At its June 13 meeting, the SCASD Board of Directors unanimously approved the purchase of Math Expressions as the District’s core elementary math resource. This vote marked the end of a year-long review of elementary programs and signals the end of the use of TERC’s Investigations as the core resource.

Today’s CDT has an article describing the conclusion of the math program change.

The SCASD report on the pilot testing that concluded this spring is available on the District website.

A key motivation for the change was Pennsylvania’s adoption of the Common Core standards.  SCASD’s review found that Investigations did not match up well at all with the new standards: About 50% agreement as compared to about 85% for Math Expressions.

At last night’s Board meeting the directors heard the report of the Math Pilot team, including its recommendation that the District move to adopt Math Expressions as its core K-5 math resource.  The Board members expressed their appreciation for the thoroughness of the process and the report, and Jim Leous recounted his positive experience as a parent whose child was in an Expressions pilot classroom, saying that he found the Expressions exercises to be more rigorous than those found in Investigations.

In the public comment period, three people spoke against the recommendation.  They did not ask the Board to keep Investigations in place, but rather to restart the selection process and take another year to pilot different programs.  One of the speakers characterized Expressions (and Investigations) as “adequate” but not the “excellent” program the District needs.

The Board then voted on whether to endorse the report and recommendation, and this passed by an 8-0 vote.  Math Expressions materials will be available for public viewing before the Board approves purchase of the program at its next meeting on June 13.   Implementation and training plans are in the works and will be presented at the same meeting.

Readers of the summary of the Math Pilot report are likely to come to the conclusion that Math Expressions and the 2nd edition of TERC’s Investigations finished in a dead heat, with enVision bringing up the rear:

Overall, enVision was rated weakest in all areas and Math Expressions and Investigations II each demonstrated strengths and weaknesses in different aspects of the pilot.

One of the weaknesses of Investigations II, however, is that SCASD teachers found that Investigations II does not have “positive alignment to the Common Core and PA Standards.”  This is a major weakness – alignment with Common Core/PA standards has been a focus all along in this process and it is now clear that Investigations II will not meet those standards without extensive remediation.

The summary states that “Math Expressions and Investigations II were rated similarly by Pilot Teachers,” but the numbers in the reports appendices tell a different story, as the tables in Barb’s analysis show.

On the subject of teacher opinion: Readers of this blog will recall that last June, the District surveyed all of its teachers who use Investigations II in response to calls from some on the Math Review Committee who questioned whether the review process was even necessary – weren’t teachers generally satisfied with Investigations II?  The District conducted a non-anonymous survey in which teachers gave their answers to their principals in meetings.

The de-identified results of the survey were shared with the committee but never appeared in the CDT or on the SCASD website.  Here they are in PDF form, scanned from my paper original.  Readers can draw their own conclusions about the survey results, but in my view the results make it clear that SCASD teachers have serious concerns about this program.  After seeing the survey results, one elementary school principal told me that s/he didn’t see any way we would be using Investigations in 2011-2012.  From the recommendation in the math pilot report, it appears that this prediction will be proven accurate.

Election Day is today. Polls are open from 7 am to 8 pm. Find your polling place here.

Candidates for SCASD Board of Directors were profiled in the CDT last week. There are seven candidates from whom five will be chosen.

UPDATE: All 7 candidates will be on the November 8 ballot because different groups of 5 won the Democratic and Republican primaries. If Democratic and Republican votes from yesterday were totaled, the five elected would have been (from most votes to least): Stahl, McGlaughlin, Concepcion, Zydney, Pawelczyk. CDT story here.

Reading the full report provides a helpful overview and it’s clear that a lot of work went into conducting the pilot and evaluating these programs. Ever the data nerd, I read the report and then went right to the data provided in the appendices. As it was difficult to eyeball things from all the different pages presented, I’ve distilled it down and color coded the average ratings received (strongest ratings are in green; weakest ratings are in red) so that overall ratings can be readily viewed simultaneously.

Of the 42 items rated by teachers on the Materials Review subcommittee, Math Expressions was rated the highest on 26 items and lowest on just 1. Investigations was rated highest on only 13, and lowest on 14. enVisions was rated highest on a mere 2 and lowest on 26.

Broken down by ratings area (e.g., content, instruction, assessment, etc.) and grade level, Math Expressions is rated higher than Investigations 75% of the time:

The Elementary Math Pilot Summary has been posted on the SCASD website.  There is a lot to digest there, including appendices with rubrics, ratings, and survey results.  It appears that the recommendation will be for Math Expressions:

The Materials Review process identified Math Expressions as the strongest program in its rubric review and its alignment to the PA Standards and Common Core. Neither Investigations II nor enVision had a positive alignment to the Common Core and PA Standards. When the materials were piloted in classrooms, both Math Expressions and Investigations II were rated similarly by Pilot Teachers. enVision was rated poorly by our Pilot Teachers across grade levels. Students in Investigations II pilot classrooms scored statistically significantly higher than students in Math Expressions and enVision on the assessments. Overall, enVision was rated weakest in all areas and Math Expressions and Investigations II each demonstrated strengths and weaknesses in different aspects of the pilot.

…

A draft of this report was sent to the acting superintendent on May 11th. Although the Leadership Team recommended a continuation of the pilot with additional materials, the Acting Superintendent directed the Pilot Planning Team to select and recommend one of the three programs supported by the community committee that is highly aligned to the PA and Common Core Standards. Given this directive, Math Expressions is the only program meeting these criteria.

