SNOW DAYS!

Just a reminder to check your school web site and local TV / radio stations for school closings. PWC has 9 built in snow days, so, as we’ve all seen over the years, if things are iffy, schools will close.

When Will the School Board Demand Answers?

The following letter was forwarded to us from one of our contributors. It was sent to Milt Johns, Chairman of the PWC School Board. I have to say that I agree with the sentiments expressed in the letter. It is mid-December and the district still hasn’t presented the elementary school mathematics performance data. As the report summarizing that data isn’t on the agenda for the next board meeting, it’s not likely we’ll see it until January 2010.

That’s unacceptable.

It’s the school board’s job to hold the school district accountable. I wonder if they will?

****Letter****

As you know, I’ve been trying to get PWCS staff to let me know when the Year Three Math Investigations survey and test scores report will be presented to the public and the school board. This question should be very simple to answer. Apparently, it’s complicated.

I, and several colleagues of mine, have been attempting to obtain the report entitled “Student Performance by Question” for 2006 – 2009 for our children’s schools for the past couple of months. We have not been successful.

I can not express how disappointed I am with this. The school district has had the survey results since the end of last school year. The SDMT results have been available since July. The SOL results have been available since August. The report listing student performance by question is provided by Pearson and has been available for 2009 since August.

It’s December – almost Christmas – and the school district still has not been able to consolidate those results into a coherent format to present to the public. Worse, based on the response I got from XXXXXXX, it appears that the senior staff is either unwilling or unable to estimate when their review of the report will be complete so that the data can be presented.

Your job, as an elected representative of the people, is to hold the district accountable. To demand that they present unvarnished data in a timely manner about student performance and teacher and parent satisfaction with the instructional programs in place in our public schools. At a minimum I’d expect that you’d ask senior staff to commit to a reasonable date to report on student performance under the controversial and questionable math program they selected to the school board.

The agenda for the next school board meeting has been released and the report is not listed. Do you honestly believe that presenting a report on student performance in the 2008 / 2009 school year is timely if it’s presented in 2010 – just four months before students sit for the next SOL exam? Middle and High school results were presented months ago for every subject. Why does elementary school lag so far behind, just for math?

Worse yet, what if the results indicate that there’s cause to be concerned. Presenting the results in January, or later, doesn’t leave enough time to address concerns. Imagine if the rate at which our children pass the 3rd grade math SOL has declined from the 74th percentile in the state to the 52nd percentile since 2006, despite unchanged overall pass rates. Imagine if student performance reports indicate that our children consistently fail to grasp a topic from year to year. That that lack of comprehension carried forward from grade to grade and was compounded when more complex concepts that built upon that topic were introduced. Would you be concerned, would you ask district officials to indicate what changes they’d implemented in the instructional program to address these concerns? I know I would.

Last year the district failed to report the increases and decreases in pass rates at each school because they were never asked to do so. District officials even had the audacity to tell Mrs Ramirez that pass rates at the schools in her district were improving when they were down at all but one. Do you think district officials would inform you of our district’s decline in state percentile rank, assuming they’ve even considered it, without you asking? Do you think district officials would report areas of concern, based on our detailed SDMT and SOL reports, and inform you of the adaptations they’ve made to the instructional program to address those areas of concern, assuming they’ve examined that data and made adaptations, without you asking? Would you ask?

Our math department is wedded to the Investigations program. The only way they will change the instructional program is if you direct them to do so. The only way you can direct district officials to change the instructional program is if you and the public have enough information to identify areas of concern and those areas of concern are identified early enough in the school year that changes can be implemented in a timely manner.

January isn’t timely.

A colleague of mine was given a copy of the 2009 student performance report for his school. He asked if the report was available for prior years so that he could examine the results to see if we could identify trouble spots and trends. The Principal told him she wasn’t aware if the data existed and that it would be really hard to get at.

Clearly, district officials are not examining our children’s test results to determine if there are areas of concern. While my children’s teachers are exceptional, I can tell you from experience that the math instructional program hasn’t been adapted in my children’s classrooms. The program is still all Investigations with only slightly more emphasis on facts and a little more practice.

School districts the size of Prince William County don’t turn on a dime. Learning the survey and overall test results in January doesn’t give you enough time to do anything but nod politely and pat the district on the back. Meanwhile gaps go unaddressed and another grade gets left behind.

