<p>Our school district started out with “everyday math” in the elementary school, but supplemented it with basic math facts starting about mid year in the first grade. So many parents objected to what they called “fuzzy” teaching that that the year my son was in fifth grade they let parents pick a track for their kids, either traditional math or the everyday math. Through middle school they could jump back and forth between the two, but in High School they had to pick a track and stick with it. After about eight years of doing this they found that there was almost no difference in the test scores of the two groups of high school kids. There was one group who did score slightly higher, the group who had bounced between the two programs in middle school. </p>
<p>I think this underscores Marite’s contention that we would be better off if every teacher was familiar enough with a number of teaching methods to use them in combination to get the best results from each individual kid. ( Which in my experience is what a good teacher does, regardless of the “approved curriculum”)</p>