“Where’s the Math?” advocates showed up in force Wednesday for a lopsided discussion about math books, prompting one confused parent to ask: where’s the balance?
Over 100 people attended the independent meeting, which organizers billed as “a guided tour and discussion” of the competing Holt and Discovering textbooks the Bellevue School District is considering for adoption this year.
Bellevue parent Jim King interrupted the event partway through, complaining that the presentations sounded like “propaganda.”
“This is obviously not an unbiased meeting,” he later told reporters. “It’s supposed to be a parent information night. What I see is a whole lot of people from Holt advocating for their side.”
The forum on Wednesday included presentations from notable University of Washington professor Cliff Mass and Bob Brandt, a former math teacher who serves as a member of the state Board of Education Math Advisory Panel and as a textbook reviewer for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).
Brandt talked about the review processes that led both OSPI and the state Board of Education to recommend Holt over Discovering.
Mass lambasted “reform math” and the “investigation” principles that the Discovering books are grounded in.
“There’s no scientific basis for these approaches,” he said. “If (Discovering) got in, it would cripple the ability of students to do well in technological fields.”
The Holt curriculum offers a more traditional approach to math that focuses on computation.
Sally Raftery, a parent member of the school district’s math-textbook adoption committee, presented a visual tour of the Discovering text using selected chapters, some of which illustrated the teaching concepts Mass had just criticized.
The Bellevue PTSA recently ditched plans to take part in a similar meeting, fearing that the discussion would be unbalanced in favor of Holt.
King, a former private school leadership teacher, said he was genuinely surprised that the meeting on Wednesday did not include advocates for both textbooks.
Sharon Peaslee, who helped organize the Wednesday forum, said her group twice extended invitations to teachers and members of the textbook-adoption committee.
“We did that knowing they’re leaning in the direction of Discovering,” she said.
The school district last year assigned a committee to recommend a new math textbook for adoption. That group was scheduled to meet Thursday evening, after the Reporter deadline, to review results from pilot studies of the competing curricula.
Holt advocates, which include a large contingent of parents, fear that teachers and the textbook-adoption committee heavily favor the Discovering curriculum. They say the district is ignoring their concerns.
The district says the committee meetings are not public. However, a district official has said no one is prohibited from attending the sessions.
The meetings are not advertised.
King said he wasn’t aware that the school district had a textbook-adoption committee, nor that the group was scheduled to meet Thursday.
The district held four “math nights” this school year to discuss its math-textbook adoption process. It also posted information about the process online.
King said he didn’t know about the math nights or the online information.
