About Everyday Math

Contained here are links to various resources about the Everyday Mathematics curriculum developed by the University of Chicago’s School Mathematics Project (UCSMP) and published by McGraw-Hill Education that was selected in May 2016 by the LCUSD elementary textbook selection committee as its top pick for use as the District’s math textbook for grades K-5. Curriculum development for Everyday Mathematics began at UCSMP in 1985. It is currently in its fourth edition, which first appeared in 2015.

Information About Everyday Mathematics:

  • Everyday Mathematics (Wikipedia) – Wikipedia general description of the Everyday Mathematics mathematics curriculum, its history, curriculum structure, and criticisms.
  • Everyday Mathematics (Publisher’s website) – McGraw-Hill Education’s portal for information about the Everyday Math curriculum and supporting products. Includes a program overview, links to a 20-page report on research, and other information.
  • Everyday Mathematics Resource and Information Center ( UCSMP) – The University of Chicago’s School Mathematics Project’s portal for more information about Everyday Math for teachers and parents, containing links to their own research supposedly supporting the efficacy of EM.

Reviews of Everyday Mathematics:

  • Review of Everyday Mathematics from EdReports (May 2016) – EdReports.org is an independent, non-partisan organization that provides “evidence-based reviews of instructional materials and support of smart adoption processes will equip teachers with excellent materials nationwide.” EdReports’ summary of Everyday Mathematics reads:

“The instructional materials reviewed for K-2 do not meet the expectation for alignment to the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM.)  Kindergarten materials spend sufficient time on major work but do not meet expectations for coherence.  It was not reviewed for Gateway 2 because it did not meet the expectation for focus and coherence…The instructional materials reviewed for grades 3-5 do not meet the expectation for alignment to the CCSSM.  All materials spent sufficient time on major work but do not meet the expectation for coherence.”

  • What Works Clearinghouse Report on Effectiveness of Everyday Mathematics (November 2015) – What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) is an organization of the Institute for Education Sciences (IES). The IES, according to Wikipedia, is an “independent, non-partisan statistics, research, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education. IES’ stated mission is to provide scientific evidence on which to ground education practice and policy and to share this information in formats that are useful and accessible to educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and the public.” They reviewed the effectiveness of studies purporting to show achievement gains from using Everyday Mathematics. The report is damning. Of the 92 studies purporting to show positive educational gains from using Everyday Mathematics, WWC found:

“No studies meet WWC group design standards without reservations, and one study meets WWC group design standards with reservations. The study included 3,436 primary students in grades 3–5 in a large urban school district in Texas. The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Everyday Mathematics on the achievement outcomes of primary students to be small for mathematics achievement, the only outcome domain in Primary Mathematics.”

  • Evaluation of Submitted Changes for Everyday Mathematics (July 5, 1999) – Written by David Klein, professor of Mathematics at the California State University of Northridge (CSUN), the analysis was submitted to the California State Board of Education in 1999. Note that this is a review of the 1st edition of Everyday Mathematics, which was subsequently rejected by the California Department of Education in January 2001 for inclusion on its state approved textbook list. Note that Professor Klein rejected Everyday Mathematics for failure to meet the 1998 California State Standards. Those standards have been replaced by the Common Core State Standards, adopted by California in 2010. Professor Klein’s conclusion was:

“I strongly recommend against the adoption of Everyday Mathematics either as a basic or partial program for any grade ranging from K to 6. Everyday Mathematics dramatically fails to meet the California Mathematics Standards in the important strand Number Sense. The high degree of integration of calculators in the curriculum–even as devices to teach Kindergarten children how to count–defies common sense and could cause significant educational harm to children. The failure to provide textbooks to students is contrary to the California Education Code relevant to this adoption process.”

  • Mathematically Correct Review of Everyday Learning Everyday Mathematics – 2nd Grade (1999) – Mathematically Correct is an organization of concerned educators, parents, mathematicians and scientists that formed in 1997 in response to the proliferation of the 1989 NCTM mathematics standards. Click here for Wikipedia’s description of Mathematically Correct. The four co-founders of Mathematically Correct independently reviewed the 2nd grade Everyday Mathematics material among over a dozen reform-math curricula available in 1997. They reviewed the 1st edition of Everyday Mathematics and rated it a “C” (on an “A” through “F” scale), summarizing:

“The overall evaluation of this program is mediocre, but that is far from telling the whole story. It is unusual in that some topics, such as perimeter and measurement, are covered quite well while other topics, notably addition and subtraction of whole numbers and to a lessor extent the work with time, are given a fairly weak treatment. The result appears to be related to the overall program philosophy which chooses to emphasize ideas and calculators and even mental arithmetic but de-emphasizes matters that require extensive practice and the use of algorithms. Multiplication, which is in the early stages in grade 2, is covered well given that the expectations are mostly conceptual and not intending to lead to mastery (or even close to it) at this level.

