits’ of Intelligence®.

               Dr. Doman, who has done this with brain-damaged babies and children before the age of 5, claims that parents could teach and do things to stimulate the child's brain and build brain cells.  Parents have taken their brain-damaged children to Philadelphia to get help where Dr. Doman has his clinic.  Some children even had missing parts of their brains because of surgery, and they built new brain cells through stimulation to that part of the brain.

               It sounds impossible, but it works. Dr. Doman has helped many children. He said that after age five the brain stops growing; if you treated a child before age five the brain could be stimulated.  However, Dr. Michael Merzenich contends that the brain is still plastic or changeable even into adulthood, but there are ‘windows of opportunity’ where the brain growth is optimum, such as before age five. There is always hope, and specific things parents can do to help.

               In a Copenhagen study, young children who were not as good as their peers at saying multi-syllabic words such as ‘crocodile,’ had trouble with literacy later. It’s a hearing-processing problem in the brain. And look-say reading makes it much worse, inducing dyslexia.

               A really great book called "The Brain that Changes Itself" by Dr. Norman Doidge, M.D., describes Dr. Merzenich's work in detail in chapter 3. It's a must-read and an eye-opener to how learning happens and how the brain nerves map themselves in our brain "real estate."

               Dr. Merzenich developed software to help map children’s brains into the best they can be. He formed the company Scientific Learning and offers the best there is to helping children learn better and faster. One excellent remedial program that rewires the brain is his Fast ForWord® for schools, from Scientific Learning Co.  His BrainPro® and BrainSpark® are for home use. These computer programs exercise every basic brain function involved in language, from decoding sounds to comprehension. It’s a cerebral cross-training and re-training of neurons.

               Dr. Merzenich's breakthrough brain-mapping discoveries help a myriad of brain functioning. His method helps repair speech and reading problems, autism, and social awkwardness, plus it sparks giftedness, showing that brain mapping can change for the better.

               These brain exercises help dyslexic children improve their ability to distinguish short and long sounds. They also teach children to identify confusing consonant-vowel combinations at increasingly faster speeds. Another exercise helps them hear faster frequency-glides. Yet another helps them to remember and match sounds.

               The fast parts of speech have been slowed down by computer so that language-impaired children can hear them and develop clear brain maps for them. Then gradually they are sped up. Each time the child is rewarded, his brain secretes dopamine and acetylcholine, which help consolidate the brain map changes he has just made. These exercises can rewire the dyslexic brain in only eight to twelve weeks.

               The average child who took this program moved ahead 1.8 years of language development in six weeks. A Stanford group did brain scans of children before and after Fast ForWord. The first scans showed that dyslexic children use different parts of their brains for reading than normal children do. After the program, their brain scans showed that their brains had begun to normalize and show patterns that were similar to children who have no reading problems, with increased activity in the proper cortex.††

               Also, try linking learning to music. Brite Music is wonderful for children, http://www.britemusic.com. The brain’s ability to change is validated in “The Music Never Stopped”, a movie based on the incredible true story, The Last Hippie, by Dr. Oliver Sacks, M.D. (of Awakenings). It’s about a young man with devastating amnesia who reconnects with his memories, and his family, through the music of the 1960s, and chronicles the journey of a father and son adjusting to cerebral trauma and a lifetime of missed opportunities. http://themusicneverstopped-movie.com/story 

               “In 1967 prodigal son, Gabriel Sawyer, runs away from home. Nearly twenty years later, Henry is shocked to learn that his estranged son requires major surgery to remove a previously neglected brain tumor.

               “After the operation, the extent of Gabriel's condition is made clear: the tumor damaged the part of his brain that facilitates the creation of new memories. For Gabriel, past, present, and future become indistinguishable. Determined not to let their son slip away from them again, Henry and wife, Helen, vow to connect with Gabriel, who is barely able to communicate effectively.

               “Unhappy with Gabriel's lack of progress, Henry does his own research on brain injuries, which leads him to Dr. Dianne Daly. She is a music therapist who has used her methods to make significant progress with victims of brain tumors.

               “As Diane works with Gabriel, she realizes that he is most responsive to the music of the Rock and Roll era - The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and particularly the Grateful Dead. Even though he is unaware that the era of his music has long passed, the effect is remarkable, and he begins to be able to have conversations and express himself. Although Henry loathes rock and roll, he is determined to forge new memories and salvage his relationship with his son.

               “While his own health fails, Henry begins his own pilgrimage through the bands of the sixties. With the songs that animate his son's soul, he is able [to help his son create new memories, previously impossible for Gabriel, and] to form an unusual but emotionally vibrant bond with the child he thought he had lost.”

               ††But what about parents who can’t afford to, or don’t want to,  send their children away for eight to twelve weeks for this break-through, computer-based remediation? Scientific learning has home-based computer solutions such as BrainSpark and BrainPro as well. They are a great, albeit pricey, remedy.

               If your child has some brain or body chemistry issues, look for holistic and nutritional solutions, first. Therapists in Canada strongly prefer this route and have several solution ideas.

I am not against using medications where needed, and several of my children have benefitted from medical help for bipolar, ADHD, anxiety, and depression struggles. However, use them carefully, keeping the side-effects to a minimum. I also work to find help that doesn’t numb-out my child or remove his/her core personality.

               Better nutrition can help diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety, etc., in adults, but sometimes they still need medical help. Likewise, we often can’t change our genetic, body and brain chemistry with just nutrition and/or talking therapy. If something can help my children get along better in society, or feel more successful in school, I may use it. But be careful; meds can do the opposite, too. The goal is to do what’s best for my child rather than to make my life easier.

Web MD, http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/guide/nondrug-treatments, has several non-drug solutions for bipolar disorder and others. Types of psychotherapy used to treat bipolar disorder include:

·        Behavioral therapy

·        Cognitive therapy

·        Interpersonal therapy

·        Social rhythm therapy

·        Support groups

·        Education – benefit from learning about the disorder

·        Also, taking these steps may help you cope with a disorder:

o   Establish routines

o   Identify symptoms

o   Adapt

o   Maintain a regular sleep pattern

o   Do not use alcohol or drugs

               For more information, check out the WebMD website for this and other disorders.

               If s/he beyond-doubt needs some medical help, have your therapist look for medicines that aid behavior and learning without spacing-out your child or erasing his/her personality. Watch for detrimental side-effects, such as muscle twitches, liver damage, or blood-sugar spikes; some can become permanent. But please do not let the doctors hospitalize your child; s/he’ll feel abandoned by you, with makes self-esteem worse. There are other options.

               And have hope! My son’s therapist, Nancy Pierce, has had several bipolar-child patients who have outgrown their disorder and have been weaned off the meds in their college or young adult years. This is my plan for my son, too. And this may be true of ADHD and other disorders.

               Without these preventatives, the cracks in your child may be dyslexia, speech problems, resource remediation classes, being teased at school, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, rage, low self-esteem, insecurity, childhood depression, low self-confidence, lack of imagination, lower IQ, slower learning capacity, math incompetency, caught in the downward educational trend, and/or low-paying jobs. They all may be preventable or curable. You, mom and dad, are the key. It’s not rocket surgery!

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Why Scientists Playing Amateur Atheology Fail by Christian Smith

http://godfreymethod.com/default.aspx