To: California State Academic Standards Commission
submitted by Bill Evers, Commissioner, 9/15/97

Dear Fellow Commissioners,

The alternative California Math Standards document that I am presenting to you is both a new document and, in a sense, a familiar one. It is a familiar document because it has been built up out of previous drafts of the Math Standards (in the document, the source of each standard appears in parentheses right after the standard itself) . The alternative Math Standards are thus an extension of the deliberations of the Math Committee, of the expert review, and of the Commission's public hearings.

It is a new document because it was just completed on the morning of Sept. 15. As a new document that revises and improves the Committee Report, it has certain notable features:

• The Alternative Standards written for all students are grade-by-grade as California state law requires (unlike the Committee Report, which groups grades 9 and 10 together as part of its "integrated curriculum");

• The Alternative Standards have a standard course sequence (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II) in grades 8-10 (the Committee Report proposes an "integrated curriculum," which mixes algebra and geometry in a new, unproven, experimental way and spreads the mixture across 8-12);

• The Alternative Standards preserve the natural coherence of algebra and geometry within the discipline of mathematics--algebra and geometry evolved separately in the history of mathematics, treat different subject matter, and emphasize different sets of operations;

• The Alternative Standards are high and challenging, but do not require another wild swing of the curriculum pendulum (the Committee Report's "integrated curriculum" will be another swing of the pendulum);

• The Alternative Standards have algebra in eighth grade (the Committee Report spreads Algebra I across four years, 8-12; I predict that under the Committee Report Standards, thousands of high-school students will never get the complete course content of Algebra I);

• The Alternative Standards match the training of California's middle-school teachers who are prepared to teach algebra, but often are not prepared to teach the more difficult subject of geometry, especially conceptual understanding of geometry (the Committee Report's "integrated curriculum" requires middle-school teachers to teach geometry);

• The Alternative Standards' six Strands are based on those in the California Education Round Table High School Mathematics Graduation Standards and the Strands in the Draft Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools (unlike the Committee Report which has its own unique, idiosyncratic Strands system);

• The Alternative Standards are aligned with the new Draft California Mathematics Framework (issued Sept. 1997), in grade-by-grade course content;

• The Alternative Standards list priorities in Kindergarten through Grade Six to assist elementary teachers and to assist test-writers (such priorities were recommended by several expert reviewers and persons who testified before the Commission, but no such priorities were planned for the Committee Report);

• In the Alternative Standards, the language in grades K-6 has been extensively revised to make it clearer and hence more accessible and useful to parents and elementary school teachers;

• In the Alternative Standards, the Clarifications and Examples column has been used primarily to help define the degree of difficulty of the problems that students should be able to solve;

• In the Alternative Standards, the pedagogy contained in the Clarifications and Examples column in the Committee Report has been removed (e.g., Sept. 12 Draft, grade 9/10 Algebra and Functions, standard 1.5, first comment "students should be encouraged to approach factoring from the standpoint of observing and analyzing patterns....");

• The Alternative Standards are high, challenging standards attainable for all students; they are not minimum-competency standards (the Committee Report's "base for all students" are minimum-competency standards geared to current student performance);

• The Alternative Standards provide focus in the primary grades, without spreading content across the Strands in a confusing way;

• The Alternative Standards include a careful statement limiting the use of calculators and computers in assessing the standards (the Committee Report does not discuss technology);

• The Alternative Standards are coherent--their coherence can be seen both in the descriptions of what is emphasized in each grade and in the relatively small number of Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) categories in each grade (in the Alternative Standards document, the TIMSS category of each overarching standard appears in parentheses right after the standard itself); and

• The Alternative Standards are so clear they can easily serve as a basis for testing (the Committee Report would require extensive interpretation before assessments could be written).

"[Some have the view] that the Japanese and others have done better than the Americans (and particularly Californians) in achievement levels because they treat subjects in an 'integrated' fashion. This is nonsense. Just look at their textbooks! The difference is that they treat subject carefully and thoroughly, unlike any American integrated text I have seen (and I have seen far too many)."
[Letter to the Academic Standards Commission, 8/24/97]