Presently, an 18 year old in Washington with three years of Core plus knows less than a 13 year old in California using College Prepatory Math who knows what a 11 year old learns in Singapore.

Few people realize that Singapore textbooks were written in English for Singapore children, for whom English is a second language.

This was also my experience with Challenging Mathematics used in Quebec with non-English speaking children. The textbooks were originally developed for students learning English who didn’t have a textbook to learn with. When they were finally ready to be mainstreamed they wanted the same textbooks only written in English. Fascinating history and I think parents should take more interest, since I agree this could be a golden age for children, except we need to throw away some really dumb, unintelligible textbooks, like Core plus, Connected Math, and Everyday Math…

Textbooks have to speak to children or why bother. Reform or no reform. Adopt Singapore. How was California able to adopt Singapore and not Singapore standards? Wouldn’t that put every other ‘exemplary’ textbook out of alignment?

College preparatory Math is what I taught with and it was great, until I saw what a tremendous improvement there was with Singapore. Obama I hope you read this.

How do communities purchase Singapore textbooks with state funds? That’s how businesses could provide assistance to public education. If districts had the option of purchasing the best curriculum so that they could be competitive, then I’d be more supportive of efforts to reform education. But presently, reformers are inventing any excuse for low achievement in order to push their private agendas and that includes the supporters of ‘fuzzy’ math, which can’t seem to find one stitch of authentic, independently-verified research for why districts should be adopting their curriculum. I’d like every state to include Singapore in its list of acceptable curriculum.

1. Huge savings in curriculum and staff development.
2. Excellent public support – you can’t argue with district officials when they’ve adopted the world’s best curriculum.
3. Meaningful curriculum that adds value to a student’s education. This will result in fewer dropouts and higher achievement. More students will enroll in math and science. Stopping the current corporate exodus from America.
4. Meaningful support programs, teachers are no longer teaching to the academic mean – they are teaching world class standards.

Why won’t school reformers do what’s right for communities? Why are there two standards and not one?

I’d like to see one curriculum that everyone uses, that’s fair. Currently, our system doesn’t allow that.

I tried teaching in a public school in Washington and it was terrible. I’ve never seen so many children drop out of school. I’ve never seen so many children not pass high school and it wasn’t unions, parents, teachers, or kids – it was the curriculum and the textbooks…

Words have value, only when they have meaning. Singapore is a great achievement and Americans will overwhelmingly accept it when they see how good it really is. I’ve got a beef with science textbooks too!