New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein has been getting a lot of grief from reading experts about Month by Month Phonics, the reading curriculum he has selected for all but the top 200 of New York City's elementary schools. Now he's beginning to hear from math experts about problems with Everyday Math, the math curriculum he has mandated for all but the top schools in the system. In this month's City Journal, former Teach for America corps member (and former Fordham intern) Matthew Clavel describes what it was like to try to teach Everyday Math to fourth graders in the South Bronx. He questions the focus of the program on "critical thinking skills" that his students simply couldn't exercise since they had yet to master basic skills. He also wonders why the curriculum dips into algebra and geometry before students can multiply or do long division. He saves his fiercest criticism for Everyday Math's emphasis on "cooperative learning" exercises, which he said regularly caused his classroom to degenerate into chaos. Clavel eventually scrapped Everyday Math entirely and focused on trying to teach his students the basic skills they needed.
"How now to teach math," by Matthew Clavel, City Journal, March 7, 2003