NEW MATH TEKS REVIEW

A MIXED PICTURE

I have reviewed the record of the TEKS amendments made during the April 19 State Board of Education meeting at some length, and a mixed picture has emerged

Zeve Wurman 5/3/2012

5/3/2012

NEW MATH TEKS REVIEW

A MIXED PICTURE
On one hand: The board stood up firmly to the attempt by organizations like the Texas Association of Supervisors of Mathematics (TASM) to allow calculators into elementary grades and to defer proficiency with elementary arithmetic even further into the middle grades. Even at the high school level, where TASM pushed for eliminating and diluting any notion of proofs in geometry, the board resisted and relented in only a few of places. The board also made linguistic changes to numerous standards both in elementary and secondary grades, The board should be praised for and those changes were generally for standing firm on calculators, the better; in some cases markedly so, turning completely garbled standards resisting further dilution of the into quite reasonable ones. In fact, a standards couple of the linguistic changes also significantly strengthened the arithmetic expectations with addition and subtraction in grade 4 and multiplication in grade 5. The changes clearly insist on students knowing and using the standard algorithms rather than a mishmash of strategies and models thrown together with the standard algorithms. Further, the board consolidated some very similar standards and eliminated a few duplicative ones. This slightly reduced the large number of distinct standards in each grade. There are still too many left, however, making the TEKS unfocused and unwieldy. On the other hand: Despite all this progress, the overall quality of the TEKS has improved only slightly. The improvement of the arithmetic expectation mentioned above puts the TEKS in the ballpark of the Common Core but not beyond it, and the TEKSs handling of fractions is still somewhat below the Common Core. It is only at the high school level that the TEKS substance begins to shine Clarity-wise, the Common Core and where one can clearly see the language is significantly better advantage of the TEKS coursethroughout based standards over the shapeless heap that is the Common Core high school standards. Further, the multiplicity of standards at each grade contributes to reduced focus and coherence, and the presence of the personal financial literacy strand in every K-8 grade contributes even more to that lack of coherence. Despite the many positive language changes, one is still left with a frequent and distinct feeling of excessive wordiness and obscure

5/3/2012 language. If I could put it in personal terms, I would describe the TEKS, particularly in K-8, as rather painful to read. So now we arrive at the bottom line. a) Content-wise, elementary grades TEKS are comparable with the Common Core but are not really better; b) Content-wise, high school TEKS are generally stronger than the Common Core; c) Coherence-, focus- and organization-wise, the Common Core is significantly better in elementary grades but worse in high school; d) Clarity-wise, the Common Core language is significantly better throughout; e) A significant number of minor errors are still left throughout the document.

The board should be praised for standing firm on calculators, resisting further dilution of the standards and cleaning up some of its more awful language. Yet the board has left many problems in place and ended up with a semi-coherent document. It proves, yet again, the old truth that coherent and elegant documents are not written by committees or perfected through amendments.