As a citizen, a taxpayer, and a voter I expect you to demand timely and complete reporting of student performance to the public from the district. I expect you to challenge district officials and hold them accountable when they spin results, misrepresent them, or refuse to provide them without excessive charges. And I expect you to demand change, when it’s justified, in enough time that the district can reasonably implement such changes.

None of that is happening with our math program. It’s all just whitewash.

I am very disappointed.

The Case of The Missing Test Scores

When will Prince William County Schools be presenting the 2008 / 2009 school year results of it’s Math Investigations program?

Each year PWCS students in 1st and 2nd grade take the SDMT exam and parents, teachers, and administrators complete a lengthy survey gauging their opinions about the math program, at considerable cost to county taxpayers I might add. Those results, along with SOL scores, are supposed to be presented in the public forum at a school board meeting.

Last year the results were presented in September. It’s almost December and the results have still not been made available to the public. Why?

Several parents have asked their school board members and school district officials when the information will be presented. None have gotten any response.

One parent sent an email to district officials asking what the percentage correct was on the SOL as opposed to the percentage passing. This parent was asked to provide a $200 deposit just so that school district officials could determine whether there was sufficient data in the warehouse to answer that basic question.

It’s past time for test and survey results to be presented to the public. It is high time someone in the school district present full, unvarnished data so that we can all see where the program is working and where it’s failing. The school board needs to hold PWC officials accountable and demand that this data be presented.

Why the school board, apparently, refuses to do so is a question best left for voters to decide.

Rigorous Standards are Part of the Battle

With the recent release if the NGA’s Common College Readiness Standards there’s been quite a bit of emphasis on academic standards lately.  But tough, appropriate standards are only half of the battle.   We also have to be concerned with how the standards are implemented.

Take Virginia, and its Standards of Learning.

In its recent revision of the Virginia Standards of Learning for Mathematics, the Virginia Department of Education patted itself on the back for eliminating calculators in elementary grades and reducing the number of standards.  Unfortunately this is nothing more than a shell game.

In Grade 3 Virginia students sit for the SOL exams for the first time.  Just glancing at the 2009 revision of the grade 3 standards reveals that the number of standards has dropped from 25 to 20, and calculators, which used to be an integral part of the grade 3 standards, have been removed.  If you only looked at the standards you’d be convinced that Virginia had successfully reduced the number of standards and eliminated calculator use amongst elementary students.

You’d be wrong on both counts.

The Standards of Learning for math are broken into segments – Number and Number Sense, Computation and Estimation, Measurement, Geometry, Probability and Statistics, and Patterns, Functions and Algebra.  Under the previous SOLs, Grade 3 students were expected to demonstrate fluency on 25 distinct standards. That number has been reduced to 20 in the 2009 version of the SOLs.  But closer examination reveals that only two standards have actually been removed – the two standards on decimals were moved from Grade 3 to Grade 4.  The remaining reduction in the count of standards was accomplished by consolidating “like” standards.

For instance, in the Number and Number Sense strand, standards 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 were simply combined together under standard 3.1 as 3.1 (a), (b), and (c) and the two standards on fractions were combined together as points (a) and (b) under one standard.

In Grade 4 the number of math standards was cut from 22 to 16, yet only two concepts were removed and a number of concepts were actually expanded in scope.  The same “technique” appears to have been used in almost every grade.

This is not to imply that the consolidation of standards was poorly done or that the revised standards lower expectations for Virginia students.  However, claiming that the goal of reducing the number of standards was met can not be supported because that goal was accomplished by combining standards rather than eliminating unnecessary content.

The standards themselves only tell part of the story; the rest of the story comes from how those standards are implemented.  In Virginia the state develops a Curriculum Framework which explains each standard in more detail and provides the essential understanding, knowledge, and skills students are expected to obtain and demonstrate to have “mastered” each standard.  While calculators have been removed from the elementary school standards themselves in Virginia, they rear their ugly heads in full force in the Curriculum Framework.

