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Unjustified personal attacks and false statements by James Milgram
Posted:
Mar 3, 2000 2:32 PM
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To: The mathematics research and mathematics education communities,
and other interested parties
From: Dan Fendel, Professor of Mathematics, San Francisco State
University
I am an author of the Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP), one of
the ten programs that were recently named as Exemplary or Promising
mathematics curricula by an Expert Panel created by the U.S.
Department of Education, which was acting under Congressional mandate.
These programs and other mathematics curricula, especially those
funded by the National Science Foundation, have been publicly attacked
in newspapers, over e-mail, on the Web, and in Congressional hearings.
Unfortunately, many of these attacks have gone far beyond acceptable
standards of evidence and professional behavior. In particular, many
of the statements made fall into the following categories:
(1) Unjustified personal attacks on the integrity and qualifications
of mathematicians and mathematics educators with whom the author or
speaker disagrees
(2) Statements about mathematics education that are at best highly
misleading and at worst, outright falsehoods
Because my own integrity and qualifications have been impugned and
because false statements have been made about my professional work, I
feel called upon to respond.
I focus here on statements made by R. James Milgram, Professor of
Mathematics at Stanford, because he has made many public statements in
highly visible venues, including a Congressional hearing, and because
his statements have been given considerable weight in California in
the formulation of mathematics education policy.
The following are examples of statements by Professor Milgram that I
consider to be "unjustified personal attacks":
(a) In an e-mail message dated September 28, 1999, Professor Milgram
wrote:
"My problem, and I'm afraid, that of most of my colleagues, is that we
see people like Fendel as possibly dishonest."
Professor Milgram offered no evidence of my dishonesty. The e-mail
containing this statement was in response to a message from Steven
Oppenheimer (Professor of Biology at California State University,
Northridge) suggesting that people of differing opinions about
mathematics education work together for the sake of "the nationÃÂs
kids." Professor Milgram sent his response not only to Professor
Oppenheimer but also to others in the mathematics and mathematics
education community, including myself.
(b) In another e-mail message, dated February 5, 2000, Professor
Milgram stated:
". . . the biggest problem with all these new programs is that the
authors are essentially illiterate when it comes to mathematics."
From the overall context of the e-mail message, it is clear that the
phrase "all these new programs" refers primarily to the programs,
including IMP, that were recently named as Exemplary or Promising by
the U.S. Department of Education. (This e-mail message was
communicated to me by one of its recipients, who is an author of
another of the programs named as Exemplary.)
I have a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from Yale University and an A.B.
degree with highest honors in mathematics from Harvard University.
Professor Milgram is aware of my qualifications. There are many other
authors of "these new programs" who have doctoral degrees or other
post-graduate degrees in mathematics.
The following are examples of statements by Professor Milgram about
mathematics education that I consider "at best highly misleading and
at worst, outright falsehoods":
(a) In his paper "A Preliminary Analysis of SAT-I Mathematics Data for
IMP Schools in California" (which is posted at
ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/), Professor Milgram
stated:
"As an indication of the effect of programs like IMP in California
since 1989, we give a table of the percentages of entering students in
the California State University, CSU, system requiring remedial
mathematics courses for these years."
The table Professor Milgram provides shows an increase in the
remediation rate from 23% to 54% from 1989 to 1998. Describing this
increase as "the effect of programs like IMP" is a gross distortion of
fact.
According to Professor Milgram's table, much of the increase in the
need for remediation--from 23% to 39%--occurred between 1989 and 1992.
As Professor Milgram is aware, the Interactive Mathematics Program
began in 1989. Its first group of students did not finish high school
until 1993, so the program could not possibly have affected any data
about college students prior to 1993. Nearly all of the remaining
increase--from 39% to 52%--occurred between 1992 and 1995. During this
period, the number of IMP high school graduates entering the CSU
system was well under 1000. Since the CSU enrollment is approximately
350,000, the number of IMP students was far too small to have a
measurable impact on the CSU remediation rate, let alone an increase
from 23% to 52% from 1989 to 1995.
Although Professor Milgram does not identify what he means by
"programs like IMP," none of the other programs named as Exemplary or
Promising by the United States Department of Education had graduates
entering the CSU system prior to 1993, and most had even fewer
graduates than IMP. Thus, it is mathematically impossible for these
programs to have had the effect ascribed to them by Professor Milgram.
(b) In his testimony on February 2, 2000 before a Congressional
Subcommittee (the Committee on Education and the Workforce
Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth & Families and Subcommittee on
Postsecondary Education, Training & Lifelong Learning), Professor
Milgram cited the data about remediation in the CSU system, as well as
data about the number of technical degrees currently being awarded to
U.S. citizens, and stated:
"A large part of the blame rests with mathematics programs of the type
recommended by the Department of Education recently as exemplary or
promising."
