School Days School Days….dear old golden rule days. Readin’ and Ritin’ and Rithmetic…Taught to the tune of a hickory stick…
There is a nasty little rumor circulating around PWC schools. That rumor deals with the School Board and the Math Textbook Selection Committee. Rumor has it that the school board selected its own text books and disregarded the work of a committee that had spent 5 months meeting and collaborating. When one hears rumors like this, it’s best to turn to videos to see if the rumor is true.
On February 1, the PWC Math Department presented the recommendations of the math textbook adoption committee to the PWC School Board. Mrs. Knight, math supervisor for the county, gave a slide presentation which included committee history, methods utilized, and recommendations. School Board members asked questions for clarity regarding the process and the recommendations. Mrs. Knight answered a continual stream of questions regarding method, participants, conclusions. Her answers appeared honest and direct.
The Textbook Committee involved well over 100 teachers, principals, and parents representing all different grade levels. There were sub committees that matched content from each text book series to the curriculum, compared and contrasted grade level content , evaluated vertical strands, and held on average 16 hours per person of collegial discussion about the text books being scrutinized. Evaluations were put in rubric form and recorded anecdotally.
On February 15, the school board assembled to vote on the recommendations of the textbook committee. Pictures are worth a thousand words. At least 2 of the school board members appeared motivated by pure politics. They were influenced by the contention over the Math Investigations series from previous years and made no bones about it. It was very obvious. So was the eye cutting. I don’t think adults realize they are eye cutting and everyone can see them.
Many of the members spoke. Mrs. Covington and Mrs. Ramirez actually knew what they were talking about. Mrs. Satterwhite and Mr. Trenum wanted us to think they knew what they were talking about. They didn’t. The more they spoke, the more apparent it became that they had never spent a day in their lives as a professional math educator. Both board members tried to convince their audience of the worth of one text book series but failed miserably to really explain what the merit of their product was. I kept hearing words that really didn’t fit the problem or the solution. They failed to spell out why one textbook was better than the other.
The real villains here were not the political hacks. The hacks were transparent and I could have predicted their behavior last summer, if not earlier. The real villains are those who allowed the hacks to have their way by voting with them. The School Board wasted tax payer money. Hundreds of staff hours, perhaps thousands were spent by dedicated staff, parents and administration evaluating textbooks, creating rubrics, doing veritcal alignments and comparing text book coverage of SOL objectives. The School Board simply failed to listen to its staff.
Why make these people waste their time? Mrs. Satterwhite, Mr. Trenum and I suspect Mrs. Bell pretty much had their minds made up long before February 15. They were on a political mission and it was fairly obvious to the skilled eyes of those watching weasel politics in PWC. They had probably made promises to constituents long before that night.
But what of the others? Mrs. Covington, Mr. Johns, Dr. Otaigbe? Mr. Lattin was absent. Mrs. Ramirez voted with the staff. She was the only one who exibited the basic respect to accept the hard work of the staff. Didn’t Mrs. Covington, Mr. Johns, and Dr. Otaigbe have enough respect for the folks that had spent literally thousands of hours of work? Obviously not. They lacked the integrity to vote for the recommendation of over 100 people, most of whom had years of experience as math educators. Some of the parents on the committee had been placed there by the school board members themselves.
What I saw was shameful. I am not sure what was worse, the politics or the chicken bok bok bok to stand up and do the right thing. The behavior was sneaky and underhanded. A ‘friendly amendment’ is unprecedented in PWC school board history. Many of the staff members weren’t really sure what had happened and Supervisor Knight had to ask for clarity on what had been decided. Other staff seemed equally confused. The employees had been blindsided.
The school board needs to abide by its own policy. If it is going to select text books, based on political motivation, then it needs to just do it and save everyone’s time. I am sure those teachers would have rather been at home spending time with their families. I doubt they got paid one extra dime for their efforts. If the school board doesn’t value the professional opinions of the staff, get rid of them and replace them with computerized math programs. See how the constituents like that. Some of those school board members didn’t even know how purchasing works for the textbooks. This was the same person who was speaking of text book rigor. He obviously doesn’t realize that Prince William County School curriculum is not based on a textbook, but on the standards of learning for that subject. Textbooks are a tool. Furthermore, teachers have been bitching for years that kids don’t know their multiplication tables or their subtraction facts. The choice of textbook isn’t going to alter this truism one iota. A good set of flash cards and some at-home practice might improve that problem.
Mr. Lattin and Mrs. Ramirez are the good guys. Mr. Lattin wasn’t there. That kept him out of trouble. Mrs. Ramirez supported the staff that had been tasked with a monumental job. She didn’t say one thing and do another. The others need to step up to the plate and be ready to do their own text book selection. I doubt that any teachers in any other subjects are going to be willing to put the time in like the math department did. The math department was slapped in the face.
Mrs. Satterwhite, if you are going to cut your eyes at your buddies for their approval, best to do it when the camera isn’t on you. Mr. Trenum, save the textbook grandstanding for another day. You failed to adequately explain to the audience what was wrong with the textbook selection that won 65 to 16. Was it just that the staff supported one book and you all chose the opposite? That’s what it looked like.
Middle School and elementary school have totally different curriculum needs. Has there ever been a time when there was one adoption of a text book series K-8? I don’t think so. Curriculum compression was discussed. Special text books were selected to cover 3 years of math in 2 years so that advanced students could take all 3 years of middle school math in 2 years and add algebra as their 8th grade math course. The school board managed to screw that up also. Why? They don’t really understand the math curriculum and what has to be accomplished.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Leave the curriculum implementation to the experts–you know, those people who are trained to do a job and who we, the taxpayers, pay the big bucks to for their level of expertise. The school board has condemned the children of Prince William County to 6 years of a really sucky math book that doesn’t match the curriculum. Those people you didn’t trust, the math teachers, will once again have to gather materials from a variety of sources to be able to teach the objectives to the children. It would have been so easy to just adopt a textbook that was the correct resource for the job.
Moon-Howler
I would comment but it is likely I would then be banished to for eternity to the dark screen so I’ll just let sleeping dogs lie.
Link to Feb. 15th School Board Meeting
http://www.pwcstv.com/episode.php?id=1433
@Mom
Now that is a tough punishment. I am not sure I could do that to you, but I am pretty fired up over this issue.
For the record, I am solely responsible for this thread. Elena does not have children in PWC and will not be commenting for that and personal reasons.
I have kids in the PWC schools and am interested in what this is all about. Are they dumbing down the curriculum?
It sounds like that did happen at the middle school level. The middle school curriculum is rigorous and is going to be getting more so.
NTK, try to find time to watch the FEb 1 and 15 SB meetings. I had to do that to totally understand the significance of what happened. You don’t have to watch the entire meeting. You just have to watch the math textbook part of each date.
Need to Know – no, they aren’t dumbing down the curriculum. Both of the texts the committee seriously considered were recommended by the VA DOE and meet or exceed the content requirements in the VA SOLs. The school board chose the text that is sightly less reform or constructivist in its approach to mathematics education.
I was on the textbook evaluation committee and, like the rest of the members, looked at each of the texts in detail. We quickly discarded one because it was confusing. I believe my comment on it went along the lines of “I hate this book” and I wasn’t alone in that opinion.
That left two choices – enVisions Math and Math Connects. Before the sales presentations the ratings of the books based on the rather extensive textbook evaluation rubric was about even with Kindergarten, first and fifth grades preferring enVisions Math and second, third and fourth grades preferring Math Connects. After the sales demos the choices clearly changed, though we were not given an opportunity to discuss or debate the texts following the sales demos.
enVisions was ultimately selected by the committee for the following reasons: (1) its on-line materials and virtual manipulatives were exceptional, and (2) it better supported the inquiry based approach to instruction PWCS uses. enVisions close alignment to Math Investigations was not mentioned in the final report, because, and I wrote this down, “that’s a can of worms we don’t want to open.” Ultimately the only justification provided in the final committee report was the on-line materials and virtual manipulatives. Clearly it wasn’t just the school board members that were making political decisions.
I was also concerned that the only thing made enVisions stand above Connects was its online materials and virtual manipulatives, and many of our students don’t have access to a computer at home or don’t have interactive white boards in their classrooms. I felt it was important for us to select a text that could stand on its own without on-line materials or manipulatives, and enVisions simply couldn’t do that.
Having served on the committee, can honestly say that I preferred Math Connects over enVisionsMath. I felt that Connects covered the topics in greater depth and that the problems provided were more rigorous. I felt that there would only be a few instances where Connects would need to be supplemented, while enVisions would need to be supplemented in many areas just to meet SOL expectations. I felt that Connects had more complete materials to challenge more advanced learners and better guidance for supporting struggling learners. Connects homework assignments were related to the day’s lessons. enVisions homework materials frequently felt like they’d been written by someone who hadn’t even seen the day’s lesson and tried to get students to make cognitive leaps when it hadn’t provided the foundational skills necessary to make those leaps.
I paid particular attention to the materials in each program on fractions and subtraction operations because those are the content areas where PWCS students consistently struggle.
Connects materials on fractions were far superior to enVisions materials on fractions. Connects moved from pictures to concrete problems and more abstract concepts seamlessly while enVisions didn’t even cover core concepts.
enVisions subtraction materials were so poorly designed that they needed to be thrown away. Connects did much better, and even covered the subtraction algorithm clearly.
So I’m OK with the decision the school board made. I do think having the same program from kindergarten to 8th grade will benefit our students greatly and that Connects was a good choice. It won’t be easy moving to Connects as there are substantial content gaps between the current instructional program and what Connects expects of students at each grade level. Our children have become accustomed to working just a few problems, at most, to demonstrate fluency with processes. They’re going to have to adapt to doing multiple problems and to working individually instead of almost exclusively in groups.
It won’t be easy, and there will be lost of complaints from our kids the first few times they have to do 20 problems. The gaps between what we’re currently doing and what Connects expects are significant, and get larger as you progress into higher grades. But I think the decision will benefit our children in the long run.
The people on this blog are naive. This end run was part of the polical agenda long before Satterwhite trounced Richardson. Local blog nests of right wing activism tell the whole story.
Kim, thank you for the detailed history, it jives with my experience and what I have been told by those involved. Loved the “that’s a can of worms we don’t want to open” as it is a typical administration response to issues they have been burned on or misrepresented in the past (pause, count to ten, wait for lightning bolt to be delivered by Moon)
Hey Pi, piss off.
No, they ar not dumbing it down. They are trying to fix 6 years of math investigaitons dumbing down so we can recover.
The committee threw out 5 months of work following a slick presentation from the publishers and brought it on themselves.
The math dept have given the appearence of remaining neutral although we don’t know what lobbying went on behind the scenes regarding their rediculous belief shift to inquiry based math learning.
There’s more to this than meets the eye…
@KimS
I must beg to differ. For starters, I hate the expression ‘dumb down.’ It is a political term that has almost nothing to do with education.
The middle school sub committees did not recommend the Connects book except in one incidence, if memory serves me correctly. The selection recommended by the staff should not have been tampered with by people who lacked extensive classroom experience. Its pretty difficult to create an expert opinion out of something you don’t know. Grades 6-8 are unique when it comes to math and nothing like elementary. Yet the wishes of the middle school math committee were completely disregarded by people without expert experience.
Tell me KimS, were you serving as staff or a parent on the textbook adoption committee?
Perhaps some of the people who served on the committee didn’t like the landslide ch
Goodness what a venomous piece of drivel! Actually the Board had more available to them than the empty powerpoint presentation and “summary report” presented. And I commend each and every one of them who actually put time and research into the issue vice the typical PWCS Board route of “rubber-stamping” anything the Superintendent places in front of them. Given the fact that the last text adoption cycle saw the staff lie to the Board by telling them that their darling elementary program (Math Investigations) was Virginia Board of Education “approved” knowing it was not, it was very refreshing to see the Board actually exercise its oversight responsibilities in support of those who elected them in the first place.
Perhaps it would be too much to ask if you actually reviewed any of the textbooks ultimately selected for K-8 mathematics? If you had done so you would find that the selected materials are robust in content, support multiple approaches to learning, present topics logically and thoroughly, promote actual mastery of concepts and applications, and provide differentiation for all learners and robust support for teachers.
Oh, and for the “good guys” you refer to. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to query Ms. Ramirez just why elementary schools in her district sent home letters to parents over Christmas break demanding that parents teach their 5th grade children multiplication facts – or else?
It’s pretty clear that Moonhowlings turned this issue over to a disgruntled ideologue who likely brought that dismal Math Investigations program into PWCS in the first place.
MH – I’m not sure I’d agree with your concern about the MS suggestions. The MS team selected a text called Big Ideas Math for regular 6th and 7th grade math. One of the reasons they selected it was because the kids coming out of elementary school don’t have the foundational skills they need to do MS math. Things like add, subtract, multiply, and divide quickly and accurately without a calculator, or do anything other than visualize fractions.
So the school board selected the more rigorous text, and selected it for kindergarten through 8th grade in the hopes that the consistency from kindergarten to 8th grade would reduce those knowledge gaps.
Perhaps MH would care to enlighten us with the reasons she doesn’t like the selection made?
Have you looked at the texts?
Do you like math investigations?
Do you have personal reasons for your objections?
@Moon-howler
I’ve spoken with teachers on the MS committee, and they were happy with the decision to select Connects over Big Ideas, provided Connects was used in K – 5. According to them, Big Ideas was selected primarily because it addressed the knowledge gaps from elementary to middle school and having the same text series from K – 8th grade should eliminate those gaps.
With a kid in Math Investigations and another in the previous program, dumbed down is a real term with real meaning. Just ask the math tutors of the area how it worked out for them…
Mom, Pi has as much right to an opinion on here as anyone else.
Frankly, if the school board was going to by pass the text book selection recommendation by the staff, they should have just made their choice in the first place and not wasted everyone’s time and effort. It was a political move and many of us non-republicans knew it was coming a year ago.
What I find amazing is that the school board was able to pull this charade off without the local press getting hold of it. I am not sure I ever recall something like this happening. It reminds me of the days when the 4 Horsemen rode through PWC. That might have been before your time.
I would be curious to know if any of those school board members who orchestrated this soon- to-be disaster met with parents who might have not been satisfied with certain outcomes. I would also be interested in knowing if any of those elected folks met elsewhere to discuss their strategy.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
This was set up by us parents (and I’m not a repub) appearing at board meeting after board meeting pointing out the failings of math investigations.
Where were you then?
@KimS
I can’t imagine why they would be happy about ending up with something that didn’t address their needs. Did they mention, just out of curiosity, if the texts selected for extended classes addressed curriculum concerns for 1.5 grade levels instead of just one?
Skipping the 8th grade year is not acceptable if one is taking alegbra.
I go back to the tampering with the work of over a hundred people. Let’s just cut to the chase. Is that really an honest way to do business? Do we want the experts to make educational choices or do we want the politicians to make educational choices.
“Do we want the experts to make educational choices or do we want the politicians to make educational choices.”
Good question but referring back to Pi’s assertion of blog naivete, you left out a group, namely those “experts” who have been little more than than certain publisher’s whores, and in this instance “whore” is being used in its proper context.
@MoM
I actually think that is a rather dangerous assertion to be making. I don’t know of anyone working for the county who is a publisher’s whore and that includes school board electees.
Having said that, it would be my guess that anyone could become one. Do you think having an elected official making an uninformed choice is any guarantee that you won’t get a publisher’s whore?
I think we might as well bring Corey in to choose math textbooks. He would probably at least chose the one that was the most fun. That in itself might be a plus for student interest. After all, they gotta read it to learn from it.
I can see the headlines right now: Prince William Math Textbook Selection Committee whores for free pens and pencils. Surely times haven’t gotten that tough.
If you think someone had done something illegal, by all means you need to go to Paul Eberts office and file a complaint. Meanwhile, that is the oldest trick in the book.
@KimS
I am not sure what you mean by ‘more rigorous’ text. You say that elementary kids coming up don’t know basic calculations. I would suggest getting some classroom sets of flash cards. That is recognition and memorization.
Middle school students need more problem solving, especially with real world problems and critical thinking applications. The SOL tests are getting much tougher and it will no longer be possible to play multiple guess on the entire SOL test. That is where the rigor is needed.
I do agree that not all kids are ready and I am very much opposed to slapping kids in the more advanced classes just to fill them up. The regular courses need to address middle school curriculum. Using the same textbooks for K-8 probably won’t work.
Perhaps the biggest reason for concern is that all of this was done in the dark. There was little discussion and no 2 ways discussion unless you want to consider drilling and grilling staff to answer questions like trained seals a discussion. I would say that for such deviance to have taken place, a public hearing needed to have happened, to inform the tax payers that this go-round, the school board was going to select the texts.
You are still not making an sense. It’s not the same textbook k-8, it’s the same series.
It covers different material appropriate to each grade and follows the SOLs closely.
The board were not uninformed; you are just wrong on that. With math investigations when they said “let’s got for it”, that was uninformed.
From my perspective, not having any personal investment, all my children are raised and on their own, successfuly I might add, I wonder about the relationship between the school board and the Teachers.
The idea that teachers would purposefully choose an inappropriate text book that would not address the curriculum flies in the face of a “self preservation”. Teachers are being judged on the performance of their students and their ability to pass the required state standards.
If the elected school board does not even trust teachers to research and choose the best practice textbook, how can they trust them to teach the children?
@Moon-howler
I’m not sure Connects “doesn’t meet their needs”. The rating, at least at the elementary level based on the evaluation rubric, was very close.
In choosing Connects for 6 – 8th grades, plus the pre-Algebra text, they’ll be using the same series of books in all of the classes – regular, extended, and advanced. Since extended 6th and 7th grade math are the same standards, just compressed to eliminate redundancies and speed instruction, I’d imagine the extended 6th grade classes would use both the 6th and 7th grade texts, and the extended 7th grade classes would use the 7th and 8th grade texts. I imagine the 6th grade advanced classes would use some mix of the 6th, 7th , and 8th grade materials.
MH – the MS teachers I know have all said that the elementary students they’re getting can’t add, subtract, multiply, or divide. They can’t perform operations with fractions because they don’t know how to simplify fractions or how to find common denominators. They can’t do long division at all, and just don’t get decimals. Our test scores have shown consistently year after year that our elementary kids aren’t getting basic things, like subtraction, or anything beyond visualizing fractions.
That tells me that the instructional program we have in place right now isn’t working.
You seem to be assuming that the school board made this decision without doing any research. I’m not sure who your source is, but that source doesn’t jive with what I saw. School board members, Ms Satterwhite, Mr Trenum, Mr Johns, Ms Bell, and Ms Covington all requested and received the evaluation forms completed by the committee members. Ms Satterwhite even cited the comments from several of those forms in her questions and comments. They requested and received the lists of the pros and cons of each text that had been posted around the rooms. One of the school board members (either Mr Trenum or Ms Bell) cited some of the items from those lists in their comments / questions. Ms Satterwhite and Ms Bell even compared the texts side by side in the same lesson to see for themselves the difference in the depth of coverage. Our school board members, at least from what I saw, absolutely took the time to identify the problems in our current instructional program and determine which text would best address those problems.
The inquiry based Investigations program we’re using in our schools isn’t providing our children with the knowledge they need to succeed in Math. Forget algebra – with the program we have in place right now they can’t even do Middle School Math. enVisions was a continuation of the same failing program. The school board had to decide to continue more of the same failing programs or go a different route. They chose a different route, and I commend them for that decision.
MH – per Ms. Knight PWCS hasn’t done drill and kill in years and we are not about to start now. Quote – unquote@Moon-howler
All of that failure despite continually improving test scores. Imagine that.
Kim, do you really think all kids not knowing how to do operations with fractions or knowing basic facts is a new phenomena? I can assure you it is not. It has been an on-going problem in math for decades. It isn’t limited to Prince William County either.
It is a national problem. So what do you do? Do you have a program that emphasizes calculations, neglecting problem solving and critical mathematical thinking or do you deemphacize the calculations and go for the problem solving, relying heavily on the use of calculators? What is needed more from workers when these current students graduate? Is there one answer to this?
I suppose this might be the place where I say, stop! Says who? Who says our kids can’t do middle school math and who says that MI is the cause? I am not defending MI nor am I embracing it. I expect it has some good and some bad, like all approaches. The one thing that is a given is, MI isn’t a curriculum. The curriculum is the SOL for that grade level in math. MI is just a process to learn the curriculum.
Kim, what you are missing is that I don’t think anyone on the school board is certified math teacher or a math educator. That is not to say that none of them have an opinion. We can all have opinions, but their training isn’t in that area nor is their experience.
I watched both meetings, not once but twice. Somewhere we are losing sight of the fact that reading about something isn’t the same as getting in there and doing it, year after year, with living breathing students like so many people on that selection committee have done.
I think the word compressed probably is misleading from both our points of view. Because the extended kids are more capable, the teaching goes faster. The students cover a year and a half in a year. If I were chosing a textbook, I would choose one that was more challenging than the one the general student used. I would also have to buy 2 rather than 3, saving the taxpayers some money. Also, my neighbor told me that Connect has several years of expensive consumable. Since you are on the committee, can you shed some light on that? My neighbor didn’t know costs.
To all readers–
There are people waiting to have their first comments approved. Some folks apparently are unfamiliar with our rules. Please go to the upper right hand corner to see our guidelines.
One I will just spell out. I do not allow county or city employees to be bashed. Why? They cannot fight back. Elected officials are one thing, within reason.
That has been a long standing rule, even though some folks continue to push the envelope.
Moon, envelope pusher here, I must commend KimS for taking the time to write an extraordinarily detailed yet concise description of what has taken us to this point.
I would also add that you are correct, this has become a highly politicized spin game. I would offer however that the spin game was started by the Math Department and well before all the local right wing activist blogs started chiming in, I would know because both I experienced it first-hand and am by definition a right wing activist, just not one of the looney tunes ones (IMHO).
You asked offline if I had ever had a fight with a mutual acquaitance, the answer is yes and a quite public one. The one thing I will not tolerate from elected officials OR STAFF is a presentation of half-truths to a generally uninformed but trusting audience. What made this particular incident more troubling was the Hubris exhibited by that individual when I had the temerity to ask reasonable and well-researched questions. Asking the principal to throw me out was the icing on the cake. Fortunately when he finally figured out whose smiling face he had been asked to evict, he turned heel ran back to the front of the room and told him/her to do it himself/herself. Guess that wasn’t in her job description as nothing further came of it. This is damn personal to me and yes flashcards and by rote learning would be nice but a majority of the teachers at the elementary school level (at least at my children’s school) are not willing to buck the Math Department instructions and teach that way. I don’t particularly care if the children understand why 7 x 7 = 49 so long as they can spit the answer out in a nanosecond without the use of manipulatives, fingers or toes. Ever wonder why McDonalds has pictures of the food on the cash register, answer the employees can’t do simple math. There, got it off my chest without naming a single individual even though he/she richly deserves it.
@Mom
Walking right up to the water’s edge on that one.
Were you using your best matters also?
@MoM
You apparently never played jacks as a kid. That is how I learned the concept of multiplcation and division.
Opinions aren’t wrong. They just often don’t agree, which is the case here.
Perhaps you should stick to your point instead of personalizing your wrath at me. I am unimportant. I just buy the ink here and watch the board meetings on my computer.
Why do you think a school board should be selecting the text book when the standards is for recommendations to be made through committee and concensus?
My question continues to be, did the school board or members of the school board with the same ideological beliefs meet someplace to discuss this move? Everyone seemed to know what their job was.
@Ed
How do you know I am not one of those math tutors? Wouldn’t that be something?
I do have to occasionally dip my toes in on the off chance I may need to do a full gainer off the high board in the future.
@Rhonda R
Did you interpret that to me students would never practice basic facts?
I interpret drill and kill to mean giving a kid 50 long division problems. That certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t do a flash card game at the end of a math lesson. The whole program just can’t be about learning to do the 4 basic operations, year after year.
Oh, and yes, I was using my Sunday go to Meeting manners, such as they are. Polite yes, informed yes, somewhat cynical, you’re damn right.
@Mom
Don’t try it until the cameras arrive. Make sure there is no shallow end.
my children have enjoyed the exploration of math as opposed to the rote memorization. we do practice those boring math facts at home. It was pretty simple, and fun, for us to incorporate within the family dinner setting! I prefer the idea of doing the boring stuff at home and leavng the more experiential component of math in the classroom.
Some people always like having their own way. This outcome was a foregone conclusion.
Mistress Moon, did you think the loud and proud would do anything other than run to their mothership?
Third grade scores are finally back up to where they were before Investigations was forced on us, 4th grade was a new test so you can’t look there, and 5th grade is holding steady (they did decline last year, but that was only one year so it’s too early to tell if that was a fluke or not). But that’s just when you look at PWCS alone. When you compare PWCS to the rest of the state, we’ve gone from being a division that was consistently in the top 25% of districts, based on our pass percentages, to about average for the state.
The teachers I’ve spoken with who were on the committee felt that having a consistent series from kindergarten to 8th grade would make a significant difference in addressing the knowledge gaps between elementary and middle school.
You’re making an assumption here without anything to back it up. You assume the text they selected neglects problem solving and critical thinking. It does not. You also assume that math education is an either or situation – you either teach computational fluency or you teach problems solving, not both. While the folks who back Investigations liked to make that argument, it was completely baseless. You do both – computational fluency and problem solving – and you do it in the same text without calculators. Singapore Math does it, and so does Connects. enVisions did as well, but it was limited in both computational fluency and conceptual understanding. In order to meet even the minimum expectations set forth in the VA SOLs, enVisions would have needed to be supplemented heavily with outside materials.
Sorry, but no.
The SOLs are not our curriculum. They are the knowledge expectations for our students for each grade level or subject. They are what we expect our kids to know before they progress to the next level. How we teach them what they need to know is our curriculum – and it includes the instructional materials and approach we follow. Investigations was and is the curriculum we follow for elementary mathematics. It dictates a particular instructional approach and provides materials that are aligned with that approach.
So? Do you have to be a physician to recognize that your child is sick? To recognize that the medication your child is taking might not be doing what it’s supposed to do?
When it comes to education, you don’t have to be a teacher to recognize that something isn’t working. When third grade teachers lament that their kids just don’t get subtraction, or when an entire school is forced to threaten their 5th graders with a weekend of detention if they don’t memorize their math facts, you’ve got a problem. Third graders should get subtraction. Fifth graders should know their multiplication and division facts to automatic recall. If they don’t, and the problem is widespread, then your instructional program is failing.
I was at the first meeting – I skipped the second. I think the issue got lost to the debates over the budget which hit at the second meeting when the vote was taken. Sometimes being a school board member means recognizing that things are working and taking steps to correct those mistakes – even if the school administration doesn’t agree. The math department was instrumental in bringing Investigations to PWCS and believes that Investigations is a great program. They do not and will not admit that there are any problems with the program. They won’t even look at the data to see if anything pops up! I know because I did look at the data and they were dumbfounded by it.
The consumable workbooks were only for kindergarten, first, and second grades. enVisions, the other text we seriously considered for elementary grades, also had consumable workbooks for kindergarten, first, and second grades. I don’t recall there being a significant difference between the prices for the Connects or enVisions workbooks, though I don’t have my pricing sheet anymore can can’t give you the specific numbers. I just remember looking at them and thinking they were about the same.
That’s it, though isn’t it? The textbook review committees recommend the texts they like best. The school board either accepts or rejects their recommendation. I was on the committee. I didn’t like how the recommendation was written because I felt it didn’t clearly and strongly make the case for enVisions over Connects or Big Ideas over Connects. I pushed for a stronger justification and the only thing I heard of substance regarding enVisions over Connects was that enVisions had better online materials and was so much like Investigations that transition would be easy.
I’m not sure better on-line materials or similarity to Investigations was sufficient to justify the selection. I’d actually suggested recommending both, and letting the individual schools decide, but that was not a popular idea.
I can’t answer that, because I’m not on the school board and am not privy to their private conversations. I suspect that the decisions are generally made before the board members take their seats to vote on something. I suspect many of the questions school board members ask of staff are primed in advance so that no one ends up looking like they don’t know what they’re doing. Again, I’m not on the school board, so these are just my suspicions, but after years of attending or watching school board meetings, I suspect there’s a lot of decision making and scripting that goes on behind closed doors.
Kim, the standards of learning objectives are the state curriculum for a given course. I don’t know who you have been talking to but a text book is never the curriculum.
It appears to me as though there has been some role confusion. Reading the summary of the article posted by Moonhowler, best practice in the past was to defer to the teachers committee for their recommendation.
@KimS
Kim said:
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And that is a real problem. School boards are elected officials and must adhere to the same laws as any other elected body. No more than 2 elected officials can meet to discuss the people’s business unless calling an official public meeting. The reason for this law is to ensure transparency and public participation. It cuts down on back-room wheeler dealing. Most importantly, it is the right of the people to be privy to those discussions which involve public policy and public spending.
Kim, I think you have some points certainly worthy of discussion. I am going to ask you to please put them in smaller block posts. I have some visual issues that only get worse the later it gets. Its my problem/fault, not yours.
If we have started dialogue then something has been accomplished. A Friendly Amendment was actually a hostile take over of what used to be the job of math professionals.
Can they do it? Sure. School Boards, if operating within the law, can do what they want until challenged out of office. However, the public has a right to know.
What essentially happened was the School Board did a major job of pay back. Are we ok with that? Obviously some folks here are. Not everyone thinks that is the way government should operate.
Now we can begin a dialogue. The dirty laundry is out in the open.
@Moon-howler
I think the reason some of us got hot under the colar is the article seems to suggest that the board was uninformed and math connects may not be a good program.
The choice was between 2 reasonable programs; one more enquiry based and one more direct.
After the previous program was rubber-stamped by the board, results dropped and math abilities suffered. I would much rather have an engaged board that understands the problem.
The rubric choices should have led to connects but slick marketting won the day. Too much weight was placed on online materials and teacher support. The author of one program was apparently going to write the lesson plan if needed…there was a lot of hype in that phase.
@Frank P.
Previous practice is not the same as best practice.
The board got into hot water over school placement and many other areas for just accepting the recommendations rather than questioning and overseeing which in my opinion is their function.
Hello Ed,
For me, I just wonder how the teachers cannot be viewed as the best experts due to their knowledge of the particular subject matter, in this case math, and the expectation that they will be the ones teaching the material in the classroom, not School Board members.
Thanks very much to those who took the time, especially KimS, to help us understand this better.
I think that “dumbing down” and “teaching to the lowest common denominator” are meaningful and useful terms, and I don’t want to see that happen in PWC. As I wrote in a previous thread, I spent several years as a full-time academic. I left one college where I was employed in the 90s largely because the administration’s policy became focusing on the lowest common denominator to boost enrollment rather than focusing on excellence. That was a small college and many of my students transferred to larger state universities to complete their undergraduate degrees. At statewide conferences among others in my field I was frequently complemented on how well-prepared my students were for the advanced courses they subsequently took at the larger universities. The college was no longer going to let me teach that way so for that reason and others, I moved on to other things.
Here’s my concern. I have kids ranging from elementary school to high school, all in PWC schools. The high schooler is pursuing science and engineering. The elementary schoolers are scoring off the charts and I’m sure will pursue similar challenging fields – I’m hoping for something like finance :-). My IQ is between 150 and 160 and the kids are following suit. Will my kids be prepared for university study in engineering, physics, finance, etc., all math-intensive fields, as a result of going through PWC schools, or do Mrs. NTK and I need to find a way to put them in private schools?
Investigations was not and is not just a textbook. It is a method of teaching with instructional materials that accompany it. The Investigations materials even refer to the program as a curriculum. Saying that Investigations is noting more than a textbook is like saying that a hurricane is nothing more than a storm.
I’m not sure there are meetings. As I said before, I’m not on the school board and am not privy to their conversations, and all of this is just my suspicions. But having attended and watched many school board and BOCS meetings, I suspect many of the board members know how they’ll vote before they ever take their seats. I suspect the share their questions with staff before the meetings so that staff are prepared. They may change their minds once they hear the other members questions and staff responses, but I suspect many of them have already made up their minds when they take their seats.
I’m not sure it was payback. I think it was the school board finally admitting that there are problems with the mathematics instructional program the division forced on the schools, and taking steps to address those problems. Investigations is not the unmitigated success the district would like us to believe it is. The division has been and is unwilling to step back from their adherence to the program to examine the data and see if there are problems. I have serious concerns with any administration that is so committed to a particular program that they refuse to even look to see how things are going.
The school board’s job is to step in when the school division isn’t doing its job adequately. Continuing a failing program, in my opinion, is doing your job inadequately.
My kids may not have 150 IQ’s but then again, that is not how I would predict success or judge the quality of a person. You may not have intended it, but you have presented yourself in a very unflattering self egrandizing way.
I have enjoyed exploring the meaning of math with my kids as opposed to repetive work sheets or pages of math problems. Teaching in our house doesn’t end with the school day. We incorporate learning throughout our home life, math included. Cooking is all about math, building a bird house is all about math.