In Virginia, calculators are suggested as an essential learning tool for children starting in kindergarten.  In the currently proposed Curriculum Framework for kindergarten, calculators are suggested as an essential tool for teaching kindergarten students how to skip count, for basic addition and subtraction facts for 1st and 2nd grade students, and in 5th grade calculators are recommended for any problem which is “too tedious” to solve by hand.  This is in a grade where the most difficult standard calls for dividing a three digit decimal by a three digit decimal where only one digit isn’t a zero (e.g. .888 / .001).

I recognize that calculators are “limited” to skip counting in kindergarten, but I have to ask what educational value is derived from having a 5-year-old hit the plus sign 10 times when he’s learning how to skip count by tens to 100, or what problem a 5th grade student would have to solve that would be so tedious that plugging and chugging the numbers into a calculator provided a better understanding of the concept than solving the problem manually.

There are many states, like Virginia, with strong standards and really bad instructional programs.  The opening for poor programs comes when the standards are bogged down with unnecessary content and dumbed down with calculators.  That Virginia requires elementary students to use calculators, and allows them on the 5th grade SOL exams, is a travesty.

Common Core “College Ready” Standards Inadequate

Several months ago the National Governor’s Association, as part of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, issued a draft of it’s “College Readiness” standards. These standards claim to provide the essential mathematical skills necessary for High School students to move onto college level mathematics courses.

Unfortunately, the standards do nothing of the sort. They fail to provide any standards for high mathematical competencies necessary for students to compete for and obtain degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math (STEM). Furthermore, the “College Ready” standards fail to address mastery of numerous Algebra II and Geometry topics which are necessary for inclusion in non-STEM fields at many Colleges and Universities across this country.

According to the US Coalition for World Class Math, “This omission of significant portions of essential Algebra II and Geometry content renders the Common Core Standards inadequate for students who will enter undergraduate programs in STEM or even non-STEM disciplines in much of the country.” The Coalition encourages the states participating in the Common Core Initiative (and this includes Virginia) to refrain from adopting the “College-Readiness” Standards until they have adequately identified the content required for success in credit-bearing mathematics courses in their state universities.

You can find the US Coalition’s full review of the “College Ready” standards here.

Seems the Teach Math Right Petition was Correct….

The Teach Math Right petition states the following as documented deficiencies of TERC Investigations:

DOCUMENTED DEFICIENCIES OF “Investigations”:

• DOES NOT teach proven standard, simple efficient and effective methods of solving mathematics problems.
• DOES NOT promote mastery of basic arithmetic facts.
• DOES NOT teach mastery of multiplication tables.
• DOES NOT teach simple long division.
• DOES NOT provide sufficient practice for children to master math concepts and applications.
• DOES overemphasize the use of calculators.
• DOES rely on “group think” and “discovery” by children vice individual mastery through teacher instruction and quality materials.
• DOES progress at a remedial pace.

Even now the PWCS Math site contains a document claiming that these statements are false.  Yet again, however, the facts show that statements made in the petition drafted by Greg Barlow are absolutely TRUE.

Lets’ look at those points one by one.

DOES NOT teach proven standard, simple efficient and effective methods of solving mathematics problems

This is True.  The standard algorithms are not taught.  They’re each covered in one 75 minute session which even the authors of TERC admit amount to “study” , but they aren’t taught.  Certainly not to fluency or even close mastery.

DOES NOT promote mastery of basic arithmetic facts

True. Just ask any local 1st grader what 15 – 8 is.

DOES NOT teach mastery of multiplication tables.

True. Just ask the parents who just got the division letter.

DOES NOT teach simple long division.

True. TERC admits that long division is not included in the program. PWCS has added long division as a single 75 minute supplementary lesson in 5th grade. Anyone want to bet how many students will understand long division after that lesson? Yet I’m quite sure the PWCS math staff will claim that that one lesson teaches long division to mastery. Heck – if the kids spend 2 weeks skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s in 2nd grade I’m sure one day with long division is sufficient (that was sarcasm).

DOES NOT provide sufficient practice for children to master math concepts and applications.

True. Clearly, if sufficient practice had been allocated to learning concepts and applications then 5th graders wouldn’t be struggling with their division facts.

DOES overemphasize the use of calculators.

True. See our previous articles here and here.

DOES rely on “group think” and “discovery” by children vice individual mastery through teacher instruction and quality materials

Know what you get when four 2nd graders attempt to figure out the number line for subtraction? Four 2nd graders who don’t know how to subtract.

