All things must come to an end and so it is with this blog: today marks my final post. I’ve enjoyed sharing observations and stories about Montgomery County’s public and private schools for the past three years, and now it’s time to move on.
But first, some news:
Much has been written here and elsewhere about math instruction under Curriculum 2.0, the elementary school curriculum that Montgomery County Public Schools began rolling out two years ago in the lower grades. Based on rigorous academic standards adopted by many states, the math lessons focus more deeply on developing number sense in the early grades. MCPS says kids need to fully grasp number sense to be able to master more complex math concepts such as fractions and percentages in later grades.
Still, parents of advanced learners have consistently complained that the pace of the new math is too slow, the lessons seem too simple and teachers spend too long on a given topic.
Now there’s a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health that shows that MCPS is on the right track.
In the study, researchers found that kids who failed to master number-system knowledge in first grade “scored far behind their peers by seventh grade on a test of the mathematical abilities needed to function in adult life,” according to an NIH press release.
Number system knowledge—the focus of Curriculum 2.0 in the early grades—is “the ability to relate a quantity to the numerical symbol that represents it, and to manipulate quantities and make calculations,” according to the researchers.
It’s the skill that we all needed to master so we could understand the higher math that we use every day, like when we make change at a store, determine the best interest rate or figure out whether a 25 percent discount really saves us much money.
And if kids don’t master it early on, they might never catch up, the researchers said.
That’s not news to teachers and parents who have seen older students struggle because they lack the basic skills needed to understand algebra and higher math.
“An early grasp of quantities and numbers appears to be the foundation on which we build more complex understandings of numbers and calculations,” said Kathy Mann Koepke, director of the Mathematics and Science Cognition and Learning: Development and Disorders Program at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which sponsored the research.
That applies to even the brightest students.
Curriculum 2.0 is a work in progress. MCPS is working on ways to provide more advanced lessons to kids ready to learn at a faster pace, and plans to provide more training to staff who teach the new math.
That’s good news for the kids who will benefit from the deep math foundation provided through Curriculum 2.0.
As for those who came before, we wish them the best of luck.
