The latest report on math in DeKalb County Schools

Many of you know that I’ve been through a number of changes with regard to the Math curriculum in Georgia. For a bit of history: (1) my soon-to-be-college-sophomore was part of the program by Dr. Brown insisting upon mandatory algebra for all 8th graders. This was required without any regard to basic “readiness” components such as whether a child knew his or her multiplication or division ‘facts’ cold. The explanation for the change was that all children who had calculus in high school succeeded in college. My personal experience with calculus in high school, which I came close to failing and have never used as an attorney, is that Dr. Brown had his Venn diagram backwards: all those who succeed with calculus in high school will do well in college, but there are others who will do well in college who do not take calculus in high school. The end result: a 70% fail rate in algebra 1 in 8th grade. My son was the 2nd or 3rd year of mandatory algebra 1 (he did fine, he took AB calculus as a senior and is currently enrolled in an engineering curriculum in NY). (2) My middle son was the first year of the shift to Integrated GPS math and he was part of the first group of students to be enrolled in “Accelerated Math 1" as an 8th grader, entering the curriculum mid-year in 7th grade. I was very involved in the roll-out of this curriculum and in its implementation. I have been outspoken against it, particularly with regard to the lack of teacher training and the lack of a “model” system effectively using this curriculum elsewhere. When directly asked “who is using this math” and “with what result,” the response was hemming and hawing and reference to Europe and a need to compete abroad. No one domestically was utilizing the curriculum in toto such that my child and his friends were being used as guinea pigs. The experiment has failed (some of his friends, now sophomores, are looking at Calculus next year and are doing very well– they are very bright and able to absorb the math, and others of his friends are really struggling in Math 2 and are looking at Math 3 next year). The State is now moving away from this curriculum. (3) My youngest son has been enrolled in Accelerated Math 1 as an 8th grader this year. In it’s 3rd year, they are still not working from a text book. Fortunately for my household, my sons are good at math and they have each other for help.

The County has released its pending course offerings for the rising 9th graders and for the Accelerated rising 8th graders. I have been barraging various folks at the County, including Dr. Beasley, Ms. Tyson and others along with Dr. Reichrath at the State, with my thoughts and opinions gleaned from these past 7 years of changes in the math curriculum. A friend and I had the opportunity to attend a meeting this past week with some math curriculum folks from the County, including Ms. Stacy Stepney, the Director for High School Teaching and Learning and with Ms. Wanda Audrict, the K-12 Math Coordinator. I was pleased with how supportive of the children they were and how knowledgeable they were about the past and upcoming changes to the math curriculum and the interface they require from the State. They also seemed to support “leveling” math within the high school. It is not obvious from the materials that have been presented to the parents that the upcoming math options will be offered in gifted and accelerated modules (for comparison my eldest had Gifted Geometry, Gifted Algebra 2, Gifted Analysis and then AP AB Calculus). They indicated that they were encouraging the schools to make such courses available if the student bodies would support it. Ms. Stepney is willing to speak with folks with questions – so contact her.

It seems that the current upcoming changes to the math curriculum will only impact the current 7th graders (rising 8th) and older (this is why none of the other grade levels have been addressed at the meetings). This is because the horizon includes Governor Deal’s adoption of the Common Core Standards (National Standards) http://www.corestandards.org/ It seems that no one is quite sure what this will mean. How does this impact the CRCT? What about implementing it now rather than going to some in-between step for math? How will it be rolled out? Why are we not using a test like the NAEP (the “National Assessment of Educational Progress” test – my middle son took this test at Henderson two years ago but never received the scores. Also not all of Henderson nor all 8th graders took the NAEP that year, only a selected group of 8th grade impact kids at Henderson took the NAEP that year... it is very odd actually, but I digress). Can we take the Iowa instead of the CRCT? Is there a budget for teacher training? New books? There are no answers. Only questions and more changes on the horizon.

