Scarlet, now in 3rd grade, has been struggling recently with some lessons, and that’s what started me thinking about how math is taught and if there’s a better way that can help her excel at math. After some research, I learned there are several different math curricula, and that some are better than others.

Our Local Public School Curriculum

Scarlet’s schools uses a California-School-Board-approved book called California Math (published by Scott Foresman, 2001). What initially caught my attention about Scarlet’s math curriculum was that her textbook was teaching “mental math” strategies that I thought were rather complicated for her age. For example, here is a mental math strategy called “compensation” that goes like this:

• Problem: 125 + 98 = ?
• Steps:
  • 125 + 100 = 225 (adding 2 to 98 makes 100 so it’s easier to add)
  • 225 – 2 = 223 (subtract 2 to compensate for adding 2 above)
• Answer: 125 + 98 = 223

That’s actually not so bad. It gets more complicated when you use compensation in subtraction:

• Problem: 65 – 19 = ?
• Steps:
  • 65 – 20 = 45 (adding 1 to 19 makes 20 so it’s easier to subtract)
  • 45 + 1 = 46 (adding 1 compensates for subtracting 1 more than needed above)
• Answer: 65 – 19 = 46

I thought, wow, that’s a bit complicated for her age. I naturally do this in my head, but I’m also a grown-up with an engineering degree. Scarlet couldn’t figure out which number to compensate. For example, she would try to add 5 to 65 to make 70, or compensate on both numbers. Particularly hard is the subtraction case because she couldn’t understand why you must add the compensated number back versus subtracting it as in the addition case. As I tried to explain all these things to her, I realized I was explaining tricks that I had learned on my own and that the math textbook did not explain.

Was this the best way to teach math?

Different Math Curricula Available

A friend of mine forwarded this popular YouTube video titled “Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth” put together by a Seattle parent that gives a good comparison between several different math teaching methods:

• Standard algorithms that most parents know because that’s how we were taught
• TERC Investigations
• Everyday Math

I didn’t do in-depth research on each, but the examples in the video are quite convincingly against TERC and Everyday Math which are both “reform math” curricula that focus more on “mental math” strategies. Just a quick web search shows that there are lots of negative reviews of both methods.

Armed with this information, I immediately tried to see if our local public school that Scarlet attends used either of these methods.  Unfortunately, I could find nothing identifying the specific math curriculum being used on any of the school, district, or county education sites. I even asked Scarlet’s teacher and she had no idea what it was called. She just said she teaches what the school board tells her to.

Singapore Math

What the video advocates at the end is a curriculum called Singapore Math, named after the country it comes from. Singapore Math is not new, but it’s getting more attention now, particularly because Singapore consistently tops the world in math scores. Singapore math focuses on the standard algorithms that we parents learned as children. I have now heard from several parents that this is best math curriculum today.

Interestingly, this article says that the California State Board of Education approved Singapore Math textbooks for use in the state back in 2007. Yet my local school has not heard of it at all. Next step for me is to ask the principal what’s up.