Schmid points out that Boston is going to use a curriculum called Investigations for the elementary grades. It is most popular in affluent suburban school districts. Critics have pointed out that fashionable, progressive theories like this are particularly harmful in poor, urban districts where students are most in need of basic skills. Progressive Gimmicks Investigations is full of progressive gimmicks. Instead of writing numbers and formulas, students communicate about math orally, or with pictures and models.
Investigations is also fashionably multicultural.
As the start of a third grade math lesson, it tells teachers to mimic holding a newborn baby and to write its birthday on the blackboard. Sing 'Happy Birthday' and encourage students to sing along with you. Ask for volunteers to sing the song in their native languages. It discourages memorization and keeps students dependent on crutches - fingers, blocks, clock faces, and calculators. It insults the intelligence of brighter students and is two years behind the fifth-grade curriculum of Singapore.