As explained in part (a), these programs cannot possibly carry "a
large part of the blameÃÂ for the CSU remediation problem. For similar
reasons, neither can these programs have had any significant effect on
the number of technical degrees currently being awarded to U.S.
citizens.
(c) Professor Milgram's paper "A Preliminary Analysis of SAT-I
Mathematics Data for IMP Schools in California" contains other errors,
besides the misleading statement about CSU remediation already noted.
For example, he has two tables allegedly reporting the number of IMP
students taking the SAT test during the years 1989 through 1998. (The
two tables represent different categories of "IMP schools" as defined
by Professor Milgram.) Combining the two tables would indicate that
the number of IMP students taking the SAT test grew from about 5000 in
1989 to about 8000 in 1998. In fact, there were no IMP students taking
the SAT test until 1992, when the first group of IMP students were
high school juniors (except perhaps for a few students who took the
test prior to their junior year).
(d) In the same Congressional hearing referred to earlier, Professor
Milgram stated:
"Recent studies of the SAT mathematics scores of high schools which
use IMP showed a consistent and significant decline over the last ten
years."
Professor Milgram did not identify these "recent studies" (and has not
responded to a request from me that he do so), but presumably at least
one of them is his paper, "A Preliminary Analysis of SAT-I Mathematics
Data for IMP Schools in California."
Ironically, even Professor Milgram's own data do not support his
statement. One of his two tables shows a slight increase in SAT scores
at "IMP schools" from 1989 to 1998, from 496.7 to 497.4. The other
shows a very slight decrease, from 509.2 to 508.8. Both tables show
fluctuations over the years that are greater than these overall
changes. For instance, if comparisons are made between 1991 (the year
prior to IMP students beginning to take SAT tests), and 1998, both
tables show increases of about 5 points in SAT scores at "IMP
schools." Thus, Professor Milgram's own data show neither decline, nor
consistency, nor significance (in the statistical sense). Professor
Milgram's statement before Congress on February 2, 2000 is thus a
gross distortion of even his own analysis.
As already noted in item (c), the data in Professor Milgram's paper
are seriously flawed, so it's hard to take any of the conclusions
seriously. Among other methodological problems, Professor Milgram
ignores the fact that at nearly all schools where IMP is used, many
students are enrolled in a traditional mathematics program. Professor
Milgram makes no attempt to distinguish the scores of IMP students
from those of students enrolled in other mathematics programs at those
schools.
Another study to which Professor Milgram may be referring is that of
Wayne Bishop (Professor of Mathematics at California State University,
Los Angeles). Professor Bishop states that "CA schools that use IMP
dropped over 7 points on a per student basis from 1992 to 1996 while
California as a whole dropped by 5." However, Professor Bishop
acknowledges that "these overall numbers are obviously too close to be
meaningful." Professor Bishop acknowledges as well that his analysis
does not distinguish the scores of IMP students from those of students
enrolled in other mathematics programs at those schools.
Let me note that there have been studies of SAT data for IMP students
that have used careful control groups and proper statistical methods.
All such studies of which I am aware, including those done by the
Wisconsin Center for Education Research (at the University of
Wisconsin--Madison), show that IMP students do at least as well on SAT
tests as students in traditional mathematics programs, with some
studies showing IMP students doing significantly better. Results from
these studies can be found at
http://www.mathimp.org/eval/article2.html. Other IMP evaluation
results can be found at http://www.mathimp.org/eval/index.html.
(e) Professor Milgram was one of the primary signatories to a
full-page statement in the Washington Post on November 18, 1999,
calling on U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley to withdraw the
Department of Education's list of Exemplary and Promising mathematics
curricula. That letter cited Professor Milgram's paper as identifying
"serious shortcomings" in the Interactive Mathematics Program. In
fact, the paper says nothing at all about the substance of the program
, and, as indicated here already, the data cited in that paper about
IMP SAT scores and connecting IMP to the data on CSU remediation are
not valid. Other negative statements in the paper concerning IMP are
equally flawed. To suggest that Professor Milgram's paper describes
"serious shortcomings" in IMP is highly misleading.
In closing, let me say that I consider it a serious matter to issue a
statement such as this. The issues in mathematics education are
complex, and there is room for legitimate disagreement. However, I
believe that Professor MilgramÃÂs behavior has gone beyond the bounds
of legitimacy and decency. Personal attacks and distortions of fact
such as those cited above do not further understanding or help our
students. While such statements can serve short-term political
purposes, they undermine collegiality and make it difficult to achieve
long-term progress, which can thrive only in an atmosphere of
cooperation and professional respect.
Moreover, when such distortions of fact come from a person whose
statements about mathematics education are given credence by the
California State Board of Education and other educational agencies, it
becomes urgent to respond.
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