Parents & Educators for a World-Class Math Education For Washington State Students. |
Parents speak out against Bellevue math claims in the Boeing video
OSPI has been working on a “white paper” to define it’s version of “computational fluency”. This could provide insight into how Terry Bergeson might handle the job of adding more “computation” in the new standards.
The white paper quotes from NCTM, “Computational fluency — having and using efficient and accurate methods for computing — is essential. Students should be able to perform computations in different ways, including mental calculations, estimation, and paper–and–pencil calculations using mathematically sound algorithms… Computational fluency should develop in tandem with understanding.” (Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, NCTM 2000–2004).
OSPI quotes that computational fluency is essential for mathematics, yet the white paper calls for supplementation of computation. You supplement something because it is not a core part of what you have. Computational fluency should NOT be a supplementation area in math, it should be a core portion of mathematics instruction!
The NCTM also calls for using “efficient and accurate methods for computing”, yet the reform criteria OSPI uses either ignores or de-emphasizes the use of these algorithms for math understanding.
OSPI uses the current EALR’s (Essential Academic Learning Requirements) throughout the paper to justify how they rate various supplemental programs. However, these EALR’s are under review by the State Math Advisory Panel (see above point #2), which only just submitted its recommendations for public comment. Why did OSPI go forward with this white paper when it already knew that the math panel was in the process of making revisions to the state math EALR’s?
An outside review of Washington’s standards for mathematics found them sorely lacking — with key concepts missing, a lack of focus and insufficient clarity, especially when it comes to the basics.
Consultant Linda Plattner, hired by the state Board of Education, says Washington expects too little of its students in math, even though roughly 40 percent of Washington 10th-graders fail math each year on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL).
The Washington State Board of Education has posted the draft Strategic Teaching report here: Washington State Mathematics Standards: Review and Recommendations
Where’s The Math? July 2007 Newsletter
We hope you are enjoying the beautiful summer. We want to give you an update on the state math panel and ask for your participation in their upcoming public focus meetings for WA’s math standards.
In June the independent consultants hired by the State Board of Education to review our state math standards presented their findings and recommendations. WTM is thrilled with their work thus far and thank the SBE for the thorough and fair process. It validates the concerns we’ve heard from parents and teachers throughout the state. Here are a few of their findings:
Your input on the recommendations is needed…
In the next 2 weeks the State Board of Education will hold focus groups across the state on the draft recommendations to provide input into the consultant’s final report due to the SBE at the end of August 2007. The Focus Groups are 3 hour meetings scheduled from 4:00-7:00 p.m. with light refreshments served. The dates and places for the focus groups are:
July 18th ESD 101 in Spokane (4204 S. Regal St)
July 23rd ESD 123 in Pasco (3918 W. Court St.)
July 24th Puget Sound ESD in Renton (800 Oakesdale Ave SW)
A draft of the recommendations will be posted on SBE’s website www.sbe.wa.gov by July 15th. You can also find out more about the consultants and their work at www.sbe.wa.gov/MathFocusGroups.htm. If you cannot attend the focus group meeting, you may provide your comments on the draft recommendation via email: sbe@k12.wa.us.
Please try to attend one of the focus groups or send your comments to sbe@k12.wa.us.
WTM is very supportive of the consultant’s recommendations. Here are a few of the main points to emphasize:
Thanks for your participation in this golden opportunity to shape WA’s math standards into a true world-class program.
Enjoy your summer!
by Rachel Tuinstra
… Three Eastside parents are seeking school-board seats as a way to better advocate a switch to computational math. In the Bellevue district, Killeen and Michael Murphy, a financial analyst for Boeing, are both running for the Bellevue School Board on a “Where’s the Math?” platform.
And in the Lake Washington School District, Chris Carlson decided to run for the School Board after watching his son struggle through the conceptual-math curriculum.
In Lake Washington, a group of “Where’s the Math?” parents submitted a petition with more than 200 signatures to the district’s new superintendent, Chip Kimball, asking him to replace the district’s math curriculum. …
Perhaps departing school Superintendent Charlie Milligan can claim credit for getting at least one thing right during his tumultuous year in Tacoma. He promised to boost math scores. If the district’s own test results are mirrored in WASL test gains this year, he can claim to have delivered – at least in part.
