WASL on KUOW, CMP2 decimal math has NO METHODS FOR DECIMAL MATH

3/13/08 Education bits

- KUOW 94.9 FM is slated to talk about wasl at 9.

- Renton radio commercial on KUOW brags about wasl results.

- Looked at Connected math for decimal math with my 6th grade
teacher yesterday. She acknowledged that the book literally did
not contain any explanation for any method, but defended the book
as "not perfect", and said that it was designed by teachers, and
she had met the lead developer. Actually it was designed by college
researchers, not teachers. I'm disappointed that she and the other
team teacher chose to back up the decision of the designers to not
include any direct explanations or methods in the student book, rather
than just admit it's junk and also complain about it. They would not
allow me to take a picture of any of the pages of any of the books.

Even
the teacher book doesn't contain any complete explanation, except for
the paragraph which is given as a "possible answer" to the question,
write down your "own algorithm" for adding decimal numbers. At no point
in time is the teacher actually expected to give the students a complete
method. This is fully consistent with the other topics, though oddly
the parent letter does not mention lining up numbers for adding, but
it's mentioned briefly in the student and teacher book, but not as
part of a complete explanation. I'm also incorrect that common
denominators are not in the book. For some crazy reason, it is in the
book for DECIMAL DIVISION. So they will only include some standard
terminology if it's A NON STANDARD USE.