EduIssues

Continue reading “Reducing the Achievement Gap”

Continue reading “The Battle Over the California Math Framework Revision”

4/5/2021 – Introduction by D. Kristofferson:

The California Department of Education publishes guideline documents for academic subject areas in K-12 education.  These documents influence teaching practices and textbook publishers and are updated on a seven year cycle.  I was alerted by the author of the following guest article, Michael Malione, that the revision for the K-12 California Mathematics Framework document is currently in progress and that public comments are being requested on the draft now.

Mr. Malione has spent considerable time studying the Framework document and has written the critique in his article entitled Draft California Mathematics Framework Shortchanges STEM.

The opinions expressed in the article are his alone, but I share his concern that the proposed 2021 revisions may have a significant and very likely negative impact on mathematics eduction in California public schools. I therefore encourage readers of this blog to consider Mr. Malione’s objections carefully and respond to the Department of Education survey via the link in his article before the April 8th deadline.

Note added 4/14/21 – The first public comment period is over. The committee working on the draft document will review the comments received, make revisions to the framework, and then put it out for a second 60 day round of public comments in June 2021.

This is a continuation of the article at The Local Math Wars Begin *Again* . The San Mateo-Foster City School District (SMFCSD) recently cited a research study by Burris, Heubert and Levin in the American Educational Research Journal, Spring 2006, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 105–136 which supports detracting middle school mathematics. I have devoted several hours to this paper today and posted the following comments on Nextdoor. I continue to believe that we need to consider other ideas to close the achievement gap besides detracking.

I’ve been going through the paper by Burris et al. for close to three hours today. It is a very detailed and qualified study and I am not completely finished but have read enough to relate some important notes to all of you.

First, I highly doubt that most of the people that cite this study have actually taken the time to really study it.

This does not mean that it is a bad study, but it reflects the myriad complications faced by education researchers, and the text is consequently loaded with required qualifications that make a careful study very time-consuming.

Here are a few examples.

First of all, note that the study was based on a single district in a small Long Island (Nassau County) community. They tried detracking middle school students AND placing them into an accelerated math track as Gene McKenna noted earlier.

Detracking started in 1995 for sixth graders. Six years of students were followed through high school – students from the three class years before the detracking and the first three years of students who went through the detracked program. The last of these students graduated in 2002.

Note that our country has gone through many changes since 2002…

Most of the students in the school district were white with “upper middle class incomes” and the article implies that there was a single high school with an “average enrollment of 1,100 students.” African-Americans made up 8% of the students, Latinos 12% and Asians 2%. The majority of the African-American and Latino students came from lower income families and lives in subsidized or government-owned housing. This is pretty different from our local demographics.

From the paper:

“The district developed a multiyear plan to eliminate tracking in mathematics at the middle school level (Grades 6–8). In addition, it instituted changes in teaching and learning conditions that school leaders believed would help all students succeed. These changes involved the following: (a) revision of the curriculum in Grades 6–8, (b) creation of alternate-day support classes known as mathematics workshops to assist struggling students, (c) establishment of common preparation periods for mathematics teachers, (d) integration of calculators, and (e) a revised mathematics teacher schedule consisting of four accelerated classes and two mathematics workshops.

The district decided that all tracking for instruction in the middle school would end with the sixth-grade class that would enter in 1995 and that all subsequent sixth graders would study accelerated mathematics in heterogeneously grouped classes. The superintendent and the middle school leadership team believed that the combination of (a) heterogeneous grouping, (b) a high-track curriculum, and (c) mathematics workshops would enable all learners to be successful without reducing the achievement of the most proficient students.”

So note above that the district started out with the belief that this method would work and did a lot to make it so:

“Students were placed in the alternate-day mathematics workshops according to teacher recommendations or parent requests. Workshop class sizes averaged eight students, and students were allowed to enroll in or leave the class on the basis of how they were doing in their regular class and their personal desire for support. All work in these classes supported instruction in the regular mathematics classroom, and, whenever possible, students were assigned to a workshop taught by their regular mathematics teacher. Approximately 25% of all students took a workshop class at some time during the year, including a number of high-achieving students who wanted the additional instruction.”

It is clear that this small district thought this process through carefully and devoted resources to improve the odds of success.

