Addison-Wesley Secondary Math: Foundations of Algebra and Geometry

Section I - Organization and Features

The student text for Addison-Wesley Secondary Math: Foundations of Algebra and Geometry contains 730 pages organized into 8 chapters. The chapters are arranged and identified by math topics, not by context topics.

The student text contains an index with a moderate number of entries. Index entries include some context references as opposed to references to math topics.

The student text also contains a glossary with a moderate number of entries. The entries in the glossary include page number references. The breadth of coverage of mathematics terms in the glossary is very limited.

There are a moderate number of answers to problems for students to check their own work.

There are many pictures within the text beyond those that clearly illustrate the material being presented.

The student text includes self-testing sections.

Section II - Major Topic Summaries

A) Linear equations in one variable

This is a failing coverage of this topic. The presentation is confusing, lacks mathematical logic and de-emphasizes algebraic techniques. Students are subjected to guess and check, "cover up," trial and error, calculators and algebra tiles before getting down to solving equations by transformation.

Although the properties of equality are named, they are never clearly related to equation solving. There are no problems requiring the distributive property and the number and difficulty of problems is consistently too low.

This major topic is not addressed in sufficient detail to merit review.

This is a poor to miserable treatment of this topic. There are not enough examples , the level of the examples and problems is too low, and the exposition, such as it is, is poor. Slope intercept form and its applications are poorly covered and parallel and perpendicular lines are missing.

This major topic is not addressed in sufficient detail to merit review.

This major topic is not addressed in sufficient detail to merit review.

This major topic is not addressed in sufficient detail to merit review.

The major topic is nearly absent from this text. Some introduction to square roots is given but definitions and explanations are lacking. The Pythagorean theorem is given and addressed with a few easy problems. The distance formula is not given, although finding distance as the missing side using the Pythagorean theorem appears in two problems. On the whole, however, the contents of this major topic are not sufficient to support student learning even at the most modest of levels.

Section III - Overall Evaluation

Math Content Coverage

The range of math topics covered is severely limited. Several entire major topics are missing, in large part or in their entirety. For the topics that are addressed, the depth of coverage is generally very poor. The treatment of basic aspects of working with linear equations is modest, but the coverage of all other sampled major topics is deficient.

Although this text should not be considered as covering the content of algebra, consideration to the use of this program for the first year of an integrated algebra and geometry sequence may be raised as a possibility. Such a program should offer at least a concentration of the major topics of algebra in the first year of the program. However, the mathematical content coverage cannot be considered adequate even by this standard. A good pre-algebra text contains much more of the content of algebra than can be found in this textbook.

Overall the quality of presentation and exposition is fair. Terms, concepts, and procedures are sometimes addressed clearly, but this is difficult to evaluate as so few of the terms, concepts, and procedures needed are actually addressed. For example, square roots and perfect squares are defined, but there is no reference to positive and negative roots or the root of a squared variable. Topic arrangement, for the material that is covered, is generally reasonable. Examples are not extensive enough and are far too simplistic. The emphasis on principals, proof, and derivation is virtually absent. The use of technology can be excessive enough to interfere with learning opportunities.

The number of student exercises is moderate to low. These exercises are at the most basic achievement levels.

The book is so deficient in content that it should never be considered for use in introductory algebra.