Don’t know how serious it is, but from what I have read in the last few months, in the education files - there is plans afoot to provide the basics via through online learning and software games. The 21st century education technologists hard at work, wanting to keep the problem solving math firmly in place.  An example - an educator’s blog -  “For the last several years, the Education Ministry has been encouraging teachers to teach Math through problem-solving using a three-part lesson.  This mandate is grounded in research.  In our board, like many others, our Elementary teachers have been involved in the CIL-M (Collaborative Inquiry and Learning in Math) meaning they have been learning together, through a co-planning, co-teaching, debriefing model to learn how to teach Math through-problem solving using a 3-part lesson.” 

There is quite a few of the educator blogs, talking about math, claiming in one breath, the math approach is being pushed by the education ministry, than in the next breath, defending the 3-part lesson and problem solving as the only approach to developed deep conceptual understanding of mathematical ideas, whenever there is a threat of reintroducing the basics and standard algorithms back into the curriculum.

There is whole nest of educators firmly established at the school board level, that are very much against standard algorithms and learning the math facts/laws to mastery. If one throws them the bit about working memory, they go right into a tizzy saying no one has to learned algorithms to mastery with all the technology. The reason why math achievement is dropping, because the problem solving math does not work. And yet they persist, mocking standard algorithms….....”  Here is a small example of what I mean: how would you compare 6/7 to 7/8?  When I ask teachers this question, they automatically begin to create equivalent fractions using common denominators.  That’s because they don’t truly understand fractions.  They should be able to see that each fraction is one piece away from a whole, and the eighths are smaller pieces than the sevenths so 7/8 is the larger fraction.”  If one did a search, the above are nice to know, normally found on the math puzzles pages and not at all important for students to know. What is important, to determined size of fraction, is equivalent fractions. Comes in handy in advanced math but this collective that are firmly entrenched at the school board level thinks math must be taught at a metaphysical level, to make it as complicated as possible that allows the classroom to be turned into a experimental laboratory. “But most importantly, teachers need to recognize that every classroom is a laboratory, and every lesson is an experiment.  We formulate a hypothesis, “if I teach this concept this way, the children will be able to ....” and like any good scientist, we need to observe the reaction; what are students doing?  What are students saying?  Then we judge the evidence.  Were we effective?  What impact did we have on student learning? If we’re not effective, we have to create a new hypothesis and determine how to fine tune our teaching to meet the needs of the students in front of us.”  http://raine6.blogspot.ca/2013/11/whats-wrong-with-how-we-are-teaching.html#.UpOXjyed3kR

This collective belongs to the larger collective of 21st century educator technologists, that also believed in no grades, no testing but does believe in technology. Of late, I have been reading that the educators who are against bringing back basic math and standard algorithms, belonging to the 21st century educator technologists who are insisting that it should not be taught in the 21st century classroom, but it should be freely available for students to learned on their own as enrichment and remediation.

I don’t know how much hope one can put into a statement from the CEO of a school board, but what I do know one should not hold one’s breath when there is a nest full of educators at the school board level, doing their best to ensure standard algorithms and mastery in the math foundation will not take over the current math direction of problem solving in the classroom - the experimental laboratory and every lesson is an experiment. Scary to think, the new pedagogical direction of educators is to treat students as lab rats and lessons as experiments.