Off Hours: Michael McKeown: biologist, activist for rigorous math education

With a post office box and a home computer Michael McKeown co-founded a nationwide citizens group dedicated to promoting tougher standards for math education.

It wasn't something the professor of molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry started out to do — he and his wife just thought the algebra lessons their twins were receiving in San Diego public school were unusually watered down.

At first, Michael (left) and Erica McKeown hoped that a meeting with their children's principal to discuss the algebra curriculum would quell their concerns about their children's math curriculum.

The text de-emphasized an analytical approach in favor of a nonanalytical one, they said. But, they were told, the curriculum was based on the "new way" of teaching.

Thinking themselves alone in their frustration, Erica McKeown — who majored in math in college and worked as a math teacher — began supplementing the twins' schooling with home lessons on algebra.

About a year later, Michael McKeown met a high school chemistry teacher who also expressed concern about the way mathematics and science were being taught. "It was an epiphany when I realized there were lots of people out there who shared similar concerns," he said.

With three other couples, the McKeowns co-founded Mathematically Correct, based on the fear that certain new math programs would leave their children unprepared to do the kinds of work they do.

Since it began in 1995, organization members have advised and helped draft local math standards for multiple state and local boards of education across the country. By far the largest amount of their work has been in California, where their efforts have seen changes in the curriculum and standards.

On behalf of the organization, Michael McKeown has testified before both houses of the California legislature and discussed mathematics education with former Education Secretary Richard Riley. In recent years, California has revised its math standards to set a course, starting in kindergarten, by which students progress grade by grade, said McKeown.

The couple's activism continues today although the twins are in college and the family has relocated from California to Rhode Island for Michael's new position at Brown. Nowadays McKeown responds to queries e-mailed to the organization's Web site.

He often recommends that parents first concentrate on what they can do for their own children before getting involved in school reform because curriculum changes take time. Schools often deliberate for several years, and working parents have little time to maintain the type of long-term effort that is necessary to effect change, McKeown said.

Although the McKeowns’ youngest child receives supplementary math instruction at home just as his older siblings had, the couple doesn't have immediate plans to begin organizing people locally to change the curriculum.

However Michael McKeown did write a recent commentary in response to a study of public education that scored Rhode Island in the bottom five states for standards and accountability. California standards, he wrote, were written in direct response to Rhode Island-like standards and the negative consequences for California's students.

"It was never my plan to do this but sometimes you must ride it through," he said. — Kristen Cole