Mr. Morse,

I was at the integrated math meeting last night.  Let me say right off the bat how much I don't envy you.  I appreciated the calm with which you withstood some very challenging questions and remarks.  I hope you realize that you are, for the moment, a lightening rod for an enormous amount of longstanding frustration in a rather large segment of the parent population out here, not only around math, but also around all District failures to meet and take seriously the needs of "high end" students.  As we see it, given "No Child Left Behind" and the ongoing budgetary disaster, this may only get worse.

Please try to appreciate where those of us parents who are concerned primarily about the whittling away of curricular options for our "high end" kids are coming from.  In a nutshell, we have been waiting for years for our children's needs (intellectual, social and emotional) to be taken seriously by the District.  When our children were in elementary school, we were told to wait until they were in middle school; when they were in middle school, we were told to wait until they were in high school; now that they will be ninth graders, we are being told to wait until they are in eleventh grade.  Not only that, but what's the hope for our younger children?  In all honesty, I think most of us have been more than willing to let a disproportionate amount of the District's resources go to bringing up the low end -- to meeting the needs of kids who haven't had the advantages many of our kids have had -- for a good long while.  We are neither selfish nor heartless.  But an ever increasing proportion of the resources? and for ever more of their thirteen years in the District?  Enough is enough already!  That's simply not fair.

For reasons I don't entirely understand myself, math is the curricular area that appears to bear the brunt of parental frustration.  I think that's because it's an easier curriculum to point to, to do assessment in, to provide "next level challenge" in, etc.  In short, math is easier to pick on and easier to fix.  The fact of the matter is that most of us would like the schools to do the same for our children in the other content areas that they do (at least to a limited degree) in math.

I was talking with another parent after the meeting -- a middle school teacher from elsewhere in the District.  We were talking about how the time has come to figure out a way to break the taboo and talk out loud about the fact that we have a very diverse student population in this District with a huge range of learning needs, learning potential and educational/professional futures.  To act as if there is a single curriculum -- in any content area -- that will meet the needs of all of our students is grossly misguided, even dangerous.  Furthermore, to choose that mythical curriculum based on limited "research" with a very small percentage of those students -- not to mention a self-selected sample -- is an act of professional negligence.  This way of thinking, this "methodology," is so clearly driven by politics.  It has nothing to do with our children or their true needs.

At the end of the meeting, someone asked you and Linda if you could understand why it made so many of us nervous to hear your unwillingness to commit to having a traditional math program in place as soon as five years down the road.  I can't tell you how good it would have been to have heard you say something like "Well, as chair of this math department and someone who has taught here for many years, I can tell you that I, for one, will do my best to insure the preservation of a traditional math curriculum at this school.  The reason why I will do that is because I know full well that at a place like West, there will always be a large group of students for whom that is the best curricular match."

Perhaps you'd be willing to say that now?

As always, thanks for taking the time to read this, and respond, if you feel so inclined.