March 25, 2005
Wrong, Wrong and Wrong: Math Guides Are Recalled
By SUSAN SAULNY, NY TIMES

LINK

City education officials were forced to recall test preparation materials for math exams late Wednesday after discovering that they were rife with errors, including basic arithmetic mistakes.

The materials were intended for math students in grades 3 through 7, but the faulty information - at least 18 errors - was found before it reached classrooms. The testing guides were e-mailed late Wednesday to regional instructional specialists, math coaches and local instructional superintendents and recalled a few hours later.

Some answers in the guide were wrong. Other questions suffered from odd wording, the incorrect notation of exponents and sloppy diagrams. Besides the math mistakes, there were problems with grammar and spelling. For instance, the word "fourth" was misspelled on the cover of the fourth-grade manual.

According to school officials, a fact-checker within the department failed to do a proper job.

"We have a clear protocol for review of all materials," said Carmen Fariña, the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning. "In this case, a member of my staff inexcusably failed to follow our protocol, and I have written a letter of reprimand to the person's file. We recalled the materials within hours, corrections to the guide will be made, and it again will be distributed digitally."

That explanation did not pacify parents and teachers.

"They should not be allowed to make all kinds of excuses," said Jane Hirschmann, co-chairwoman of a parents' organization called Time Out From Testing. "The fact is, if third- or fifth-grade students made the mistakes made in the test prep materials, they would be flunked and no one would be asking them for an explanation."

Several math coaches and teachers who had seen the test preparation manuals yesterday notified Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers. Ms. Weingarten seemed outraged.

"Tweed has no problem with excessively criticizing teachers for failing to meet its picayune mandates," Ms. Weingarten said, referring to the Department of Education by the name for its headquarters, the Tweed Courthouse. "But then it produces a test prep manual riddled with errors and misspellings. The hypocrisy is stunning. They could avoid embarrassing things like this if they were more collegial and shared these documents with us, instead of running things in a top-down management style that does not welcome or want input."

Dr. Alfred Posamentier, the dean of the City College School of Education and a professor of mathematics, said his staff would have been happy to help review the materials.

"Official documents sent out by the Department of Education carrying their imprimatur have a great deal of influence on teachers and students and must be perfect," he said. "And in particular, in mathematics where you have such an exact science, there is no room for error."

From the NY SUN:

Here's One Guide That's Off Base
BY JULIA LEVY - Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 25, 2005

While Schools Chancellor Joel Klein often complains that too many city schoolchildren are failing math and English, it turns out his own staff is also struggling with basic skills like spelling, sums, and estimation.

Top Department of Education officials distributed a new preparatory guide this week that is full of mathematical mistakes, spelling errors, and grammatical slipups, as well as formatting flaws.

The errors start on the cover with the title: "Mathematics Planning For Forth Grade." (The word forth, of course, means "onward in time, place, or order"; the ordinal number corresponding to the number four is spelled "fourth.")

The mistakes continue inside.

One of the practice questions for fifth-graders asks students to round the numbers 178, 212, and 254 to the nearest hundred and then add them together. The correct answer is 700; the guide indicates that it is 600.

One of the sample questions for seventh-graders asks students to evaluate the expression xy-z+2y if x=3, y=5, and z=0. The correct answer, 25, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the guide says 24 is what the students should put down.

"It's kind of laughable, actually, don't you think? It makes you wonder who's minding the store," a professor of mathematics at the Courant Institute of New York University, Sylvian Cappell, said. "While little mistakes are not the issue, it doesn't inspire confidence about the larger issues."

He said the city's math community has offered to help the department when it comes to math education.

"There's been no responsive interest at all from them," Mr. Cappell said. "I can only tell you we wouldn't have made those mistakes."

Parents, politicians, advocates, and union leaders were equally unimpressed with the education department's new guide.

"Tweed has no problem with excessively criticizing teachers for failing to meet its picayune mandates, but then it produces a test prep manual riddled with errors and misspellings," the United Federation of Teachers president, Randi Weingarten, said. "The hypocrisy is stunning."

She continued: "They could avoid embarrassing things like this if they were more collegial and shared these documents with us, instead of running things in a top-down management style that does not welcome - or want - input."

The chairwoman of the City Council's Committee on Education, Eva Moskowitz, said, "You just sort of wonder why they can't get the most basic things right. Whether it's being given out to the administrators, the teachers, the kids, the bottom line is it's got to be a professional work product, and this seems to be far short of that and that's unacceptable."

A parent who advocates for reforming the math curriculum, Elizabeth Carson, said she's not surprised that the guides had so many flaws, given that the city has used flawed tests in the past. But she said that should not be an excuse for being "sloppy."

"It puts the kids at a disadvantage. It puts the teachers at a remarkable disadvantage," she said. "It sets the kids up to fail. It sets the teachers up to fail."

The co-chairwoman of Time Out From Testing, Jane Hirschmann, said, "The standards are so low that even the test prep booklet is inaccurate."

She said the whole idea of spending money to create a test prep guide seems like a waste of city funds, and that the city should be spending money on improving instruction rather than improving test preparation.

"It's gotten totally out of hand," she said. "This is just an example of how out of hand it is."

The education department e-mailed and handed out CDs of the guides to regional instructional specialists, local instructional superintendents, and math coaches Wednesday night and recalled them within hours. The guides were created internally by the Department of Teaching and Learning, which said the guides didn't cost any money beyond the salaries of the employees who wrote them.

"We have a clear protocol for review of all materials. In this case, a member of my staff inexcusably failed to follow our protocol, and I have written a letter of reprimand to the person's file," the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, Carmen Farina, said. "We recalled the materials within hours, corrections to the guide will be made, and again will be distributed digitally."

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