Tonight is the first meeting of the SCASD Elementary Math Program Review Committee. This meeting is open to the public (although there will be no time for public comment) and will be held in the All-Purpose Room at Gray’s Woods Elementary between 6:30 – 8:30 pm.  Earlier this week a subcommittee of the SCASD Board selected the members of the Committee; a list of the members can be found here.  To the Board’s credit, it’s a very diverse group that must address some ambitious goals:

1. Recommend alternatives to the Investigations core curriculum currently used in SCASD

2. Recommend further refinements to the Elementary Math Action Plan that will

a. continuously improve student math achievement and growth

b. increase SCASD teacher’s ability to monitor student achievement

c. create district capacity to track student achievement and growth

3. Improve the quantity and quality of dialog between parents, subject matter experts, operational experts other constituents regarding elementary math instruction in SCASD.

Coverage in the CDT is here.

Many people who are new to the math issue ask, “What does the research say?” and think it’s just a matter of selecting the curriculum with the most favorable research behind it.  The current issue of Newsweek explains why, with this story about the sorry state of education research:

Since holding teachers responsible for student performance is now all the rage, from the White House to the political right, let us do a simple thought experiment. Imagine an amateur baseball league in which team owners dictate which bats players use. The owners try to choose the best, but the research on bats is so poor, they have to rely on anecdotes—”Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs with maple!”—and on manufacturers’ claims. As a result, some teams wind up using bats that are too heavy, too fragile, or no better than a broomstick. Does it make sense to cut players who were forced to use ineffective equipment?

It goes without saying that effective teaching has many components, from dedication to handling a classroom and understanding how individual students learn. But a major ingredient is the curriculum the school requires them to use.

An announcement has been put up on the SCASD web site calling for volunteers to serve on the “Elementary Math Program Review Committee”.  Those interested need to send e-mail letters of interest by midnight on Sunday May 2.  From the announcement:

Because of the tight timeline, applicants should be prepared to complete assigned work outside the meeting times. Preference will be given to applicants who can attend all four meetings. Please indicate your ability to attend all four meetings of the committee: May 5, May 18, June 3 and June 9. The May 5 meeting begins at 6:30 p.m.; the committee will then set meeting times for the following meetings.

At tonight’s Board meeting, Superintendent Richard Mextorf outlined a process that would result in an alternative math curriculum being selected for pilot testing in fall 2010.  The plan, including the makeup of the committee and the aggressive timetable, is described in this document.  The process will be run by an external facilitator, Dr. Mark Dietz, a former superintendent of two Pennsylvania school districts and educational consultant, who was present at the meeting.

A large and diverse advisory committee will be selected by the Culture, Climate and Learning subcommittee of the Board.  Meetings of the committee will be open to the public but, understandably, there will not be time for public comment at the meetings.  The deadline for “letters of interest” from those interested in serving will be this Sunday evening.  Look for details in tomorrow morning’s CDT and on the District website (links to be added).

If there is anything that would represent an improvement to this proposed process, I cannot think of what it would be …

UPDATE: CDT story is here.

As noted here previously, SCASD administrators are expected to come back to the Board at its next meeting to give their plans for a process that will identify a math program to be pilot-tested in the SCASD in fall 2010 as well as for the longer-term review that was presented at the last meeting.

That next meeting is this evening (agenda here) at 7:30 pm at 131 W. Nittany Ave. (also live on C-NET on cable channel 98).  Math is listed as the second “Information/Discussion” item on the agenda.

In a SCASD third-grade classroom earlier this week, a student was graded unfairly on a mathematics assignment. No, not just unfairly — ridiculously unfairly. No, that’s not it either. Graded just plain WRONG. Here’s the story…

On a graded math homework assignment, students were expected to determine the perimeters and areas of various shapes, mostly rectangles. Given that this student had previously done this kind of work (at home with Singapore Math), this assignment was quite easy for the student. He did it efficiently and independently, and submitted it to the teacher. Upon receiving the graded assignment back, much to his parent’s surprise, the student received only 20 points out of 30 (66%, or a D).

Taking a closer look at the assignment, his parents were extremely upset with what they found.

For every single area problem, he had the correct answer but his answers were marked wrong. Why? He was using the standard notation for units of area: using the abbreviation for the units of measurement superscripted with 2 to indicate squared units (e.g., m^2, cm^2, km^2, ft^2, etc.).

I looked this up in Webster’s New Collegiate dictionary and, sure enough, it lists ” sq km” OR “cm^2″ as acceptable abbreviations. In my field, APA style expressly requires 1) use of the International System (SI), 2) the unit’s abbreviation be used when presented with a numeric value.  But — inexplicably — this standard, universally accepted mathematical notation for square units of measurement is NOT acceptable in this classroom. In Investigations? In our district!!!???!!!

No, indeed. Instead, all students were expected to write it out (e.g., “square meters”, “square centimeters”, etc.). So he lost 9 points for all 9 problems. How asinine is that?

Failure to accept, let alone teach, standard mathematical notation and language is yet another reason why Investigations doesn’t belong in our schools.

Here’s a NY Times article on a recent international math test for teachers.  Teachers in the U.S. didn’t do so well, but the thing that struck me the most about the article was the reaction of the president of the NCTM, the organization most responsible for the last 20 years of constructivist math:

“There are so many people who bash our teachers’ math knowledge that to be honest these results are better than what a lot of people might expect,” said Hank Kepner, professor of mathematics education at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who is president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “We show up pretty well here, right in the middle of the pack.”

As reported in the CDT, the major action item following from Monday’s Board meeting was that SCASD Superintendent Rich Mextorf would be forming a committee that would be charged with identifying alternative math programs, one of which would be pilot-tested in SCASD starting in September 2010.  Presumably the decision about what curriculum would be adopted on a permanent basis would be informed by the results of the pilot test and would require much more time.

Superintendent Richard Mextorf, who started working in the district in July, said he’d bring recommendations for committee members at the next meeting. He said the committee should include members of Parents for Quality Math Education.

While the prospect of PQME members on this committee is a welcome idea (several have already volunteered to Dr. Mextorf, or will be doing so soon), it seems prudent to include others besides SCASD employees who are proponents of Investigations and PQME critics of the current program.

Take, for example, what was done in a very similar circumstance in Columbia, Missouri, another college town that after several years decided to turn away from constructivist math.  That district formed a Mathematics Community Advisory Committee that included

• Business Leaders
• Community Members
• Higher Education Faculty (including mathematicians and math educators)
• Parents
• K-12 Administrators
• Teachers

There were 36 members on this diverse committee that was established “as a means for two-way communication between the district and parents and community members regarding the mathematics curriculum.”  The whole process was transparent, with meetings of the committee open to non-committee members as well .  SCASD would do well to follow this excellent example.

The CDT has put an online poll on its main page asking for opinions on the Investigations curriculum:

Should SCASD continue with the Investigations math curriculum?

The early returns are 31%/50%/19% (yes/no/don’t know) but that represents only 16 votes.

Take a look at the SCASD fluency expectations, and then at the results shared last night at the Board meeting:

The fluency expectation for grade 2 is mastery of addition AND subtraction facts through 20. That means that all grade 3 students should easily have been able to complete all addition banks – certainly by April.  Only 28% have completed addition, and a mere 16% have finished subtraction.

The fluency expectation for grade 4 is mastery of multiplication facts through 12×12. That means that all grade 5 students should easily have been able to complete all multiplication banks at the start of the online evaluation in November. Even by April, only 46% has mastered each bank.  I don’t think there is a need to “investigate” the cause – Investigations IS the cause!