Despite good coverage of some topics, it may be difficult to identify a situation where the use of this program is very appropriate. If expectations are high, then the program seems to be inappropriate due to the lack of support for the mastery of central topics. For situations with lower expectations, the program may contain too much attention to the higher-level topics and not enough attention to support success with addition and subtraction. Thus, it is difficult to recommend this program despite the circumstances.”

“The overall evaluation of this program was next-to-lowest among the fifth grade programs in this review. The program comes across with the flavor of a survey of some rather sophisticated areas of mathematics for fifth-grade students without support for the development of topics or student mastery of content. This unusual combination of features makes it difficult to imagine a fifth-grade circumstance where such a program could be recommended.”

“In spite of some attractive approaches undertaken by the Everyday Mathematics (EM), the topics and skills it leaves out will be seriously detrimental to the students in rendering them not being fully prepared to handle the learning of higher mathematical topics in middle, high and finally the college years. These deficiencies alone warrant the unsatisfactoriness of the Everyday Math curriculum for the Oak Ridge schools (for any schools for that matter). However, in addition to these deficiencies, EM stresses and adopts the attitude of shunning the standardized algorithms that have been developed through out the ages for the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Not only are they not taught per se in the curriculum, but EM wants the students to choose her own method of preference among several alter native algorithms (usually cumbersome) including those the student has come up with, under all circumstances to solve an operation procedure.”

  • IllinoisLoop.org’s Summary of Everyday Mathematics – IllinoisLoop was a parent organization in Illinois that called itself “Your guide to understanding education in Illinois.” Everyday Mathematics was among the fifteen mathematics textbook programs in use across Illinois at the time that was reviewed on the organization’s website. IllinoisLoop summarized Everyday Mathematics thusly:

“Popularly known as ‘Chicago math’ and published by Wright Group/McGraw-Hill, this program is one of the most pervasive of the original fuzzy, constructivist math programs. It was developed starting in 1985 by a group called the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project (UCSMP). It is legendary for its problems without solutions, incredibly frustrating “games,” shallow interest in effective algorithms, heavy use of the demoralizing practice of spiraling and oddball methods such as “lattice multiplication.”

  • An Evaluation of Selected Mathematics Textbooks (May 1997) – A review and comparison of four major elementary mathematics textbooks — SRA, Sadlier-Oxford, Saxon, and Everyday Mathematics — by Wayne Bishop, Professor of Mathematics at the California State University of Los Angeles for the Core Knowledge Foundation. Note that the author reviewed the 1st edition of Everyday Mathematics and refers to it  as “UCSMP” (for University of Chicago School Mathematics Project) in his review. His summary review is:

“After having looked closely at these materials, my ranking from first to last is Saxon, CMC, Sadlier, with UCSMP a distant last. In more detail, I rank Saxon and CMC both as solidly acceptable, Sadlier less so but still acceptable, and UCSMP unacceptable….Whether or not all of the ‘reform movement’ curricula – Quest 2000, Math Their Way, etc. – are as susceptible to omission, or at least lack of certifiability, of the CK Sequence specifications as the UCSMP curriculum would have to be confirmed on a case-by-case basis. Given that the UCSMP materials are often perceived as the best of the genre, however, I would be extremely wary. One that I have looked at in some detail, though not as carefully as I did with UCSMP, is California’s current largest seller, MathLand, by Creative Publications. Based on my cursory perusal and substantial California student performance data, I would go from “dangerous” to “poisonous.” Any more traditional text such as Sadlier is preferable. Even more preferable is one that does not overlook the importance of automaticity, of course, but does it in the style of pervasive incremental review. Both CMC and Saxon do this well and my impression is that Saxon does it better, at least in the hands of competent teachers.”

