Son of Senate Bill 1

This from Bluegrass Politics:

Williams considers changing state’s math curriculum

and ending CATS

Kentucky should consider changing how math is taught in its public schools and ending its student testing system, Senate President David Williams said Monday...

Williams reference the CATS assessment is fairly well understood. Sen Dan Kelly advised KSN&C that some revised version of Senate Bill 1 from the last session is to be expected.

But what about Williams' math comment?

Given his history since about 1991, I tend to be skeptical of anything Williams suggests. Expect the worst - is how I've been conditioned to respond. But is it possible he has co-opted a useful and not-too-costly reform idea, here?

True, we don't know what Williams really means, but it's likely he is referring to the National Mathematics Advisory Panel's report: Foundations for Success. If so, he will find those ideas widely supported by math teachers.

One hopes Williams will do us all a favor and present his ideas in two separate bills - so that one can support the math changes while rejecting his attempt to waste money changing CATS, without improving student assessment.

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel was created by President George W. Bush to advise the nation on the best use of scientifically based research to advance the teaching and learning of mathematics. The panel was charged with making recommendations on improving mathematics achievement for all students, with a focus on preparing students to take and succeed in algebra.

Much of the report was embraced by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The following are recommendations made in the report, and NCTM's response to those suggestions.

• Streamlining the Curriculum
• Factors That Boost Mathematical Achievement
• The Importance of Effective Teachers
• Research and Teachers' Judgment Should Influence Instruction
• Improving NAEP and State Assessments
• Building Research Capacity

Extensive reports of the panel’s task groups on Conceptual Knowledge and Skills; Learning Processes; Instructional Practices; Teachers; and Assessment are also available at the panel's website.

This from Steven Leinwand in Education Week:

Moving Mathematics Out of Mediocrity

The logic for the importance of improving school mathematics programs is reasonably unassailable. The country’s long-term economic security and social well-being are clearly linked to sustained innovation and workplace productivity. This innovation and productivity rely, just as clearly, on the quality of human capital and equity of opportunity that, in turn, emerge from high-quality education, particularly in the areas of literacy, mathematics, and science. Applying the if-then deductive logic of classical geometry puts a strong K-12 mathematics program at the heart of America’s long-term economic viability.

But the problems with mathematics in the United States are just as clear. A depressingly comprehensive, yet honest, appraisal must conclude that our typical math curriculum is generally incoherent, skill-oriented, and accurately characterized as “a mile wide and an inch deep.” It is dispensed via ruthless tracking practices and focused mainly on the “one right way to get the one right answer” approach to solving problems that few normal human beings have any real need to consider. Moreover, it is assessed by 51 high-stakes tests of marginal quality, and overwhelmingly implemented by undersupported and professionally isolated teachers who too often rely on “show-tell-practice” modes of instruction that ignore powerful research findings about better ways to convey mathematical knowledge.

For 20 years, we have tinkered at the margins, merely adjusting parts of the system while ignoring the fact that the basic structure has remained largely intact and underperforming. During those 20 years, we’ve raised achievement a little and narrowed gaps a bit. But even as the need for broader and deeper mathematical literacy has grown, our traditional approach still rarely works for more than a third of our students, and it fails even more when it comes to critical-reasoning and problem-solving skills. It shouldn’t be all that surprising that on the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, 15-year-old U.S. students placed an unacceptable 25th out of 30 countries tested.

Fortunately, the solutions are as clear as the problems. The answers do not revolve around costly new initiatives. Moving beyond mediocrity does not have to mean new textbooks and supplemental programs, or a slew of new calculators and computers, or jumping on the latest bandwagon of benchmark assessments. Instead, our attention needs to focus on how effectively existing programs are implemented, how available technology is integrated and used to enhance the learning of skills and concepts, and why assessments that steal valuable instructional time must provide relevant information that is actually put to use to inform revisions and reteaching.
In short, it’s time to turn to the real basics of what we expect students to learn, how we convey that, how we measure student learning, and how we support teachers and reduce their isolation...