In evaluating what to do about the “new” math options if you have a child impacted (e.g. 7-10th grade). You need to look at a very confusing chart. The County’s website has the math powerpoint uploaded. The women explained that the “programs” (DCSS has so many) have different tracks so a student exiting Chamblee Middle in Accelerated Math 1 isn’t necessarily in the “same boat” as a student exiting Henderson Middle in Accelerated Math 1 (for some reason, Chamblee High still has a math track that can proceed even faster than the Accelerated track at Lakeside that will get a student to Calculus in 11th grade). Also, DCSS is experimenting with “on line” learning whereby joint enrollment may be available for the upper level, very advanced (beyond Calculus) students with the local colleges for classes not offered on-site. This is very exciting and I commend the county for this!

So here are my “take aways” from the meeting. If you have an Accelerated Math 1 child who should stay “on track” and is doing “well” “as is” then don’t return any forms (or get them back - quickly!) and proceed. Your child should automatically be enrolled (by teacher recommendation) in Accelerated GPS Geometry/Advanced Algebra (this is half a year to finish up what is left in Geometry and half a year of the old Algebra 2 – give or take). If you want to “slow it down” because you child hates math, isn’t doing too well, or just isn’t interested in 11th grade Calculus, you sign up for GPS Geometry – not GPS Algebra – if your child has already taken Accelerated Math 1 and has sat for the EOCT (given on Thursday, May 5th) and earned a Carnegie unit and passed the class, your child has completed Algebra 1. To shift from Accelerated Math 1 to GPS Geometry, the form should be completed and returned.

If you have a GPS Math 8 child who is doing well and wants to go to a college like UGA or Ga Tech and is good at math and is not currently struggling (e.g. has the teachers’ “go ahead”), then consider enrolling your child in Accelerated GPS Algebra/Geometry. This will be a half year finishing what is left of Algebra 1 and starting the first half of Geometry (give or take). Sophomore year, you will pick up in the previous paragraph.... There is a way to accelerate even further and get to Calculus as a Junior by “doubling up” – probably sophomore year – if your child is very strong at math and very interested in math. If this is the case, please chat with your counselors and Ms. Stepney about this alternative and plan your courses. If you want to “take it slowly” because your child hates math or is really bad at it, enroll in GPS Algebra or Math 1 depending on whether you want the “discrete” approach (if you are headed to Lakeside, my understanding is that you may not have the option and will need to be in the “discrete” column). I’m not sure which option will require the form to be returned.

My personal “spin” on things is that the high schools are not going to be able to offer every class on the chart and to be able to offer them at every “level” (e.g. gifted and accelerated-colloquially “high achiever”). There are “STARS” (under the new funding formulas) to figure out and actual classrooms to fill. If there are only 8 kids signed up for Math 1 and 20 kids signed up for GPS Algebra, the Math 1s will land in GPS Algebra. The gifteds may be merged with the accelerateds in order for the schools to fill in their “matrixes” of classes so that they can maximize the number of math teachers they have with the courses they are offering. To that end, it may make sense for parents to coordinate with one another so that the kids are presented to the high schools as larger “groups” rather than “singles” for the offerings, which from the chart could be all over the place and a scheduling nightmare for the Assistant Principal doing the scheduling (obviously I’ve never done scheduling myself so maybe it will be easy and I just don’t know it).

I hope this is helpful to you. If you have questions, I really do encourage you to contact Ms. Stepney – she was really delightful and very helpful. The counselors from the different high schools seem to have different information. Please also check with your student’s current math teacher if you have any lingering questions about ability. Understand that the math is changing, training and text book budgets are tight and grades are going onto final transcripts for high school so when you are choosing courses you need to do what’s best for your child. Also, think ahead. Colleges are interested in your child challenging him or herself at the highest end of his or her ability and also doing well in the class (it is sometimes a tight line to walk). Also, the classes your child takes freshman year set the stage for the classes he or she will take the following year and so forth. Certain colleges may be “out of reach” if your child doesn’t reach a “certain level” of classes by junior and senior year so you need to choose wisely and maybe even research colleges now. For example, it may be that UGA and Ga Tech want to see that your child has taken AP classes and Calculus by the time they graduate. In order to take those classes, there are other classes that need to be taken first, so the child needs to set forth on a certain path to get there. It may be that there are other things that come into play. Just enter into your child’s freshman schedule with open eyes regarding ability and where it will lead the following few years with college and after (work, etc) looming ahead so that you are not caught off guard at a time when you may be at a critical juncture and may not be able to do something about it. Also, for kids who are interested in “STEM” careers (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), there are some really interesting summer programs and scholarships – for college and for the summer – some are there for girls and others for minorities. Many are “need” based. Do some research on line and see what is out there and what the “prerequisites” are with enough “lead” time to plan ahead. Your teen may still need some guidance from you even if they appear to be completely removed from you.