Articles on Everyday Mathematics:

 “At its core, the Everyday Math curriculum fails in three critical ways not directly related to math. First, it buys into this notion that all learning must be fun and engaging. How valid is that idea? Is it not just possible that some learning can be perhaps less than scintillating but still useful, like PBS News Hour? Is it not possible that the very work of working at learning is, in itself, an important lesson about living in the real world? Little humans need to learn what responsibility is as much as they need to understand 2+2. Part of that lesson is understanding that responsibility means working at something, for something, as a means to an end because it’s necessary, because we have to, because it is important. Even if sometimes, it can be a slog.”

  • “How Not to Teach Math” by Matthew Clavel, March 7, 2003, City Journal – Clavel, a New York City math teacher, writes about his frustrations teaching Everyday Mathematics. An excerpt:

“The curriculum’s failure was undeniable: not one of my students knew his or her times tables, and few had mastered even the most basic operations; knowledge of multiplication and division was abysmal. Perhaps you think I shouldn’t have rejected a course of learning without giving it a full year (my school had only recently hired me as a 23-year-old Teach for America corps member). But what would you do, if you discovered that none of your fourth graders could correctly tell you the answer to four times eight?”

  • “Q&A with James Milgram”, April 2, 2011, Math Experts Blog – Professor James Milgram of Stanford University was the only mathematics content expert on the Common Core State Standards Mathematics validation committee. He was one of the four authors of the previous 1998 California Mathematics Standards, and the main reviewer of the NCTM’s Curriculum Focal Points. Additionally, he served on the National Board for Education Science that oversees the IES – the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and he also served on the NASA Advisory Council. Milgram compares Everyday Mathematics to Singapore Mathematics and writes:

“Among the districts that started using EM 15 – 20 years back, none, to my knowledge, still use it. And a number of districts, such as, e.g. Philadelphia, seem to quietly trying to get rid of it without losing too much face.

When we first started this fight, EM was just the best of a really horrible collection of such programs. We managed to get rid of the others in California, and, as far as I can tell, when we said that EM was the best of these programs, though all were extremely problematic, this was interpreted by the ed-schools and school administrators as saying that “EM is the best.”

  • “An A-Mazeing Approach to Math: A Mathematician with a Child Learns Politics”, by Barry Garelick, Spring 2005, EducationNext – Garelick is a mathematician and analyst with an unnamed Federal agency in Washington, DC. Garelick writes about his frustrations with his child’s experience Everyday Mathematics, provides an excellent history of how Everyday Mathematics evolved in the Math Wars from the 1990s, and describes his bewildering experience trying to get answers from Everyday Mathematics’ publishers.
  • “One Step Ahead of the Everyday Math Train Wreck”, by Barry Garelick, October 23, 2014, Education News – Garelick writes more about his frustrations his daughter has with Everyday Mathematics and how he remedies her issues at home using Singapore Math. About Everyday Mathematics, Garelick writes:

“A casual glance at Everyday Math’s workbook pages does not reveal that there is anything amiss.  The problems seem reasonable, and in some cases they are exactly the same type given in Singapore Math. What the casual observer doesn’t know is what sequencing has preceded that particular lesson, nor how that lesson is conducted in class. What is supposed to happen is that students are given a series of problems to work (in small groups).  The Teacher’s Manual advises teachers to monitor students as they work through the worksheet and look to see if students can answer certain key questions.  If a student cannot, it is an indication that the student needs more help.  This means “reteaching”.  Reteaching amounts to having students read about the particular topic of concern in the Student Reference Manual.

If the lack of proper sequencing, lack of direct instruction, lack of textbook and lack of mastery of foundational material prevents a student from making the necessary discoveries, he or she can be “pulled aside” and given material to read.  So teachers are left with a three ring circus of kids getting it, kids not getting it, and are expected to “adjust the activity” as needed.”

  • “Everyday Math Makes Me Want to SCREAM!”, by Melissa Taylor, March 14, 2012, Education Soup – Taylor, a mom and former elementary teacher, describes her frustrations with her daughter’s Everyday Mathematics. Taylor summarizes:

“3 Reasons I Hate Everyday Math: 
– Everyday Math does not teach basic number sense.
– Everyday Math makes simple math operations harder than necessary.
– Everyday Math does not differentiate for kids who need longer time or kids who need to move faster.”

