I’d like to thank our School Board for rejecting Core-Plus as the proposed new high school math curriculum. Core-Plus is one of several “constructivist” math curricula in existence. Two other math curricula which share this distinction are already in use by the school district, both adopted in 2001.

“TERC: Investigations in Numbers, Data and Space,” is the primary math program at our elementary level and the “Connected Mathematics Project” (CMP) is the primary math program at the middle school level. The constructivist approach to teaching math, shared by TERC, CMP and Core-Plus, is also sometimes referred to a spiral teaching approach.

In 2008, The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel strongly advised against the use of any curriculum that emphasizes a spiral/constructivist teaching approach. Unfortunately, the school district this year apparently opted to leave TERC and CMP in place while they marched toward Core-Plus for the high school. Had the school board allowed the Core-Plus adoption, we could have won a trifecta for having adopted three of most-criticized math programs in the U.S.!

I urge parents to research TERC, CMP and Core-Plus to understand why the school board made the right decision. I urge the school board to apply the same logic it used for balking at Core-Plus to avert us away from TERC and CMP as soon as possible.

My Oak Harbor student is in eighth grade this year. I’ve experienced TERC and CMP as a parent. Please save other parents from this experience. Again, thank you, school board, for standing up to the school district’s math curriculum proposal.

William Burnett

Oak Harbor