…
Milligan promised to zero in on poor math performance when he was hired last year. His first dramatic move was to spend more than $1 million on a basics-oriented Saxon math curriculm to be used as a supplement to the regular math curriculum.
District-administered tests show Tacoma’s kids are getting better at the basics in an often bedeviling subject, said Pat Cummings, the school district’s director of research and evaluation.
For example: 32 percent of fourth graders answered at least half the questions correctly on Tacoma’s Math Basic Skills Assessment test, or MBSA, in September. By May, 74 percent of fourth-graders fell into that group.
Hello WTM Northshore and MAP members, I hope you’ve been able to enjoy another gorgeous weekend of our summer.
This update has only a few notes:
Note that in Lyng’s public comment there is a reference about the District implementing a new math curriculum for the 6th Grade (Connected Math, also known as CMP2) and removing the current Everyday Math curriculum. Although the District made repeated statements that it did not have the funds to change the current math curricula, especially before the State Math Panel made known its recommendations, it went forward with the CHANGE TO CMP2. In a letter issued to Lyng and the other public comment speakers of the May 22 school board meeting, BZ Davis and the Board wrote,
“…. Until the task force report has been issued, school districts have been advised to continue teaching using the same materials.
In the meantime, we are moving ahead with other initiatives that aim to improve math education. … ”
Thus, the District meant that it would not be changing its current math curricula until it received the recommendations from the math panel. However, at the June 12th SB meeting, the Board approved the purchase of Connected Mathematics 2 program for the 6th grade. This information is available in the SB Meeting Minutes, which is posted at the District website under the SB Meeting Schedule and Minutes.
If you have strong concerns about any of the math topics brought forth during any of the public comment sessions at the school board meetings I would urge you to contact the school board and reinforce your support/concerns regarding those areas. You may send comments to the school board at the following email address: schoolboard@nsd.org
I’ve really enjoyed hearing from those of you who have emailed me about your math concerns, testimonials and works in progress at your individual schools to improve the math situation.
Thanks for keeping involved in your children’s math education!
Have a safe and happy 4th of July!
Lyng
I submitted a letter to the District asking them to remove Nana Lowell’s memo disputing Professor Cliff Mass’ chart about declining math assessment scores at the U WA (see attached “Nana Lowell…”).
– Lyng
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 10:42 PM
To: ‘cokeeffe@nsd.org’; ‘Michele Williams’
Cc: ’schoolboard@nsd.org’; ‘Dawn McCravey’; ‘Becky Birch’
Subject: Nana Lowell’s memo on math scoresHello, Michelle and Carolyn. I hope you’ve both been able to take a short respite from your heavy schedules now that the children are officially out for summer break. However, knowing the demands you both have on your schedules, you’re both probably still bogged down by many of the preparations that will be needed for the coming school year.
I thought you’d like to be updated on some information I received regarding Nana Lowell’s memo on the U WA admissions test scores for math, which you placed on the NSD website. Because I was somewhat confused by the whole issue I contacted both Professor Mass and Professor Tuncel (U. WA, Chair Dept. of Mathematics) to seek clarification. Professor Tuncel did not respond to my letter, but Professor Mass did provide me with an update of his correspondence with Nana Lowell.
Professor Cliff Mass had requested that Ms. Lowell present her data to substantiate the memo she provided to the school district, which refuted Professor Mass’s chart regarding sharp declines in student math scores on the U WA math assessment test during the first half of the ‘90s. However, Ms. Lowell admitted that she had not reviewed the data for the first half of the ‘90s, nor does she have access to all the data to refute Professor Mass’s chart. Therefore, she cannot substantiate all the claims she made in her memo.
Because I have not been able to reach the Dept. of Mathematics Chair to receive further clarification or support on Ms. Lowell’s memo, I am requesting that the District please remove Ms. Lowell’s memo from the Northshore School District’s website until this issue can be resolved between Professor Mass and Ms. Lowell.
I would be very grateful if the District could contact Professor Mass, Professor Tuncel and Nana Lowell to facilitate clarification about Professor Mass’s chart and to substantiate the information from either party. Furthermore, I look forward to the District posting a clarification when it does become available.
Sincerely,
Lying (Lyng) Wong-Chu
What do kids need to know for tomorrow’s workplace? Who is in a position to say?