Good luck.

Shayna

=====
Shayna Steinfeld has served as our resource for math information for quite some time. We very much appreciate her willingness to continue to meet with those 'in the know' and to advocate for excellent math in DeKalb.



Below are some charts showing the Georgia math pathways and why Algebra 1 won't fit.

Using Video to Reinvent Education

Have you all heard about Khan Academy? It's a wonderful online resource for math instruction and tutoring. The above video from TED.com came to us through an interesting blog post from Reading Rockets.

Sal Khan hosts video lectures on math concepts in an entertaining, easy to understand way.  He even says that teachers have starting assigning his video lectures as "homework" and then using class time to work out problems (used to be "homework").  Kids seem to be learning well this way!

To read more on their suggestions for online learning, click here.

Click here to link to Khan Academy.

Oh - and one more thing.  You know I always harp on my pipe dream of giving all students an iPad or Kindle loaded with their textbooks instead of making them lug around heavy, expensive textbooks (at least in middle and high school)... Well, the pushback has been due to the "cost" of the technology.  But -- get this - once you buy the hardware (at a discounted bulk rate of course), then you can download all the FREE Open Source textbooks you want at ck12.org. So, costs not looking as bad, eh?  Check it out by clicking here.

Math Survey

The AJC tells us that State School Superintendent John Barge plans to ask the state school board to vote to reinstate the traditional math courses (often referred to as discreet math courses) on the state-approved, state-funded course list with the intention of allowing local school officials to decide which courses they want to teach. In response, DCSS' Dept. Superintendent Morcease Beasley sent out this memo:

From DCSS Dept. Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Morcease Beasley

From: MORCEASE J. BEASLEY Wednesday, February 16, 2011 6:12:10 PM
Subject: Parent Feedback on Discreet Math Option
To: HS Principals 10-11 MS Principals 10-11
Cc: ALICE A. THOMPSON Woods, Walter


To: MS and HS Principals


From: Dr. Morcease Beasley, Interim Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning


Re: Parent Feedback on Discreet (Traditional) Math Option


All MS and HS parents are requested to share feedback on the district's intention to offer the discreet math option (referred to as the traditional approach) using the CCGPS/CCSS appropriately sequenced for such an option if the state BOE approves to grant such flexibility. This discreet math approach would be offered to incoming 9th graders beginning the 2011-12 school year. Parents may share feedback by going to the district's website or by utilizing the link below.

===

And then from a differnt email he sent:

The discreet math approach, taught using the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) sequenced as appropriate, would be as follows:


9th Grade Course Intermediate Algebra with Statics
10th Grade Course Geometry and Statistics
11th Grade Course Advanced Algebra and Statistics
12th Grade Course Multiple Course Offerings in Mathematics

===

To take the survey, click here.

Perhaps It Isn't Rocket Science ...

Another international student test has the U.S. lagging well behind the leaders and a moon-shot away from the students of Shanghai, for example. I found this interesting article on the NYT's web site and thought readers here might enjoy.

Here is one of the summary statements from the article discussing Shanghai's extraordinary results on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests:

"The results also appeared to reflect the culture of education there, including greater emphasis on teacher training and more time on studying rather than extracurricular activities like sports."

Wow. That is so ... radical. Teacher training and more time studying ... hmmm, that is a newfangled idea! Perhaps DCSS instructional wizardry and legion of curriculum gurus should be "Shanghai-ed" and replaced with good old fashion expectations and work ...