The researchers took the data from this district and analyzed it.

To place students into low, average, and high achievement groups, the only data that the researchers had to use was a national math competency test created in Iowa (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) and administered a single time in fifth grade.

Furthermore they had to deal with the problems of dropouts and people entering/leaving the district:

“Selection effects are possible, however, even in stable populations. For example, the inclusion of transfer students whose educational histories differ from the majority could bias a study’s results. A strategy for dealing with such effects is to include only data for the cohort members who have the most similar histories (Cook & Campbell, 1979). To reduce this possible source of bias, we included student data only for cohort members (entering high school in 1995–2000) in regular education who (a) were continuously enrolled in the school district from fifth grade to their exit from high school or completion of this study, (b) entered ninth grade between 1995 and 2000, and (c) had a permanent record folder containing all data of interest.”

This creates obvious problems with interpreting the data for the low achieving group.

The Iowa test mentioned above to define achievement levels creates an issue about interpreting data for the ill-defined high achieving group.

Overall, though, the superintendant and others in that district were happy with the results which is the most important take away.

However, the researchers note in their discussion:

“Nevertheless, it is important that further research explore the essential components of this reform. The district that implemented the reform is a suburban district that has allocated generous resources in providing support to struggling students. Fifth-grade stanine scores in mathematics indicate that students in the district earn higher scores than the national average, and the proportion of low achievers in this study was proportionally lower than the number of average and high achievers. Would the reform work in a district with fewer resources and larger numbers of struggling students?”

They do not know the answer to that question.

This study illustrates common problems with education research. The study is valuable in showing that one community attained the results that it desired. Such an outcome is not guaranteed without the desire to succeed, resources, and careful planning, and no representation is made in the paper that such a reform would necessarily succeed in areas with “larger numbers of struggling students.” This does NOT mean that we should therefore do nothing to help struggling students, but it does mean that simply detracking students in itself is not a magic bullet that will guarantee success.

I may have additional comments later, but this is about all of the time that I can spend on this today. I have not had time to go through the detailed data analysis, but am concerned from a first pass that, even though there was quite an improvement in the low performing group, the results still need detailed consideration.

For example, the “Seq II” high school math class in the paper, which is geometry, went from a 46% “low achiever” pass rate by 10th grade before the middle school curriculum change to a 64% pass rate after the change. Note that passing means a grade of >= 65%.

I don’t have the comparable “low achiever” numbers for our local high schools, but I would not be surprised if they are lower, meaning that this work might be a much heavier lift for local teachers.

3/27/2021 – A discussion began yesterday about a San Mateo-Foster City School District (SMFCSD) school Board effort “to get rid of the GATE program and all advanced math.” Nextdoor users who can access Baywood Park neighborhood posts can access the discussion entitled “The death of the San Mateo foster city school district” at https://nextdoor.com/p/Wtf3qFd5-J3w?utm_source=share&extras=Nzg3MzE3MQ%3D%3D

(Note – if this link does not work for you, please try cutting and pasting it into a new browser window. For some unknown reason WordPress is having a problem connecting to this link.).

I wrote the following response which I will quote here. Please read through to the end because the link to the slides has been made available and there is some controversy as to what was actually portrayed at the extremely long meeting. Stephen Floor on Nextdoor quoted the following from the meeting: “I want to make sure nobody walks away this evening with the idea that the district is proposing to get rid of compacted math. We understand the very important reasons that student want to accelerate in mathematics and the concern about getting to advanced math. We’re proposing to the board that due to the pandemic and related circumstances we really need to move to a heterogeneous math course and then engage with our stakeholders with what that would mean going forward for rising sixth graders in subsequent years.”

Unfortunately this comment was supposedly made at 5 hours and 28 minutes into the meeting…

Despite this comment immediately above, the concerns that I stated below remain relevant regarding reform efforts in mathematics education. There are several “progressive” influences that are currently impacting the California math curriculum.

I have been lobbying against efforts like these for years on my blog at www.eduissues.com. I call your attention to the following article

https://eduissues.com/2018/01/29/never-believe-educational-experts-or-me/

Jo Boaler is a Stanford professor of education whose work is highly influential in California. She is a strong influence on and is part of the group who is *** currently rewriting the CA Dept. of Education Math Framework *** so expect to see much more efforts like the above as time goes on if parents don’t get organized.

