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.

A Message From "Georgia Parents for Math"

Dear Parents and Concerned Citizens,

Since we have a new GA State School Superintendent, I thought I would provide some information relative to potential changes to the integrated "fuzzy" math program in Georgia. Last November, the citizens in Georgia elected Dr. John Barge as the new GA State School Superintendent. During the election, Dr. Barge repeatedly promised to:

• Return control of local school districts to superintendents, their key staff, and local boards of education.
• SEEK input from and LISTEN to the local school districts of Georgia....citing that he witnessed first-hand the insistence by the GA DOE leadership to implement a math curriculum that local school teachers, districts, and even State Department of Education curriculum specialists pleaded with them not to implement.
• Support the elimination of Math I, Math II, Math III, and Math IV and the restoration of Algebra, Geometry, Statistics, Calculus, etc. to distinct courses.

I am pleased to report that at this time it appears that Dr. Barge is planning to follow through with his commitments to the citizens in GA. Some highlights of Dr. Barge's actions to date are as follows:

• December 2010 - Dr. Barge, then Superintendent Elect, formed a Transition Advisory Committee comprised of a diverse group of education professionals, business leaders, citizens, politicians, etc.
• Dr Barge was seeking a group of people who would actively engage in discussion and provide feedback to Dr. Barge and his leadership team.
• Dr. Barge asked this group to bring a list of their top goals for his first year in office. It was no surprise to see that addressing the failed math program was high on almost everyone's list!
• January 2011 - Dr. Barge conducted his first meeting of the Transition Advisory Committee after taking office.
• During this meeting, Dr. Barge demonstrated his ability to listen to committee members by announcing that addressing issues associated with GA's math program was one of his top priorities.
• Dr. Barge was aware of the trouble facing many of the "guinea pig year" students in 11th grade as they near graduation without the math skills necessary to successfully graduate.
• Dr. Barge energized his staff, many appear to be new and motivated, to "act with urgency" to generate a plan that helps the current 11th graders who are struggling to graduate. This is a nice change from the previous administration, where nobody seemed to understand that the math program was failing!
• Dr. Barge announced the formation of a Math Subcommittee. This Subcommittee is focused on the effort required to ensure retention of rigor while implementing a math program that can be successfully utilized by all school boards in GA.
• February 2011 - Dr. Barge held the first meeting of the Math Subcommittee
• Discussed details regarding the challenges facing many of our students in the "guinea pig year", namely our 11th graders.
• Requested feedback relative to his team's ideas to address the immediate problems facing the current 11th graders, as well as beginning to think about long term implementation for high school.
• Request feedback relative to plans to enable local school boards to utilize traditional Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II and Trigonometry to meet the "rigorous" standards in existence in GA.

I am pleased to note that I was invited to participate as a member of both the Transition Committee, as well as the Math Subcommittee. While Dr. Barge has only been in office for a couple of months, it appears that he is remaining true to his campaign promises to:

• Provide local school boards with the necessary control to enable them to choose what is right for the students within their district.
• Seek information from, and listen to, constituents and local school districts.
• Support the return of Algebra, Geometry, Statistics, and Calculus as distinct courses while retaining increased rigor.
• I acknowledge that we are early in Dr. Barge's term, and there is much work ahead of his team. But he appears to be moving in the right direction, including looking at data, asking for feedback prior to implementing changes, and most importantly...Acting with Urgency!!

I hope you find this information helpful. As we move forward in Dr. Barge's term, I will keep you informed of the changes. In terms of local action, now is a good time to rally the citizens in your community, and initiate discussions within your own school district and politicians, to ensure that your local school board, government leaders and Superintendent are aware of your expectations to move back toward traditional math programs while retaining the rigor that is in the best interest of the students in GA!!

Thank You for Your Continued Support!!

Tammy Lucas

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.

'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?