Here is the full article and a link to the test results:

>Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators

>Test Results 

Reading deeper into the test results and analysis, you can find a report titled, "What Makes a School Successful?" Great question, right? We agonize over this question on this blog and I thought it worth a look ... here's a summary from the report's Forward:

"First, while most nations declare their commitment to education, the test comes when these commitments are weighed against others. How do they pay teachers compared to the way they pay other highly-skilled workers? How are education credentials weighed against other qualifications when people are being considered for jobs? Would you want your child to be a teacher? How much attention do the media pay to schools and schooling? Which matters more, a community’s standing in the sports leagues or its standing in the student academic achievement league tables? Are parents more likely to encourage their children to study longer and harder or to spend more time with their friends or in sports activities?

In the most successful education systems, the political and social leaders have persuaded their citizens to make the choices needed to show that they value education more than other things. But placing a high value on education will get a country only so far if the teachers, parents and citizens of that country believe that only some subset of the nation’s children can or need to achieve world class standards. This report shows clearly that education systems
built around the belief that students have different pre-ordained professional destinies to be met with different expectations in different school types tend to be fraught with large social disparities. In contrast, the best-performing education systems embrace the diversity in students’ capacities, interests and social background with individualised approaches to learning.

Second, high-performing education systems stand out with clear and ambitious standards that are shared across the system, focus on the acquisition of complex, higher-order thinking skills, and are aligned with high stakes gateways and instructional systems. In these education systems, everyone knows what is required to get a given qualification, in terms both of the content studied and the level of performance that has to be demonstrated to earn it. Students cannot go on to the next stage of their life – be it work or further education – unless they show that they are qualified to do so. They know what they have to do to realise their dream and they put in the work that is needed to achieve it.

Third, the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and principals, since student learning is ultimately the product of what goes on in classrooms. Corporations, professional partnerships and national governments all know that they have to pay attention to how the pool from which they recruit is established; how they recruit; the kind of initial training their recruits receive before they present themselves for employment; how they mentor new recruits and induct them into their service; what kind of continuing training they get; how their compensation is structured; how they reward their best performers and how they improve the performance of those who are struggling; and how they provide opportunities for the best performers to acquire more status and responsibility. Many of the world’s best-performing education systems have moved from bureaucratic “command and control” environments towards school systems in which the people at the frontline have much more control of the way resources are used, people are deployed, the work is organised and the way in which the work gets done. They provide considerable discretion to school heads and school faculties in determining how resources are allocated, a factor which the report shows to be closely related to school performance when combined with effective accountability systems. And they provide an environment in which teachers work together to frame what they believe to be good practice, conduct field-based research to confirm or disprove the approaches they develop,and then assess their colleagues by the degree to which they use practices proven effective in their classrooms.

Last but not least, the most impressive outcome of world-class education systems is perhaps that they deliver highquality learning consistently across the entire education system, such that every student benefits from excellent learning opportunities. To achieve this, they invest educational resources where they can make the greatest difference, they attract the most talented teachers into the most challenging classrooms, and they establish effective spending choices that prioritise the quality of teachers. These are, of course, not independently conceived and executed policies. They need to be aligned across all aspects of the system, they need to be coherent over sustained periods of time, and they need to be consistently implemented.

The path of reform can be fraught with political and practical obstacles. Moving away from administrative and bureaucratic control toward professional norms of control can be counterproductive if a nation does not yet have teachers and schools with the capacity to implement these policies and practices. Pushing authority down to lower levels can be as problematic if there is not agreement on what the students need to know and should be able to do. Recruiting high-quality teachers is not of much use if those who are recruited are so frustrated by what they perceive to be a mindless system of initial teacher education that they will not participate in it and turn to another profession. Thus a country’s success in making these transitions depends greatly on the degree to which it is successful in creating and executing plans that, at any given time, produce the maximum coherence in the system.

These are daunting challenges and thus devising effective education policies will become ever more difficult as schools need to prepare students to deal with more rapid change than ever before, for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented and to solve economic and social challenges that we do not yet know will arise. But those school systems that do well today, as well as those that have shown rapid improvement, demonstrate that it can be done. The world is indifferent to tradition and past reputations, unforgiving of frailty and complacency and ignorant of custom or practice. Success will go to those individuals and countries that are swift to adapt, slow to complain and open to change."