How the new program is to phased in is not addressed in the report and this will presumably be discussed at future Board meetings, starting with the one scheduled for Monday, May 23.

Recycling those Everyday Math books reminded me of just how funky their program is.

According to their literature:
“Our new math curriculum Everyday Mathematics teaches a number of ways to do grade-level computations. Some of them are hundreds of years old, but simply aren’t the way we have traditionally taught in U.S. schools. A few of these algorithms are emphasized more than others, and they are called ‘focus algorithms’.”

Everyday Math’s focus algorithms for each operation are:

Mathematical Operation — Name of Algorithm
Addition — Partial-Sums Addition
Subtraction — Trade-First Subtraction
Multiplication — Partial-Products Multiplication
Division — Partial-Quotients Division

Some of the approaches EM endorses you really have to see to believe.

The Math Review Committee members had a chance to look over two grades’ worth of EM materials. What did I learn? In brief: Grade 2 does NOT cover the standard algorithm. Grade 5 encourages calculator use to convert fractions to decimals and percents (p. 325) as well as later addition of fractions. Overall, insufficient, minimal practice is provided and certainly not enough to permit mastery of computations.

That’s odd because the Common Core standards require fluency with the standard algorithm. For grade 2: “Compute sums of two three-digit numbers, and compute sums of three or four two-digit numbers, using the standard algorithm; compute differences of two three-digit numbers using the standard algorithm.” A Grade 4 standard is “Compute products of two-digit numbers using the standard algorithm“. Grade 5 expects students to “Use the standard algorithm for each of the four operations on decimals”.

Clearly, Everyday Math’s ‘Focus algorithms’ aren’t going to cut it in any grade.

Spring has finally come to central Pennsylvania – thank goodness! Despite my tendency to hold on to things that I think might be useful someday, I found that I’ve run out of space in my office and really needed to find a new home for the big pile of elementary math textbooks I’ve been collecting. Some I used when homeschooling last year, some I collected for comparison purposes, and some I swear must have spawned on their own when I wasn’t looking.

It’s safe to get rid of them now, right? After all, SCASD has been piloting enVision and Math Expressions, and I anticipate their results will be shared at the next board meeting on 5/23 and we’ll have a new math program proposed to the Board. Time to clear out some space!

We’re still using the Singapore Math books at home and sometimes for our after-school ‘math club’, so those will stay. And the others? So far, several have been promptly recycled (e.g., Everyday Math, ThinkMath are uselessly constructivist), but others really have good potential to be useful (e.g., Saxon Math) and deserve some longevity.

But what to do with a full set of K-6 Saxon Math textbooks, teacher manuals, and lesson plans? Well, I first offered them to a local elementary school. To my surprise “No, thanks” was their answer. Hmm.

Next stop: the Pattee-Paterno Library at Penn State. Their response: “We would be very happy to have the Saxon materials for the Instructional Materials collection in the Education and Behavioral Sciences Library. Thanks for thinking of us!” yay!

Now, if I can just get my act together to consolidate, load them up, and get them over there Hopefully, by the first of June, these will be available for families that might need or want to work on some math with their kids over the summer. After seven plus years of Investigations, there is definitely work to do….

One of the ways in which the SCASD administration has evaluated the three programs up for consideration in the current Elementary Mathematics Pilot (Investigations 2, Math Expressions, enVision Math) is with respect to how each measures up to the Common Core Standards (which are now the Pennsylvania Standards).  The importance of this metric was acknowledged at the outset of the pilot (“Strong attention will be paid to standards alignment (PA and Common Core)”).

According to TERC, the developers of Investigations, their program their program aligns very well with the Common Core Standards:

There is also strong alignment between Investigations and the CCSS’s Content Standards. Each curriculum unit provides an in-depth study of a specific and related set of mathematical concepts and skills. The design of the materials offers students extended opportunities to make sense of, practice, and develop fluency with the key concepts and skills within a grade level and across grade levels.

The alignment is so strong, in fact,  that TERC is rushing to develop supplemental materials that will presumably create super-strong alignment between Investigations and Common Core:

The authors of Investigations are developing materials to support teachers and schools that use Investigations to implement the Core Standards. These companion materials, which will be available from Pearson, are designed for use in conjunction with the curriculum units at each grade level, K-5. New activities and sessions build on existing content and familiar contexts and representations within the grade level.

The truth behind this doublespeak is that Investigations doesn’t align well at all with the new Pennsylvania standards, and this should come as no surprise.  The Common Core Standards require proficiency with standard algorithms and operations with fractions, as well as facility with math facts, and – by design – none of these is emphasized in Investigations.

Similar strangeness is found on the website for Everyday Math, another strict constructivist program, one that was roundly rejected by the SCASD Math Review Committee following the presentation by its publisher last October.  The first thing one sees on the site is a large seal of approval proclaiming “COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS – 100% ALIGNMENT”, but the text tells a different story:

Each grade-level author reviewed the content standards and developed a plan to adjust lessons so that Everyday Mathematics aligned 100% to the CCSS. Those plans are complete and we are now implementing those adjustments to the Everyday Mathematics program. Our author and editorial team are well on their way and we will have a program that aligns to the CCSS ready for implementation in the 2011-2012 school year.

Is there any reason to put much stock in these promises from TERC or Everyday Math?  A nominally compliant patchwork of supplemental materials will be offered (not to do so would effectively remove these programs from the market), but the developers of both programs are on record as objecting in principle to the goals behind the Common Core Standards.

Here is Penn State student and candidate for SCASD Board of Directors Samuel Settle, in his own words: