Singapore math a success so far in Fayette Co.

This from Jim Warren at the Herald-Leader:

Math in Focus, which essentially is identical to the text used by about 80 percent of elementary students in Singapore, a tiny Asian city-state whose kids have been hitting the ball out of the park on international math assessments since the late 1990s. Fayette County is hoping for similar results.

So-called "Singapore math" features problems that often are more complex than American textbooks contain. It demands deep mastery of a few math concepts, rather than an overview of many different ideas. And it aims to give students a basic understanding of how math works, rather than a simple rote system for finding answers.

Because the nine Fayette schools' experiment with Singapore math began only last fall, direct pre- and post-Singapore standardized test results are not yet available. But anecdotally, teachers say early results look promising. "I know I'm teaching math at a much higher level now than I ever taught it before, and the students are grasping it more quickly," Cox said....