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Frederick County elementary students are not learning traditional math skills and must discover on their own how math principles work instead of learning basic algorithms to solve problems.

That's a finding of an internal task force of school staff, principals and teachers after three months of evaluating the elementary school math curriculum, which is based largely on "Investigations in Number, Data and Space," a textbook by the Technical Education Research Center in Massachusetts.

The finding parallels the concerns that some parents have raised with TERC math materials for at least three years.

"I think a lot of parents are feeling validated. ... I just wish it hadn't taken years to get to that," said Tom Neumark, the founder of www.FrederickEducationReform.com — a group that has criticized TERC.

The report, which was posted on the Frederick County Public Schools' website on May 19, states that neither the Frederick County elementary math curriculum nor teachers in their classrooms place appropriate emphasis on teaching basic math operations, such as subtraction, addition, division and multiplication.

The report also found that the existing elementary math curriculum lacks balance between conceptual and procedural understanding, leading students to discover how math principals work rather than focusing on teaching them basic math algorithms.

The report is not fully critical of school system practices, but it marks the first time that Frederick County staff has pointed to gaps and weaknesses in their approach to elementary math. In the report, the task force also gives recommendations for improvement and suggests a new elementary math textbook for Frederick County schools.

"They did an honest, straightforward examination of the program," said Steve Hess, the school system director for research, development and accountability, who chaired the task force.

In Frederick County, parents have been questioning elementary math since 2008, when county school officials voted to spend $2.1 million and adopt the TERC textbook as a primary resource for elementary math.

Critics fought the decision, saying that the book didn't challenge students, didn't focus on math algorithms, and encouraged students to use non-traditional strategies to solve math problems.

But despite the strong opposition, it was not until December that the school board voted to remove the textbook from elementary classrooms.

As a result, the schools Superintendent Linda D. Burgee in February charged a 15-member task force with evaluating the existing elementary math curriculum, choose a new primary textbook in place of Investigations, and determine if Frederick County is prepared for the new Common Core standards, a nationally coordinated initiative that aims to ensure that students around the country are shooting for the same goals in all subjects.

The report, which was scheduled for discussion at the school board's meeting on Wednesday, is the final product of the committee's work.

"This is not just a textbook adoption committee," Hess added. "I am very proud of our process."

Working on a tight timeframe, the task force based its findings on multiple pieces of evidence. Task-force members reviewed external reports, conducted 129 structured interviews with teachers, administrators and parents, and observed 81 math lessons in kindergarten through fifth grade at 14 randomly selected elementary schools.

Task-force members sought additional input from 31 high-performing districts in eight states and held panel discussions with math college professors and math experts from the Maryland State Department of Education.

The task force applied these strategies to examine the elementary math curriculum, assess classroom instruction, study elementary math texts and evaluate the level of training available for Frederick County elementary math teachers.

While the task force found that Frederick County teachers were sufficiently prepared, it recommended that the school system increase focus on teaching math facts and algorithms without decreasing the attention to teaching math concepts.

As it searched for a new primary math resource to replace Investigations, task-force members considered six texts, including Saxon Math and Singapore Math — the two favorites for TERC math critics.

Task-force members examined each text and graded it based on 22 indicators, such as focus on algorithms, use of appropriate math vocabulary, coverage of fractions by grades three and four and so on.

Two texts ranked the highest — Harcourt's "Go Math!" for kindergarten through second grade and Houghton Mifflin's Math 2007 for third through fifth grades — and the task force is recommending that the school system adopt the two as the primary resources.

The school system already uses the Houghton Mifflin textbooks for advanced math learners.

School system staff will present the recommendations of the task force on Wednesday, and suggest an action plan for implementation of any of the proposed changes, Hess said.

It will be up to the board to accept or reject the suggested action plan, Hess said.

The action plan has not been made public because staff is still working on it, said Hess, who praised the work of the task force. Task-force members had a difficult task trying to fit an enormous amount of research in an extremely short period of time.

"The last meeting of the task force was on May 18," he said. "... Normally, when you replace a textbook you have two or three years."

Meanwhile, the report has raised mixed feelings in some of the biggest critics of the TERC math program.

Neumark said he has reviewed the report and still has some questions about the task force's methodology. For Neumark, the biggest issue is that the task force still used a survey-style approach to evaluate and select the new math texts instead of finding research on the performance of students who studied from the texts.

"I suspect that it was an opinion-based decision, not research-based decision," Neumark said. "... If you are going to evaluate a book, you are going to need a track record."

Neumark said he would like to see the school board hold public forums before it discusses the new math textbooks and also try to field test the materials before putting them in place.

"We need objective evidence," Neumark said. "Otherwise, it ends up being your opinion versus my opinion."

mraycheva@gazette.net