  • “Much-Used Elementary Math Program Gets Qualified Nod from U.S. Ed. Dept.“, by David J. Hoff, September 19, 2006, Education Week – Report that the US Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse, an organization that attempts to assess the validity of studies supposedly supporting specific curricula are scientifically sound. What Works Clearinghouse found that four of 62 studies on the effectiveness of Everyday Math were found  “to raise students’ test scores by an average of
    12 percentile points.” The devil is in the details, though. McGraw-Hill touts that Everyday Math is “is the most research-grounded and field-tested elementary mathematics program available today” on its website and in its marketing material. However, the What Works Clearinghouse found that 58 of the 62 studies claiming to show Everday Math’s effectiveness did not meet basic “evidence screens,” meaning that the group did not deem the studies to have merit because of flaws in their research design:

“For the review, a team of clearinghouse researchers analyzed 62 studies on the impact of Everyday Mathematics, which was developed at the University of Chicago in the 1980s and is now published by the New York City-based McGraw-Hill  Cos. Of those studies, just four met the clearinghouse’s quality criteria and underwent more analysis by its researchers.

Of those four, three studies found “positive” effects, but just one detected improvements in students’ math achievement that were considered statistically significant. The fourth study found no effect on test scores.”

Expert Opinion on Everyday Mathematics:

  • From Hung-Hsi Wu, Professor of Mathematics at University of California at Berkeley, a former member of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel and frequent reviewer and contributor to development of California state mathematics standards, wrote in 2009 while the Palo Alto Unified School District similarly considered adopting Everyday Mathematics (EM):

“EM is a not a program I’d recommend because it is extremely misleading. It claims to promote Conceptual Understanding, but in my opinion, it raises hope while dashing it mercilessly. It does not pay careful attention to the need of the painstaking build-up of skills, and when this happens in *mathematics*, you may as well bid farewell to conceptual understanding. What makes Everyday Math especially misleading is the fact that, when other programs are blatant about the de-emphasis of skills, Everyday Math camouflages this de-emphasis by the massive onslaught of a super-abundance of skills. If several skills are taught each week without allowing children the time to internalize the one or two key skills, the end result is that they learn nothing. But this tactics allows Everyday Math to claim that it has given skills their due and at the same time succeed in de-emphasizing them.

Andy Issacs, the major author of EM came to see me to protest my low opinion of EM, so I told him more or less the following, face to face:

The decision by EM to dump many topics on children each day, and hope that by chance some of them will stick to the children’s minds in the long run, is contrary to the way mathematics should be learned. Mathematics is simple and clear, and its progression is orderly and hierarchical. We want children to learn the most basic things, and learn them well each time, so that they can move to the next stage with a clear understanding of what they have learned, and what they can do next with their new-found knowledge. Some skills and concepts in elementary mathematics are so important (place value, standard algorithms, etc.) that one must not leave the learning of such things to chance. They must be learned, and learned well, and the only way to do this is to isolate them and give children time to absorb them. When you do the standard algorithms as some items among a few dozen that children should know, you are doing public education a disservice. You are in fact misleading the public by design, because it allows you to claim, on the one hand, that you recognize the importance of these basic skills and concepts and, on the other, pander to the ideology of others by making the learning of said skills and concepts virtually impossible.

Imbedded in EM is a mathematical knowledge that is above the norm in American educational publishing. Unfortunately, this knowledge does not filter down to the pages of the student texts. These texts use language that is as vague and misleading as other texts from major publishers. Moreover, the flawed design in the structure of your lessons puts this knowledge to waste. For this reason, I do not consider EM to be suitable for the typical elementary teacher or classroom.”

Source: https://pamath2009.wordpress.com/everyday-math-what-is-it/

  • Gunnar Carlsson, Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University and one of the four authors of the 1998 California Mathematics Standards, wrote the following letter to the Palo Alto Unified School District Board in 2009 recommending against adoption of the Everyday Mathematics curriculum:

“I am writing to give my impression of the program Everyday Math, which is being considered for adoption in the Palo Alto district. I have had three kids go through the district (last one graduated in 2005), and continue to watch the development of the mathematics program with interest. Everyday Math certainly has its strengths, but my feeling is that is misses the mark in certain important aspects, for example in the area of algorithms for basic arithmetic operations. I will first briefly describe my view of the reasons for teaching these algorithms to students.

…

In summary, the authors of Everyday Math feel that it is worthwhile to trade computational fluency and speed for having algorithms in which the underlying properties of mathematics stand out in the clearest possible way. I do not regard this as a necessary or desirable trade-off. The connection of the theory with the algorithms are important to demonstrate, but need to be done only when the algorithms are introduced. One does not need to saddle students with less effective methods in order to remind them of this connection every time they perform a calculation.”

Click here to read the letter in its entirety.