Down on H-M math Date sent: Sat, 06 Dec 1997 16:32:46 -0800 From: Lieb Family Send reply to: LiebFamily@worldnet.att.net To: ghoffman@bellatlantic.net Copies to: education-consumers@tricon.net Subject: Re: Houghton Mifflin Math North Olmsted City Schools in Ohio uses Houghton Mifflin Math and any parent who has voiced an opinion to me has NOT liked the texts. I personally don't like the "busy-ness" of the book. There are so many colorful pictures that I get side-tracked when trying to read what little text there is. One parent actually said that she thought it was the social studies book when she first saw it! Houghton Mifflin has become the text of choice for our school system and many parents are not happy about that. Of course the choices are generally between Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt Brace and McGraw Hill which all tend to mimic each other. It's like trying to choose between Cap'n Crunch, Quisp, and Frankenberry cereals....our kids all love them but they have little (nutritional) value and may even cause (hyperactivity) problems later. A belated updated, too, about the North Olmsted Board of Education race...I was running with two men and all three of us lost to the two incumbents and another person whose campaign manager was the other incumbent who was retiring. At the end they distributed information implying that we were the radical right and made it sound like all the good things in the system were going to be lost if we were elected. We had a very strong showing with myself only 500 votes behind the second and third place winners out of a total of 23,000 votes cast. We refuse to lay down and quit and we have activated even more people to our cause. I am also going to be having a baby girl on January 26 (a c-section and ironically the day of the first Board meeting of the new term) so I'll have to remain active for her and my two boys. Jean Lieb EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE From: MSeawitch Date sent: Sat, 6 Dec 1997 07:42:29 EST To: education-consumers@tricon.net Subject: Houghton Miffflin Math Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) Cypress-Fairbanks ISD in Houston, Tx uses Houghton Mifflin Math. I don't believe it falls into the category of Whole Math. My objection to the text is that it doesn't follow a logical progression. The texts skip from one subject to another without any continuity, i.e., three chapters on coins, then three chapters on sets, then a little bit on addition. There is nothing to tie it all together. The text changes topics so often, the child has very little retention of the material. Cy-Fair tried to address this shortcoming by teacher-generating "Daily Math Warm-ups" that attempts to review material previously covered. My daughter is doing much better at a school that uses Saxon Math. Micheline Fountain Hutson EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE From: CMMEHuss Date sent: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 21:33:51 EST To: professor@tricon.net, education-consumers@tricon.net, ghoffman@bellatlantic.net Subject: Re: From [Gloria Hoffman ] Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) Gloria, Is this H-M's "Math Central"? I went to a presentation with some other teachers earlier this year. (It is math text book adoption time for us) We came away totally unimpressed. Too many pictures, not enough math was our general consensus One teacher found hideous typo's. 6 x1 = 7 ! The rep's kept bragging that one of the main developers of the series was a person who was key in designing KY's KIRIS tests. That was nothing to brag about in our opinion. We later went to one given by Silver-Burdett-Ginn, "The Path to Math Success". It was much better. Much more math, less pictures and propaganda. My favorite is still Saxon. Unfortunately, I don't believe it is on KY's "showcase" list. MEH EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE