Washblog

30 years ago I graduated high school.

5 Years ago, in September 2003, I started training to get my Teaching Certificate in Math in order to teach in high school. I already had a Math B.A., U.W. '97. I had spent over 25 years out in the wonderful private sector. I had also spent a few months tutoring in 1 of our public middle schools in 2003, as I wanted to test the current school waters before I jumped in.

4 Years ago this month I started Student Teaching at a Middle School in the Highline School District, and then I spent a bunch of months substituting at scores of schools in the area south of Seattle.

I've taught for 3 years at the High School level, 2 in Seattle.

What follows are my thoughts on the current state of Math teaching. These thoughts have evolved from 4+ years experience helping our kids with math they are not successful with. I've included URLS to materials which have also influenced my thoughts.

I do NOT speak for ANY school, school district, union ... I speak as a citizen, a taxpayer, a worker familiar with the work. Anyone who claims differently is a LIAR, and should stick to working with the Ailes, Atewaters, Roves, Bushs and McCains of the world.

+++++++ END BACKGROUND

I recommend that you do NOT support Terry Bergeson's reelection.

1. Ms. Bergeson has had 12 years of influencing math education in the state. She and her cronies have created a reform WASL math, without supporting curriculum, unique to Washington State. Unique to Washington State means that our kids can't compete with kids from China, India, Russia, Massachusetts, California ...

   -- An 'achievement' of this unique WA. WASL math has been failure for over 30,000 10th graders on the 10 grade math WASL for the last 3 years.

2. For the last 3 years, I've been paid as a high school math teacher, and I've tried to help hundreds and hundreds of high school students with this unique reform WASL Math. Our kids struggle for many reasons, one of the most significant reasons for their struggles is that they have NO mastery of BASIC arithmetic Skills.
3. These high school students haven't had mastery of BASIC SKILLS;

   -- because they use a hodge podge WASL math reform materials which intentionally do NOT include math basics,

   -- because globally uncompetitive reform math state OSPI standards don't have competent curriculum.

4. Math teachers have been blamed for reform math failure:

   -- because we didn't follow reform teaching philosophies turned ideology (aka instructional practices),

   -- practices based on reform learning philosophies that are only loosely based on scientific research,

   -- however these reform philosophies have been pushed on math teachers with an ideological extremism.  We either followed the dictates of reform - all group work all the time, no basics - or our jobs are at risk.

MY EXPERIENCE:
2007-2008

1. Detailed Math WASL results aren't available as of Monday, July 07, 2008.  They weren't available during the school year, of course, which would be in time for me to help my kids some before the end of the school year.  I think about 50 or 70 of my students took the 10th grade math WASL this spring. As of the end of the year, I hadn't a clue if they failed or passed, and where their problem areas are.   As with most data I need, it is available ONLY through onerous, time consuming, inefficient manual processes.  

   Data:
   2006- 2007
   About 33,000 fail (Below Standard) out of about 74,000 10 grade math wasl test takers

   2005-2006
   About 32000 fail (Below Standard) out of about 74,000 10th grade math wasl test takers.

   http://reportcard.ospi...

2. For the last 3 years, I've been paid as a high school math teacher, and I've tried to help hundreds and hundreds of high school students with this unique reform WASL Math. Our kids struggle for many reasons, one of the most significant reasons for failure is they have NO mastery of BASIC arithmetic Skills.

MY EXPERIENCE:

I've been working for a paycheck for 33 years. I have NEVER been in a job where basic arithmetic skills weren't important, and I've NEVER seen a job where basic arithmetic skills wouldn't be useful.  Hundreds of my high school students have few of the skills below.  

Data:
I. Foundations for Success: Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel
http://www.ed.gov/...

Chapter 3 - Report of the Task Group on Conceptual Knowledge and Skills, pg. 3-42

E. Benchmarks for the Critical Foundations
In view of the sequential nature of mathematics, the Critical Foundations of Algebra described in the previous section require judicious placement in the grades leading up to Algebra. For this purpose, the Task Group suggests the following benchmarks as guideposts for state frameworks, for state assessments, and for school districts. There is no empirical research on the placement of these benchmarks, but they find justification in a comparison of national and international curricula. The benchmarks should be interpreted flexibly, to all wfor the needs of students and teachers.

Fluency With Whole Numbers

1. By the end of Grade 3, students should be proficient with the addition and subtraction of whole numbers.
   
2. By the end of Grade 5, students should be proficient with multiplication and division of whole numbers.

3. By the end of Grade 6, students should be proficient with multiplication and division of fractions and decimals.
   
4. By the end of Grade 6, students should be proficient with all operations involving positive and negative integers.
   
5. By the end of Grade 7, students should be proficient with all operations involving positive and negative fractions.
   
6. By the end of Grade 7, students should be able to solve problems involving percent, ratio, and rate, and extend this work to proportionality.

-- because of globally uncompetitive reform state OSPI standards.

MY EXPERIENCE:

In the fall of 2007, in my 3rd year of being paid to teach, I found out that lower grade curriculum PURPOSELY did NOT teach basics.  The philosophy is that teaching basics is boring, and bored students don't learn how to reason.  Therefore, we should have students discover mathematical basics which took humans thousands of years to work out, and while discovering students will learn to reason, and along the way they'll learn their basics!

DATA:
OSPI subjects children and taxpayers in Washington State to another flawed process
Mathematics Instructional Materials Review June 24, 2008
http://www.wheresthemath.com/...

because of globally uncompetitive reform state OSPI standards.

My Experience:
In 4 Washington Districts - ( Edmonds, Highline, Federal Way, Seattle) in the last 4 years I've worked with over 30 different math teachers trying to decipher OSPI's standards called GLEs (Grade Level Expectations), trying to map our lessons to the GLEs = lots and lots and lots of time wasted EVERY year. The GLEs are found in 10 page word documents, which are about 10 to 12 pages each, and the trick is too take your lesson in regular old recognized around the world math and turn it into NON Standard Math terminology = WASL Math.

Data:

Public Statement by University of Washington Faculty on Math Preparation of Incoming Students
http://mathunderground.blogspot.com/...

4. Math teachers have been blamed for reform math failure:

-- because we didn't follow reform teaching philosophies (aka instructional practices),

-- practices based on reform learning hilosophies that are only loosely based on scientific research,

-- however these reform philosophies have been pushed on math teachers with an ideological extremism.  We either followed the dictates of reform - all group work all the time, no basics - or our jobs are at risk.

MY EXPERIENCE:

Cooperative learning and group work have been sold as cure alls for all academic problems.  I've had hundreds of hours of vague `training' on these techniques where we did little or nothing to impact our teaching the next day or next week, but we did spend lots of time in guided discussions talking to other teachers about how great these techniques were.  I think they are great teaching techniques, but, they aren't the answer in the manner in which they've been sold to districts, administrators and math teachers.  Please look at various Washington School  district job postings for math coaches or math policy people - group work and discovery learning are the buzzwords and the cure alls.

Data:

A.    The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel 2008, page 82

http://www.ed.gov...

The Panel as a whole reviewed more than 16,000 research studies and related documents. Yet, only a small percentage of available research met the standards of evidence and could support conclusions.

B.   Chapter 2 - Report of the Subcommittee on Standards of Evidence, page 2-1

http://www.ed.gov/...

II. Background: Categories of Internal and External Validity
There are three broad categories into which one can categorize research and the corresponding claims based on that research. First, there is the highest-quality scientific evidence, based on such considerations as the quality of the design, the validity and reliability of measures, the size and diversity of subject samples, and similar considerations of internal (scientific rigor and soundness) and external validity (generalizability to different circumstances and students)...
In addition to reviewing the best scientific evidence, the Panel is also charged with considering promising or suggestive findings that should be the subject of future research. Promising or suggestive studies do not meet the highest standards of scientific evidence, but they represent sound, scientific research that needs to be further investigated or extended. For example, laboratory studies showing significant effects of "desirable difficulties" (i.e., difficulties produced by challenging to-be-learned material) or of repeated testing on longterm retention could be extended to actual classrooms or existing curricula (e.g., Bjork, 1994; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006; see Cook & Campbell, 1979). The final category corresponds to statements based on values, impressions, or weak evidence; these are essentially opinions as opposed to scientifically justified conclusions. Issues such as what constitutes algebra are matters of expert opinion rather than of scientific evidence.

Chapter 2 - Report of the Subcommittee on Standards of Evidence, page 2-7

VII. Recommendations
The Panel's systematic reviews have yielded hundreds of studies on important topics, but only a small proportion of those studies have met methodological standards. Most studies have failed to meet standards of quality because they do not permit strong inferences about causation or causal mechanisms (Mosteller & Boruch, 2002; Platt, 1964). Many studies rely on self-report, introspection about what has been learned or about learning processes, and open-ended interviewing techniques, despite well-known limitations of such methods (e.g., Brainerd, 1973; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Woodworth, 1948). Therefore, the Subcommittee on Standards of Evidence recommends that the rigor and amount of course work in statistics and experimental design be increased in graduate training in education. Such knowledge is essential to produce and to evaluate scientific research in crucial areas of national need, including mathematics education.

C.  Chapter 6 - Report of the Task Group on Instructional Practices, page 6-24

http://www.ed.gov/...

5. Conclusion
"The studies produced a mix of significant effect sizes favoring student-centered instruction, and others favoring teacher-directed instruction, together with findings of no significant effects. As a result, the research does not lead to any conclusive result about the value of student-centered instructional strategies in comparison to teacher-directed instructional strategies. Under some conditions, with some groups of students, and for some kinds of outcomes, an isolated study may find that either teacher-directed or student-centered strategies are preferable. In general the evidence does not provide a case for favoring or promoting either strategy over the other. The Task Group points out that in only one of the studies reviewed is "teacher-directed" instruction the experimental treatment."

Chapter 6 - Report of the Task Group on Instructional Practices, page 6-32

"That leads to the final principal finding. Much more research is needed that directly compares the effectiveness of student-centered and teacher-directed instruction, and that provides clear operational definitions for these terms. In particular, research is needed with teacher-centered instruction as the experimental condition. Almost all of the research reviewed here investigated experimental modes of instruction that are student-centered--whether guided discovery, cooperative learning, or peer tutoring--with the control condition described as "teacher-directed" or "traditional" or "direct instruction." Experiments with better specified teacher-directed interventions would enhance our understanding of how to improve classroom instruction in mathematics. A comprehensive program of research might succeed in transforming what has been a clash of ideologies into a search for effective practice."

Chapter 6 - Report of the Task Group on Instructional Practices, page 6-206

Search Terms Used for Instructional Practices Task Group
By Research Question
All of the terms in the lists below were searched with the term math*
Teacher-Directed and Student-Centered Instruction
active instruction    active teaching    cognitively guided instruction        constructivist
direct instruction        discovery learning        explicit instruction    guided inquiry    guided learning   
learner centered  student directed strategies    teacher centered instruction        teacher-directed instruction ...
Additional Searches Specifically for Cooperative Learning
classwide peer tutoring    collaboration    cooperative learning    cooperative mastery learning       
peer assisted learning        peer tutoring