And here's a link to the full "What Makes a School Successful?" report:

http://browse.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/pdfs/browseit/9810101E.PDF

Back to math...

Oh boy. Talk about having your eyes off the ball. It appears that perhaps our math program has fallen into crisis and that unless something is done to embellish or change the curriculum very soon, we could find ourselves in a heap of failure.

We're hearing from teachers and parents across the county regarding their concerns about the math program. Read on:

"I have continued to watch my child and others struggle with the new Math curriculum. Most recently the school sent a letter out concerning the new Math 3 support course which is sanctioned by the state as a "core" course to help support students in passing Math 3. This to me suggests that new Math is not working."


"My child is a 10th grader at Chamblee in the magnet program, taking accelerated Math 2. As I understand this is the first group to have all of middle and high in new Math. Last year's 10th graders at Chamblee were able to take Algebra I, II, etc."


"Dekalb County has continued to state that the state requires that the Math courses be taught just as they as teaching. I work in Fulton County. Last year, midyear we were told to pull out the old Math books, Algebra I, etc. This year, Math courses are being taught using the old books with the new curriculum as a resource. Fulton cited the plunging Iowa scores as the reason for the change. They never really adopted the new Math due to parent protests. I note that APS is providing extra funding for a school teaching the new Math. Forsyth and Gwinnett continue to teach the old Math."


"We need to set the goal of having our Math switch back to Algebra I, II, etc by the winter break. If Fulton can switch midyear, why can't we? I am not sure how to bring about the change back to the old curriculum, but would appreciate the input and expertise of the folks on this blog. I also think that we need to get the superintendent and board focused on education along with redistricting and construction. After all, isn't that why we are all here? I sometimes think we lose sight of what should be our real focus the education of our children."


"Clearly we are lagging behind the metro region in Math. Something needs to be done ASAP."

We would love to hear from teachers, parents and students about the math program. Was Shayna right in her assessment of the new math in her July, 2009 article entitled, "All About Math"? What can we do to make the necessary corrections to salvage our math student's GPAs?

'Algebra-for-All' Push Found to Yield Poor Results

This just in (from Education Week) --

A new study has confirmed, “Simply sticking students in courses without preparing them ahead of time for the class does not seem to work as an intervention,” said Chrys Dougherty, the author of the Arkansas and Texas analysis, published last month by the National Center for Educational Achievement, in Austin, which is owned by the test publisher ACT Inc. “It seems to work with adequately prepared students, but not for the most challenged students.”

That said, when students were given a "double-dose" of daily algebra, their test scores improved.

As the trends became evident, the school system in 2003 began requiring 9th graders who scored below the national median on standardized math tests in 8th grade to take an algebra “support” class in addition to a regular algebra class. Students who scored higher continued to take a single period of algebra.

For the Chicago consortium’s study, the researchers compared outcomes for students just above and below the cutoff for the “double dose” classes.

Worried about the potential for reintroducing tracking, the district also provided professional-development workshops and other resources to the teachers of the support classes, according to Ms. Allensworth.

“Because teachers had more time and resources, the instructional quality in those classes improved quite a bit,” she said. “But the classes ended up concentrating more students with attendance and behavioral problems.”

In the end, the study found, failure rates increased for both the targeted students and for their peers in single-period algebra classes. On the other hand, algebra test scores rose substantially for the students in the double-dose classes.

“The district thought [the double-dose initiative] was a failure because it did not improve pass rates, but our analysis showed that test scores improved a lot,” Ms. Allensworth said. ...

Tom Loveless, the author of the report from the Washington-based Brookings Institution on “misplaced” math students in algebra, said the issue is even more complex.

“No one has figured out how to teach algebra to kids who are seven or eight years behind before they get to algebra, and teach it all in one year,” said Mr. Loveless, who favors interventions for struggling students at even earlier ages.

Nationwide, research findings may diverge because testing content varies—the TIMSS test has more algebra content than many state exams taken by 8th graders—and because course content varies from classroom to classroom.

