The American Federation of Teachers Doesn’t Like Our Standards

That’s the gist of a new report from the AFT, “Sizing Up State Standards 2008,” wherein they give our elementary and middle school math standards a thumbs up and everything else (science, reading, social studies) didn’t meet their criteria for rigor and clarity.

There is a certain irony to them liking our math standards reasonably well. Those are the ones that get the most negative press here in state.

So Much for Kids

A $13.2 million, five-year grant from the National Math and Science Initiative, designed to add new Advanced Placement teachers, courses and exams for thousands of Washington high school students, has been scrubbed.

The reasons?

The state’s rule against merit pay for teachers and top-down inflexibility. (Check out the whole article from The Columbian.)

The grant would have provided for resources to help get more minority students into AP programs...and rewarded teachers will additional pay for successful students. It was this additional "merit pay" which was the sticking point with WEA. Heaven forbid that outstanding teachers be compensated for their efforts.

I'm most disappointed for students. While I think that some districts have done what they can to encourage traditionally underrepresented groups to participate in Advanced Placement programs, removing financial barriers may have gone a long way toward giving even more children a boost.

While MAP will continue to match a growing number of local math and science mentors with AP students, loss of the NMSI grant is “a tragedy,” Keeney said.

“We knew it would take some discussions, but we didn’t expect not to be able to get through this. This is a major setback for Southwest Washington, and Washington state,” Keeney said.

“The real shame here is that it’s more than $13.2 million: It would have been matched by other private sector (donations),” he said. “It was all new money coming to teachers. It wouldn’t have taken anything away from anybody.”

Marcia Fromhold will wrap up the loose ends of the grant process, then leave MAP, Bill Fromhold said. She retains her local political consulting business; his plans are unclear, he said.

Perhaps I should just be grateful that I didn't get that job when I applied for it last fall?

Standards, Get Your Math Standards

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Students in kindergarten through eighth grade will be held to more concrete standards when it comes to math, thanks to a revision of standards approved by the State Board of Education on Monday.

The Legislature approved the revised standards earlier this year. The standards were drafted because student underachievement in math was causing alarm among educators and lawmakers.

Now the revised standards are clearer, emphasize basic math facts and introduce some mathematical concepts in earlier grades.

Although the Board of Education touts the new standards as something other states will aspire to match, the plan recently met with criticism. Some education activists thought the program wasn't rigorous enough and that school districts might suffer a loss of autonomy when it comes to teaching methods.

A plan for high school math standards is still being devised. In February, a consultant hired to review the state's proposed standards said there were "serious problems" with the high school curriculum. A revised plan will be presented to the board later this spring or summer, according to a statement from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction

For a complete description of the revisions, visit http://www.utdanacenter.org/wamathrevision/history.php.

I would encourage all Washington teachers to have a look at the new standards---even if you don't teach math. The format and wording is far superior to that found for other content areas. Science is next up for revision, but I would love to see Reading and Writing revised to reflect the "friendly" format math now has.

time to throw concrete math instruction out the window?

This... could hurt.

In the first experiment, involving 80 students, some participants were given one concrete example before testing on the children’s game, while some were given two or three examples. One group only learned the generic symbols.

When tested on the children’s game, the group that learned the generic symbols got nearly 80 percent of the questions right. Those who learned one, two or even three concrete examples did no better than chance in selecting the right answers.

“They were just guessing,” Kaminski said.

In a second experiment, the researchers gave 20 participants two concrete examples and explained how they were alike. Surprisingly, this still did not help students apply the concept any better and they still did no better than chance when tested later about the game.

In a third experiment, the researchers presented 20 students with two concrete examples and then asked them to compare the two examples and write down any similarities they saw. After this experiment, about 44 percent of the students performed well on the test concerning the children’s game, while the remainder still did not perform better than chance.

This suggests that only some students, not all, benefit from direct comparison of learned concrete examples.

Finally, in a fourth experiment involving 40 students, some learned the concrete example first followed by the generic symbols, while others learned only the generic symbols. The thought here was that the concrete example would engage the students in the learning process while the generic symbols would promote transfer of that knowledge.

But even in this experiment, students who learned only the generic symbols performed better on subsequent testing than those who learned the concept using the concrete example and then the generic symbols.

The authors said that students seem to learn concepts quickly when they are presented with familiar real objects such as marbles or containers of liquid, and so it is easy to see why many advocate this approach. “But it turns out there is no true insight there. They can’t move beyond these real objects to apply that knowledge,” said Sloutsky.

Compare that with, say, the recent math-athon in the North Thurston district.

Pre-calculus students at North Thurston High School will show display boards of photographs of everyday objects that are examples of conics — circles, parabolas, ellipses and hyperboles.

“I just wanted them to see real math in the real world,” said their teacher, Julie Cassidy.

Boards showed photographs of nail polish bottles, mustard containers, bicycle racks, basketballs, garden hoses, shoe soles and more.

“I really liked it because it kind of gives you a more hands-on idea of math. I’m the type of person who likes to get out and experience in the world. I can’t sit at a desk and remember it,” said junior Raewyn Heim, 17.

Obviously, further studies are needed to see if Heim has it right. It could be that the hands-on aspect provides greater motivation for learners who aren't already college undergrads, the subjects of the OSU experiment. Also, if Piagetian principles are at play, the older students might just be more facile in the realm of abstraction. Still, as an English teacher, I have to go with this quote by one of the experimenters: "Story problems could be an incredible instrument for testing what was learned. But they are bad instruments for teaching."

Now you have a scientific reason to hate story problems.

Gregoire passes end-of-course exams

I'm still a little surprised that she signed a bill to gut the Math WASL, replacing it with end-of-course tests (described earlier). The WASL's been such a fixture on the landscape for so long, and Gregoire had previously been so adamant about preserving high standards.

But no: no more Math WASL.

In 2013, students will have a choice: Pass the math WASL, or two end-of-course exams. In some districts, those exams will be given at the end of Algebra I and Geometry I. In districts that mix those two subjects into "integrated" math classes, there will be end-of-course exams in Integrated Math I and II.

In 2014, the math WASL is scheduled to end all together.

A bill that would have dumped the WASL in favor of end-of-course exams also passed last year, but Gregoire vetoed it, in part because she thought there were too many unanswered questions, said Judy Hartmann, her executive policy adviser for K-12 education.

Since then, however, the state Board of Education commissioned a study that looked at end-of-course exams in other states and concluded that both the math WASL and end-of-course exams can do a good job of assessing students' math skill.

And before you say anything: yes, I realize the title is ambiguous. It's on purpose.

math WASL dumped for end-of-course exams

Hasta la geometría, baby:

Legislators and Gov. Chris Gregoire have decided to phase out the math portion of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning and replace it with end-of-course tests. The final budget announced on Wednesday included $3.2 million toward developing exit tests for each math course. The senior class of 2013 will still be the first group of students who must pass a math test to graduate, but they will be able to pass either the WASL math test or end-of-course exams. And the math WASL likely will be eliminated by 2014....

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson supports the change, and Steve Mullin, president of the Washington Roundtable business group, said, “We’ve basically received a lot of assurances that while this was a different method, the rigor would be the same or perhaps higher.”

I can see a certain amount of pedagogical sense to the plan, detailed in HB 3166 [pdf]. Not sure it's going to be any less expensive, though.

Over at the Partnership for Learning blog, alisonm goes over the pros and cons. Her final assessment of the assessment:

Offering both tests gives students more options, which can be a good thing. But the reality is, if standards aren't aligned with curriculum taught by high quality teachers to motivated students, the kind of test given to students won't really make much of a difference.

The Math Wars Rage On

Surfing around the other day I came to the Where’s the Math? website, and was pleased to find that they’ve released their version of what our new state math standards should be. Particularly interesting is this document where they compare their version of the standards to the version the Dana Center put together for OSPI recently; math teachers especially will be interested to see the difference between what the state proposes and what an ideal could be.

I was set to go to the public meeting in Spokane two weeks back on the proposed standards, but the epic snowstorm kept me at home. If you were able to attend the roll-out in your area, please share!