DOES progress at a remedial pace

Sticker math. Need I say more?

There are so many instances of lies and misrepresentations by PWCS officials that it’s almost laughable. Almost, because these are the people who are supposed to be providing the programs our kids follow.

You can still sign the petition, here, or send an email, here, or, better yet, come to a board meeting and let the school board know how you feel.

TERC Investigations Doesn’t “Do” Division

One of TERC Investigations many shortfalls is the fact that it just doesn’t teach division well.  In fact, it barely teaches division at all.  The division materials covered in 5th grade are all largely supplemental.  Long division, by the way, is covered in a single 75 minute class. PWCS must be extremely thankful that calculators are allowed on the SOL exam in 5th grade.

Over the weekend we began hearing reports of an interesting letter sent home to parents of PWCS 5th grade students.  The letter states the following:

Parents,

Today your child took the attached assessment on basic division facts.  They were given 2 minutes to complete as may problems as they could.  After 2 minutes, I had them switch to a pen and complete the remaining problems.  Please talk with your child about how they did.  I would like you to discuss where there are strengths and weaknesses in your child’s division.  Please develop a plan for improvement with your child below.

I_________________________(child’s name), with the support of my parents, plan to

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________.

to learn my basic division facts.

Student Signature_________________________________

Parents Signature_________________________________

Please return this completed form on XXXX

Know what?  Division facts (like 81 / 9) are basic core competencies our children should have acquired and mastered in 3rd grade – according to the state standards of learning and the PWCS curriculum.  It is inexcusable for any child to still be struggling with his or her division facts in 5th grade.

This ought to be warning sign to any parents with children in PWCS or any school district that follows TERC Investigations.  After close to 6 years of TERC your child will not be able to complete the simple arithmatic  expected of a 3rd grader.  If you want your children to be able to complete a college level mathematics class, or even remotely envision a future in a math dependent field for them, then you need to hire a math tutor or start teaching math at home.

School Overcrowding is Good – At Least in PWC

It seems like Avendale, the proposed 300 – 500 home development in the rural crescent in Bristow, is back on the schedule for the PWC BOCS.

Our previous article, Let’s Cram More Kids Into Overcrowded Schools, discusses the development in more detail.

For families in the Bristow / Gainesville area this is a big deal. Our children have never attended schools that weren’t severely overcrowded. The local high school had to rent a bathroom trailer because there were so many kids and so few bathrooms that the school was violating health codes. Recess is rationed at the elementary schools, the hallways are jammed. It can take 5 minutes to walk from the entrance of the elementary school to the classrooms at the start of the day. One local elementary school, which has been overcrowded for more than 9 years, is literally out of space for trailers and two more are expected next year.

More on PWC 2009 SOL Scores

The state breaks SOL rates into a number of categories – All, Male and Female, LEP and Not LEP, Economically Disadvantaged and Not Economically Disadvantaged, and others.

Limited English Proficiency (LEP) students are required to take the Math SOL and to have their scores aggregated into the overall (All) scores for the school they attend. LEP student’s scores are not aggregated for English, Science, or History. Because so much of the exam is language dependent, the state allows school districts to use an alternate assessment, the VGLA, for some LEP students.

About 76.5% of PWC elementary students are English proficient while 23.5% have limited english proficiency (LEP).  In the Spring of 2009 PWCS increased the percentage of LEP students tested with the VGLA. Because of the increased use of the VGLA and the shifting LEP population at some schools, it is difficult to note trends in pass or advanced rates when examining the overall rates for a given school.

In order to  eliminate that variability, rather than examine the overall rates for PWC, we examined pass and advanced pass rates for the English Proficient and LEP students as separate populations. We looked at pass and advanced pass rates for those populations on a year by year basis to see if we could spot trends and on a cohort, or class, basis.  We also compared PWC’s rates to those state-wide and in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties to see if trends were unique to PWC or occurring in our neighboring jurisdictions.

Our analysis is below.

Calculators, for Kindergarten Kids, in VA?

If you’re wondering what to get your 5 year old this year for Christmas or his / her birthday, you might want to consider a calculator.    In Virginia calculators are a major part of our elementary mathematics curriculum,  starting in Kindergarten.

Yes, Kindergarten.