“If you take what’s called algebra class, and you look at the actual distribution of allocated time, you find that many of those teachers spend a very large portion of that year on basic arithmetic,” said Mr. Schmidt, who is a distinguished university professor of education at Michigan State’s East Lansing campus. His research on U.S. classrooms has found, in fact, that nearly a third of students studying algebra are using arithmetic books in their classes.

Likewise, Mr. Loveless’ study found that “misplaced” students tended to attend large urban schools where their teachers were more likely to have less than five years of experience, less likely to hold a regular teaching certificate, and less likely to have majored in math than teachers of typical 8th grade algebra students.

“It may well have more to do with whether students have been given adequate opportunities to learn this stuff,” Mr. Schmidt said of the disappointing findings that have emerged from some studies.

All About Math

by Shayna Steinfeld


Please read this keeping in mind that the United States ranks between 15 and 20 of the top 20 industrialized countries in education around the world. Then remember that Georgia is perpetually ranked in the bottom five in the U.S. Layer onto that the fact that DeKalb seems to be headed away from the top in Georgia ...

A few years ago, the State changed the math curriculum to make it more “competitive” and shifted it from QCC to GPS for “more rigor.” The theory is that if we give the kids more rigor, they will ultimately rise to the occasion and perform better in the long run. My biggest problem with the math curriculum is that Georgia seems to have manufactured it by piecing together curricula from at least three other places “to compete internationally” (this is before we make it to the top 10 domestically). I believe it is primarily from South Carolina, Texas and Japan. Although my in-laws, who taught in the New York City schools for 25 or 30 years (not as math teachers) swear it looks an awful lot like the botched math curriculum that the NY schools tried for a few years and gave up on when none of their kids - from the ghetto or the wealthy suburbs - performed well on the Regents exams. I think it lasted in NY for at most three years.

My problem is that states like Massachusetts seem to always score in the top three states in math on the NAEP test (National Assessment for Educational Progress – a nationally normed test), which the Henderson Middle School 8th graders took this year but no results were released (along with those "missing in action" EOCT for Math I). There is, therefore, a math curriculum in Massachusetts, that has trained teachers, teaching materials, curriculum, etc. for K-12 (or K-8 if you leave high school alone for Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry and Calculus, Statistics). There are teachers, I am sure, who would prefer our climate who could be swayed to moved south. Instead, our taxpayers, paid for our board of education to research a new curriculum in South Carolina, Texas and Japan and paid for new textbooks to be created (which since no other state teaches our math, they must have been created from scratch for all grades in all districts). Supplemental materials needed to be written, training materials needed to be created, and testing materials needed to be created. At each step of this process, entities and individuals made money – from tax dollars. All of this was already available for purchase in a place like Massachusetts. And the flip side? Our children get to be guinea pigs for the new Georgia curriculum to see if it works. We need the legislature to pass a law: If there is a state in the top five or top ten doing well, our state department of education isn’t allowed to make up our own version and test it on our kids (e.g. math, English, social studies (except Georgia Studies), Economics, etc.).

The Asian kids always did really well at the Sagamore Hills Math Tournament when my kids were in elementary school. They were the vast majority of the top five in each grade. It turns out that many of them attend “Saturday School” – a program called Kumon. It even turns out that some legislators I know use this program for their kids too. It’s all about drilling math facts. Over, and over, and over again. If the Kumon program works so well, why don’t we incorporate it and it’s teachers into our standard elementary school curriculum? I’m frustrated that we are recreating the wheel and testing it on our kids rather than using the “tried and true.”

Part of the new math curriculum uses a “train the teacher” approach – at the elementary level, at least in the DeKalb, one teacher per school – and not necessarily one trained in training other teachers or one who knows the most about math – but a teacher who was willing to spend the time for some extra cash, went for training on the curriculum. They were then supposed to train the others in their building on how to teach this really new math (some without text books).