Parents can comment on the CA Math Framework revision through this link (or through the link on the CA Math Framework page entitled “Mathematics Framework Online Survey” if they obsolete the link), but note that the first page of the survey makes it look like you have to be an educator to comment. This is NOT the case. Just fill in your personal info in the required fields and then click Next to move on to the second page.

*** Comments are only being received through April 8th. ***

Note that Boaler’s research work is not without its critics. This is a hot topic so I will present Boaler’s case first followed by Milgram’s and Bishop’s replies. Both sides appear to have legitimate gripes, so your “homework assignment” is to read both carefully if you want to be informed.

https://web.stanford.edu/~joboaler/

https://www.nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Essays/v8n5.htm

https://www.nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Essays/v8n4.pdf

As I mention in my blog article cited above “Never Believe Educational Experts – (Or Me)!”, California has a long history of educational experimentation fostered by places like the Stanford School of Education which one would think is a prestigious organization.

In Silicon Valley we like to think that bold new ideas are great. I am a scientist by training who went back to teaching late in the game after a long career in science, scientific software, and biotech. I was in on the ground floor of the Human Genome Project and managed the national gene sequence database (GenBank) for the NIH in the early 90s. I have always been open to new ideas.

Unfortunately education research has many problems as I describe in my blog article above, and the sorry history of failed educational experiments in California that have resulted in damage to children is lengthy.

I wrote my blog to try to warn younger parents of these problems so that each generation does not keep repeating the same mistakes. I hope that you will find this information useful.

*** I want to be very clear though, that the inequities that the reformers on the school board are trying to address are very real and require action too. Please be respectful of this fact. We need to act in a way such that we raise the general level of our society; not just fight for our own children. ***

My concern remains though that we can hopefully achieve that goal without injuring our most talented students.

My experience working with local high school students is that better students who are put in mixed math classes are bored and feel held back. This is largely because our society has become so divided by income levels that there is a chasm in education levels among students of the same age.

At the same time, the opposite happens for students who are put into accelerated classes that are beyond their capabilities as the blurb cited at the top of this conversation indicates. I have addressed this problem at length in other articles on my blog.

Please get organized and speak up TOGETHER now, but PLEASE also heed my other concerns mentioned immediately above.

In general I favor evolutionary change in educational practice. Abrupt changes affect too many kids and can not be undone. Kids should NOT be guinea pigs in educational experiments done to enhance the publication records of academics.

I’ve been told that Jo Boaler, originally from England, likes to end some of her writings with the phrase, “Viva la Revolution.” referring to shaking things up in math education. Proceed with caution…

This is a later comment that I made on Nextdoor.  Note that the slides for the meeting are available here: 7_2_MiddleSchoolMathProgramUpdate032521_0.

I skimmed through the slide deck (43 slides !!!). I am not surprised that this meeting went on till late at night. Slides 11-29 appear to be a “lesson” in Common Core Math, for example, probably intended to illustrate its “richness.”

This is another example of the problem that I often see at school board meetings. Administrators make up massive slide decks that people can not take in at a single sitting and then proceed to lose their audience. As a result, all kinds of misperceptions can occur. This is not my idea of good teaching technique.

I agree with Stephen Floor above that the slides do appear to show that there is still a path to Calculus in High School, but, not having heard the actual discussion, I do not know how much this was emphasized during the meeting. I have often seen slides skipped over quickly as time grows short and the Board and audience grows restless.

I DO know that Common Core has always tried to slow things down and delve more deeply into topics, and this has led to this exact same debate in years past. Common Core itself is a subject of massive controversy which has also been discussed in articles on my blog.

I will add a link to the slides in my blog article and add the qualifications above, but I don’t have the time to watch yet another five hour board meeting. Something is clearly wrong with this method of decision making.

NOTE – for those of you who are so motivated, the link to the Board meeting video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOKVK5VFzrQ. The meeting went on for SEVEN hours apparently.

NOTE added 3/27/21 at 9:30 PM: Gene McKenna has provided notes/comments on the Board meeting video on this topic at

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R41a3drvVVszgN7YQ4tsyKMj3tYz5YgAzHTyziS2pls/edit#heading=h.x4a5kbnpgepe