Throw Out Your Calculators and Memorize

This from Business Week:

A Clarion Call for

Real Mathematics

I have spent more years than I care to remember reading reports of government advisory committees, but I have never encountered anything like “The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel” (PDF) released yesterday by the Education Dept.

In uncharacteristically blunt language, the report offers an action plan for a radical reconstruction of math education, especially in kindergarten through 8th grade. The overhaul is needed, the panelist argue, because the U.S. is failing produce the technically literate workforce it needs and can no longer count on making up for the shortfall through immigration because “the dramatic success of economies overseas in the age of the Internet cast doubt on the viability of such a strategy in the future.”

It may come as a surprise to anyone who finished their middle school education before the mid-1980s, but [perhaps the [panel's most controversial recommendation is that elementary school students should memorize their addition and multiplications tables and develop proficiency in adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions. Educators who felt that calculators had rendered manual calculation obsolete have been denigrating these skills for two decades.

But the National Mathematics Advisory Panel was focused on the readiness of student to learn algebra and found that algebra depends heavily on the computational skills that were being lost. (The panel ended up neutral on the controversial question of whether the use of calculators, particularly in early grades, helps or hurts the development of the ability to do mathematics. The quality of existing research, it found, simply is not good enough to come to a conclusion on the subject.)

The sad thing about the report that despite the unanimity on a panel that represents a broad spectrum of the mathematics and math education communities, it will take a decade or more for its recommendations to be implemented. It simply takes that long for curriculum guidelines to be recast, textbooks to be rewritten, and teachers to be trained or retrained. And in that time, a lot more damage can be done.

Panel Proposes Streamlining Math

This from the New York Times:

American students’ math achievement is “at a mediocre level” compared with that of their peers worldwide, according to a new report by a federal panel.

The panel said that math curriculums from preschool to eighth grade should be streamlined to focus on key skills — the handling of whole numbers and fractions, and certain aspects of geometry and measurement — to prepare students to learn algebra.

“The sharp falloff in mathematics achievement in the U.S. begins as students reach late middle school, where, for more and more students, algebra course work begins,” said the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed two years ago by President Bush.

“Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college, compared to students with less mathematical preparation.”

The report, to be released Thursday, spells out specific goals for students. For example, it says that by the end of the third grade, students should be proficient in adding and subtracting whole numbers; two years later, they should be proficient in multiplying and dividing them. By the end of sixth grade, it says, students should have mastered the multiplication and division of fractions and decimals.

The report tries to put to rest the long and heated debate over math teaching methods. Parents and teachers in school districts across the country have fought passionately over the relative merits of traditional, or teacher-directed, instruction, in which students are told how to solve problems and then are drilled on them, as opposed to reform or child-centered instruction, which emphasizes student exploration and conceptual understanding. The panel said both methods have a role...

...Closely tracking an influential 2006 report by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the panel said that the math curriculum should include fewer topics, and then spend enough time on each of them to make it is learned in depth and need not be revisited in later grades. This is how top-performing nations approach the curriculum....

Today the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics applauded the findings.

NCTM Welcomes National Math Panel’s Focus

Reston, Va., March 13, 2008—The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) welcomes the release today of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel report and the unprecedented focus it brings to the mathematics education of America’s students. The report addresses many of the actions needed to provide a strong mathematics education for all students and to keep America prosperous and secure in the 21st century.

Created in 2006 by an executive order of President Bush, the Panel was charged to examine and summarize the scientific evidence related to the teaching and learning of mathematics, with a specific focus on preparation for and success in learning algebra. Students who successfully complete algebra, long considered a gatekeeper to future academic and career success, are better prepared for college and have greater opportunities after high school graduation. The Panel also analyzed what must be developed in pre-K through grade 8 and identified a set of Critical Foundations and accompanying Benchmarks as essential prerequisites for algebra.

“We applaud the Panel’s recommendation that the mathematics curriculum for Pre-K to grade 8 should be streamlined to emphasize the most critical topics in those early grades,” said Jim Rubillo, Executive Director of NCTM. “This reinforces the Council’s identification of the most important mathematical topics for each grade level in the release of its Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics in 2006.” ...