A claim I hear from advocates math reform is that what today’s students need to know to be successful in tomorrow’s workplace is differs drastically from that of past generations. This claim is usually put out there as a justification for whatever specific aspect of their philosophy that they are trying to defend. It is stated as a truism, in such a way as to defuse and defeat any argument, because after all, who can argue that the workplace doesn’t change, and shouldn’t education change to keep up?
But I’d like for you to think about this question: Just what do today’s education professionals know about today’s technical workplace, much less tomorrow’s? How is it that they have come to be the experts on what tomorrow’s workers need to know? Shouldn’t that information come from people actually familiar with today’s technical workplace?
There is a problem here that is not unique to this district, the state of Washington, or even the USA. The people that enter technical professions and those who enter education, are, as mathematicians would say, disjoint sets. This is the core reason that math teachers are in such short supply. Although many capable people become teachers, many others do so because they can do so with a minimum of math. How many new elementary teachers have chosen that profession because they love and want to teach math? I have yet to meet one, but have taught remedial algebra to many heading in that direction. I believe that this is part of what gives rise to the problem we have with math anxiety in our culture. If a third grade teacher is anxious about math, or dismissive of it’s importance, their students are likely to be imprinted with these feelings as well. Parents, siblings, and our culture as a whole can do this as well, but teachers can have a particularly crippling impact.
It is surprising to me just how many of the people who have risen to positions of authority in Math Education out of elementary education careers. I’d like to think that these people are comfortable with math, or they wouldn’t have chosen this path, but I’m not so sure. They can get advanced degrees, and even take more math classes, but they will tend to do so in a school of Education, so they just steep in the Kool-Aid of Constructivism.
Math Ed professionals like to mask over their lack of familiarity of working-world math with another attractive but nebulous phrase: “Higher ordered thinking”. When I first heard this in my education classes I thought that it meant a firm grasp of the fundamentals of math, but now I see that it refers to transcendence above them, a disregard for a mastery of the basics in favor of a feel-good overview. Feeling good about ourselves is not what made this country great. Great effort and accomplishment did.
Our children’s futures are being put at risk by a cult of self-declared “experts” who have built an empire of power and influence on a set of delusional dreams. They are fundamentally detached from the needs of the workplace they profess to serve. Most of the people, such as myself, who have become outspoken critics of this cult, are successfully employed in this very workplace. We’re tired of being told to butt out of the discussion, and we won’t stand by idly while they feed off our future.
- Paul Dunham
To the Northshore School District School Board:
Thank you for your May 25th letter, which recognized that many families are concerned about the quality of the math program (Everyday Math, Connected Math Program & Core-Plus) currently administered by the District throughout the K-12 grades. The District’s cautious stand and fiscal conservatism at the prospect of changing its math curriculum before hearing from the state math advisory panel is to be applauded. Its public stand, however, is made confusing by some actions and statements made by the District’s administrators, Michele Williams and Carolyn O’Keefe, who seem to contradict the District’s position:
If the District is sincerely intent on raising its math program to be competitive with the six high achieving math countries cited by the TIMSS study, then it should go forward with phasing in the Singapore Mathematics series, the Hake/Saxon Math or other comparable curricula for all grade levels to replace the NCTM aligned texts currently in use .
Our district has shown tremendous initiative and foresight in the development and support of its excellent and internationally competitive IB High School Program at Inglemoor, which is the envy of many parents and school districts throughout the state.
However, this is not enough. We must forge ahead and provide ALL our students with instruction to master basic math that is internationally competitive. Can the District validly justify delaying these necessary improvements, especially when it has already taken the action of replacing an existing elementary math program for the 6th grade before the state math panel has made its recommendations?
It is obvious from the School Board meetings that the board does give its membership’s concerns great thought and deliberation. Please continue with this admirable process and reconsider your decision to delay any substantive improvements to the District’s current math program. Our children and students deserve a world-class math
education, and they need it now!
Respectfully,
Lying (Lyng) Wong-Chu
Concerned Member of the Northshore School District
'What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?'
'I don't know,' said Alice. 'I lost count.'
'She can't do addition,' said the Red Queen.
- Lewis Carroll
Click here to download the Washington Exemplary Mathematics Standards: 2008 - Revision 2 (PDF).
Your are encouraged to compare the revised Washington Exemplary Mathematics Standards:2008 to OSPI’s latest math standards revision and take the online survey for your input.
