Open Letter to Issaquah School District

February 17, 2010

To:
Board of Education

Issaquah School District

565 NW Holly Street

Issaquah, WA 98027-2899

From:
Save Math In Issaquah

Subject:
Math Textbook Adoption

Reference:
Instructional Materials Committee Meeting of February 11, 2010

At the February 11, 2010 meeting of the Issaquah School District Instructional Materials Committee (IMC) the IMC voted unanimously to recommend Discovering Math. This vote was based on a number of false and misleading statements presented to the public and committee by Issaquah School District’s K-12 Math Curriculum Specialist, along with reckless disregard of the overwhelming body of evidence in favor of mastery based curricula.


1) Issaquah School District’s K-12 Math Curriculum Specialist Ms. Leslie Nielson testified to the public and the IMC that the State Board of Education math textbook study conducted by Linda Plattner in March 2009 found no curricula to be sound, and that the study is therefore not relevant.

Ms. Nielson made false testimony to the public and to the IMC.

As shown on the figure below, the Plattner study found the Holt series to be at least “minimally sound” in EVERY category, and the Discovering series to be “unsound” in EVERY category.

2) Issaquah School District’s K-12 Math Curriculum Specialist Ms. Leslie Nielson testified to the public and the IMC that research indicates that inquiry based instruction reduces the “achievement gap” citing a single eight year old study by a biased advocate of inquiry based instruction.
Ms. Nielson’s testimony to the public and to the IMC was grossly misleading.

a) The author of the study cited by Ms. Nielson is also on record saying “…the new approaches are unverified, but plausible.”

b) In a 2008 study conducted by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel sponsored by the United States Department of Education which included comprehensive study of all available research on math curriculum concluded in part: “Explicit instruction with students who have mathematical difficulties has shown consistently positive effects on performance with word problems and computation. Results are consistent for students with learning disabilities, as well as other students who perform in the lowest third of a typical class. By the term explicit instruction, the Panel means that teachers provide clear models for solving a problem type using an array of examples, that students receive extensive practice in use of newly learned strategies and skills, that students are provided with opportunities to think aloud (i.e., talk through the decisions they make and the steps they take), and that students are provided with extensive feedback.”

c) A 2004 study of math curricula effectiveness sponsored by the Mathematical Sciences Education Board and the Center for Education found that “On the basis of the committee's analysis of these 147 studies, we concluded that the corpus of evaluation studies as a whole across the 19 programs studied does not permit one to determine the effectiveness of individual programs with a high degree of certainty, due to the restricted number of studies for any particular curriculum, limitations in the array of methods used, and the uneven quality of the studies.”

d) A comprehensive study of inquiry based versus mastery based instruction method authored by Kirschner, Sweller and Clark published in Educational Psychologist in 2006 concluded:
“After a half-century of advocacy associated with instruction using minimal guidance, it appears that there is no body of research supporting the technique. In so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners. Even for students with considerable prior knowledge, strong guidance while learning is most often found to be equally effective as unguided approaches. Not only is unguided instruction normally less effective; there is also evidence that it may have negative results when students acquire misconceptions or incomplete or disorganized knowledge.”

3) School District’s K-12 Math Curriculum Specialist Ms. Leslie Nielson testified to the public and the IMC that the Discovering series is a “balanced” approach.
Ms. Nielson made false testimony to the public and to the IMC.

Also, in an article dated February 16 2010 in the Issaquah Press newspaper, Issaquah School District Assistant Superintendent Ron Thiele repeated the false assertion that the Discovery Series represents a balanced approach.
Mr. Thiele made false testimony to the public.

a) Key Press goes to great lengths to market the Discovering series as an inquiry-based approach.
b) The introductory sections of the textbooks say that it is inquiry based.
c) The books are full of information presented as inquiries.
d) The judge in the Seattle School District case made a Finding of Fact that the Discovering series is an inquiry-based approach.

4) Issaquah School District’s K-12 Math Curriculum Specialist Ms. Leslie Nielson testified to the public and IMC that Key Press provides the district with significant assistance in implementing the Discovering curriculum, while Holt offered only to “help unpack the boxes”.
Ms. Nielson made false testimony to the public and to the IMC.

In a discussion of February 16, 2010 with Lindsey Cross of Holt Mathematics Customer Service, I was told that Holt offers significant curriculum implementation assistance to adopting districts including teacher training seminars and technical support throughout the school year from sales representatives. I was also told that there are substantial online resources for teachers using the Holt curriculum in the form of exercises, worksheets, tests, and other supporting material.


I am quite concerned that Ms. Nielson’s conflict of interest arising from her position as Issaquah School District’s K-12 Math Curriculum Specialist while at the same time being employed by Discovering Math publisher Key Press as the author of “Is Democracy Fair?” creates the appearance of impropriety. Given this irresolvable ethical conflict, Ms. Nielson should have been disqualified at the outset from having any influence at all in the textbook selection process for the Issaquah School District. The fact that she was not casts a shadow over the entire process which could suggest that the textbook selection process should begin anew with an entirely new team of people unaffected by Ms. Nielson’s bias.

The table here (scroll to bottom of linked page) summarizes five different studies of the Holt and Discovering series of textbooks. In every analysis, the Holt series was found to be excellent or at least meeting minimum standards, whereas the Discovery series was found to be unsound in every analysis but one.

As you are well aware, the judge in the case concerning the math textbook adoption in the Seattle School District found their selection to be “arbitrary and capricious” because they ignored or discounted much of the overwhelming body of evidence against the inquiry based math instruction embodied in the Discovering Math series of textbooks. I see many similarities between the approach being taken by the Issaquah School District, and the approach taken by the Seattle School District which was struck down in King County Superior Court in the following ways:

1) Issaquah School District has chosen to ignore Randy Dorn’s recommendation for Holt Mathematics while also ignoring the fact that Mr. Dorn does not recommend the Discovering series.

2) Issaquah School District has chosen to ignore five independent studies shown above, all of which indicate that the Holt series is superior to the Discovery Series.

3) Issaquah School District is relying on one isolated study relative to the “achievement gap” while ignoring three comprehensive studies all of which find absolutely no sound statistical support for the notion that inquiry-based instruction is effective for struggling students.

4) Issaquah School District has chosen to ignore the “Plattner Study” commissioned by the State Board of Education which found the Holt series to be clearly superior to the Discovery series.

5) Issaquah School District has chosen to rely on testimony from an ethically compromised District employee who is a biased advocate of inquiry-based education.

I urge the Superintendent and Board of Education of the Issaquah School District to give very careful consideration to all the evidence, and to perform sound analysis before making any decisions regarding math textbook selection.


Respectfully,