Another aspect of the curriculum that could be a real problem was pointed out by a psychologist friend. She’s has a Ph.D. in psychology and listened to a mom describe 2nd grade math to her and commented that if a child were ADD or ADHD they would lose it. This is because, apparently, these kids need concepts drilled, the curriculum has a lot of jumping around and not too much drilling. This would be particularly bad if you had a child doing poorly in math and it was due to an undiagnosed problem along these lines, particularly leading up to those all important 3rd grade CRCTs. I’m not a psychologist or an expert on this curriculum so here I’m just passing on a conversation.

Another component of the curriculum is that the children are supposed to teach each other in learning groups (at least at the middle school level). This doesn’t work if there isn’t anyone in a group that knows what they are doing. It really doesn’t work if the teacher can’t help them figure it out. One of my son’s 8th grade friends is starting with Algebra I in 9th grade at a private school next year after last year at Henderson due to the ineffectiveness of this group work. My son, who was in Accelerated Math I this past year with an excellent teacher, should be ready for Algebra 2 according to the color-coded state chart on the curriculum. The chart indicates that he was supposed to have covered nearly all of geometry by now. The private schools we’ve spoken with believe he has only received half of a regular (old) geometry curriculum. The other half of the curriculum is not in the Math II curriculum either, it seems to be missing altogether. This does not facilitate the ability of families with teenaged children to move in and out of the state for business purposes (Coke – UPS – Chamber of Commerce.... WHERE ARE YOU?).

One of the top math teachers in the state, who helped develop the curriculum (a DCCS teacher), has told one of my twelfth grader’s friends that he has no idea what he will teach to his Math II kids this fall. When I was campaigning last year, a middle school math teacher I met said he was at a training session and he was told that Math II was going to be trained by DVD. Math I was trained so well that they have decided not to release the EOCT results. When I asked members of the school board how they were going to gauge whether the curriculum was working, the answer was the EOCT. For me, that isn’t the answer because that tests the state curriculum, it does not test whether they are receiving what they need to know for the PSAT, SAT, ACT and College. How about giving all 9th graders an old (already existing) Algebra EOCT at the start of the year to see just how much algebra they’ve absorbed under the new curriculum. Same for 10th graders for geometry?

My sister-in-law is not a math person. She has been enrolled in a Master of Arts, Teaching program at Brandies in Boston this past year. One of her first classes was on teaching Elementary math. One of the components of the Georgia math curriculum (possibly where they should have stopped on the elementary curriculum) is called “Everyday Math” and it is used by many of the private schools. It is not how we as adults were taught to do math – for example: they add across the page and they don’t borrow or re-group. My non-mathematical sister-in-law spent at least an hour a day in this class, five days a week for a month, with a top teacher, who has written a textbook series now being used in NY. They discussed the Georgia curriculum, which is being cited in this academic world as an example of what shouldn’t be done. By the end of the month in this class, the lightbulb went off for her and she told me that she could now teach math to any type of learner. Her brain, which is only 28 years old, had finally been reprogrammed successfully – she understood Everyday Math herself and appreciated its merits and tools and she felt as though she could adequately and appropriately convey these concepts to any child in elementary school. In Georgia, we are using “train the trainer” to reprogram the math teacher, over a much shorter duration of time, and many of these teachers are not new teachers but they have been teaching for many years. And we expect this to be successful?

Another good friend is involved in the AP Computer Science world here in Georgia. She trains those teachers and grades those exams. She has commented to me that she has seen a tremendous influx of math teachers who are all of a sudden interested in teaching computer science. That’s very good for computer science. What does it say about math?

The counties were given some latitude in how they implemented the state-wide standards. My understanding of how this was done is that DeKalb went “whole hog” and scratched the old curriculum and implemented the new curriculum. Cobb and Gwinnett, on the other hand, kept their old curriculum, and layered the integrated math on top of the old curriculum. It seems to me that the Cobb and Gwinnett approach may be working better (see, e.g. the CRCT middle school scores in each of these counties). There is also a program that enables the counties to opt around the curriculum that Gwinnett is pursuing.

I’m wondering how long it will take for all of this to play out. I’ve decided to post this column so I could share what I’ve pieced together and to provide a place for you to comment. Anyone want to take on getting a law passed?