The Math ‘Action Plan’ approved by the SCASD Board of Directors in June 2009 included an emphasis on math fact fluency. At the “responder’s meeting” on Thursday night, SCASD students’ performance on an online fact fluency assessment tool developed by the district was shared (see Table 1).
The National Math Advisory Panel Final Report (2008) defines proficiency as “students should understand key concepts, achieve automaticity as appropriate (e.g., with addition and related subtraction facts)…” (p. xvii). Clear benchmarks for critical foundations in mathematics are established, including:
“Fluency with Whole Numbers
1) By the end of Grade 3, students should be proficient with the addition and subtraction of whole numbers.
2) By the end of Grade 5, students should be proficient with multiplication and division of whole numbers.” (p. 20)
| Table 1. SCASD Math Fact Fluency outcomes | ||||
| Fact Bank | Date | Grade 3 | Grade 4 | Grade 5 |
| N = 503 | N = 492 | N = 481 | ||
| Addition sums to 20 | 3.09.10 | 109 | 73 | 71 |
| 4.04.10 | 141 | 95 | 110 | |
| Subtraction | 3.09.10 | 3 | 16 | 21 |
| 4.04.10 | 78 | 26 | 36 | |
| Multiplication products to 12×12 | 3.09.10 | 6 | 138 | 205 |
| 4.04.10 | 15 | 157 | 223 | |
| Division | 3.09.10 | — | 24 | 48 |
| 4.04.10 | 4 | 40 | 82 | |
| Table 2. SCASD Math Fact Fluency outcomes
(same data as in Table 1 presented as percentages) |
||||
| Fact Bank | Date | Grade 3 | Grade 4 | Grade 5 |
| N = 503 | N = 492 | N = 481 | ||
| Addition sums to 20 | 3.09.10 | 22% | 15% | 15% |
| 4.04.10 | 28% | 19% | 23% | |
| Subtraction | 3.09.10 | 1% | 3% | 4% |
| 4.04.10 | 16% | 5% | 7% | |
| Multiplication products to 12×12 | 3.09.10 | 1% | 28% | 43% |
| 4.04.10 | 3% | 32% | 46% | |
| Division | 3.09.10 | — | 5% | 10% |
| 4.04.10 | 1% | 8% | 17% | |
The expectations for this task? Answer each fact correctly within 4 seconds (4 times each fact), and practice at least once per week starting in early November.
To be fair, some contributing factors and other potential explanations posited by the math office for why these numbers are so low include that students could choose from all banks and actual frequency of use varied, as did computer availability, computer skills, and familiarity with the tool. Still, these numbers don’t look so good as only 28% of third graders have mastered addition facts, and only 46% of 5th graders have mastered multiplication facts 8 months into the school year. It appears as if we are missing these critical NMAP benchmarks.
If you find these SCASD outcomes to be concerning, please come to the next school board meeting 7:30 Monday night 4/12/10 to learn more, to urge the School Board to take immediate action to improve these outcomes by choosing an alternative core mathematics resource, and to help advocate for improvement in our kids’ math education!
These numbers amount to a scandal in my view. The District’s own standard is for all second graders to have mastered addition sums to 20. Yet after five months of weekly practice and testing, only 28% of third graders had demonstrated proficiency with addition as of last week.
Think about what this means. Seventy-two percent of our third graders can’t accurately and reliably answer questions like 5+4 and 8+9 in four seconds.
One additional caveat: The students appear to have been allowed to choose the fact sets that they worked on, and this may be the reason that only 23% of 5th graders had demonstrated fluency with addition facts – presumably those kids mostly chose to work on multiplication. Still, there is not one grade/fact category with a fluency rate above 46%.
Pathetic. We are supposed to be the number one nation in the world, and look at how our students compare to their counterparts in the rest of the world, including some third world countries. SCASD should be ashamed of itself. I wonder who is making these decisions. Maybe it’s time to change leadership in the math department.