This post is from from my other blog here

We received an email today from the backers of a new website "Teach Math Right - Stop "Investigating" in PWCS". (Dulles South Online covers western Prince William county, as well as western Fairfax County and Loudoun County).

Simply reading through the site will provide all the information you need to understand the situation and call to action (including a Prince William Citizen's Petition). And this following on the heels of similar activity in Loudoun (which seems to have fizzled).

This "investigations" nonsense is equally damaging to the Loudoun students...how many times has your 1st, 2nd or 3rd-grader come home with simple addition homework, where the instructions add "use a calculator if necessary"? You can see the strategy in action in one of our local elementary school "School Improvement Plans" - the Math Action Strategies are pretty uninspiring - for example "identifying math vocabulary students need to learn at each grade level" and "using manipulatives to explain concepts". (Evidently a calculator a "manipulative".)

How about learning multiplication tables and long division?