Readers learned in the last issue that Bob Witte has retired and that Joe Gonzales has come to the Foundation as Bob's successor. In the article below, Joe introduces himself and tells us how he sees the future. Ed.
The last Intersection
introduced a name change and a staff change. As the result of the
merger, the Exxon Education Foundation became the ExxonMobil
Foundation. And after an extensive career, Bob Witte retired; the
"new" person is Joe Gonzales. Well, that's me. You
might wonder, "Will this last change impact the Foundation's
support for education, particularly mathematics education?"
Education has touched my life personally and professionally. I was Exxon's Houston, Texas K-12 education coordinator. My spouse, Raquel, is a school district administrator and bilingual elementary grades educator. And, as parents of four children, we've had firsthand experience with educators, administrators, and policy-makers.
Bob Witte described "where he was" when he was introduced to you and the work you do. He learned what mathematics education must be. He became your advocate and champion. I want to be that kind of advocate. I also want us to move our efforts to the next level. Much good work being done by you goes almost unnoticed. We must change this. It's time to look at what we've done and decide how to move forward with greater impact. And, we must "fine tune" the processes for supporting your efforts.
So, there is some change ahead. There is much learning and work in store for me. I am willing. I am excited. I will count on you. Hopefully, one day we'll look back and see that the smooth transition made it seem like there was never a change.
We wish you all the best, Joe! Ed.
According to the late Frank Sinatra, Chicago's the place to do that. You'll have much to gain there, too, if you can attend NCTM's Annual Meeting in Chicago this spring, April 12-15. Each year the conference provides unique opportunities for networking, learning, sharing, and sightseeing with friends and colleagues from across the country and around the world.
Those who plan to attend the conference are cordially invited to a reception that is hosted each year by the Foundation. Now a much-anticipated tradition, this come-and-go event will be held on Thursday, April 13, from 6 - 8 PM at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, 151 East Wacker Drive. You are invited to enjoy hors d'oeuvres, conversation, and a brief program scheduled at 7 PM. We hope that you will plan to attend. Please look in the next newsletter for more details regarding the location.
Now you can read the current issue of Intersection on-line or view any issue published since January 1999 at www.intersectionlive.org.
The article that follows was contributed by Judith Kysh at the CRESS Center at the University of California, Davis, to introduce their newly-funded project. Thanks, Judy. Ed.
Rio Vista Elementary is a K-5, Title 1 school in Baypoint, California, located in the delta between the Sacramento River and the San Francisco Bay. The school serves a diverse community, where poverty and lack of community resources are problems for many families. Our current goals are to continue and intensify our work to develop a problem solving-based mathematics program in grades K-3 and to provide support for the Rio Vista teachers to share their work with teachers from four similar district schools through a lab school arrangement and a summer institute.
Our collaboration began in 1994, when three teachers from Rio Vista Elementary School contacted the CRESS Center at UC Davis to ask about forming a teacher-research group to focus on how children learn mathematics. The research group has grown to include nine teachers, and all of the K-3 teachers are now participating in grade level groupings, demonstration lessons, and/or peer coaching in math.
Our long range goals include the following:
This year we propose to work more in depth with the Rio Vista faculty by adding to the specialist's time for in-classroom work and consultation, by facilitating monthly conversations for teachers who are new to the program, and by preparing three half-day study group sessions. To start to involve teachers from the other schools, we plan to use Rio Vista as a lab school so that they can come to observe classes and talk with teachers on a scheduled basis. To further support Rio Vista teachers and help interested teachers from the other schools in getting started, we plan to develop a one-week summer program for August 2000, for approximately 30 teachers—half from Rio Vista and half from the other schools.
Patty Lofgren in Oregon forwarded this article describing the work she and Ruth Parker are engaged in with MEC. Many thanks, Patty! Ed.
In February 1999, the Mathematics Education Collaborative (MEC) received grants from the Exxon Education Foundation and the Intel Foundation to work with a consortium of seven schools in Portland, Oregon. (See Intersection, September 1999.) Ruth Parker and I began working collaboratively with parents, teachers, administrators and the public at large on a major mathematics restructuring effort as a result of these grants. Our goal has been to have diverse stakeholders at the table from the beginning as we work towards securing quality mathematics programs for all children.
Portland is a large inner-city school district and project schools reflect the wide cultural and socio-economic diversity of the district. Our work focuses on bringing the entire community together around important issues in mathematics education. The impact of work with parents and the public has already far exceeded our expectations. Principals report that they have heard nothing but supportive comments from their parents. Parents have:
The five major components of our project include: 1) large group public engagement sessions; 2) ongoing support for administrators; 3) development of a group of teachers as a Mathematics Support Team; 4) a series of intensive 9-day mathematics content courses for teachers, administrators and interested parents; and 5) staff development support for the new mathematics adoptions, Investigations in Number Data and Space at the elementary level and Connected Math in the middle schools.
We bring parents and other interested community members together for quarterly large group interactive sessions. These sessions are designed to help parents and the public gain a feel for what quality mathematics looks like and to create a public that is willing and knowledgeable enough to advocate for quality programs in their schools. We do mathematics, discuss important issues, look at samples of student work and respond to questions. Child care is provided and sessions at one of our project sites are translated into several languages.
Building on our public sessions, we meet four times a year with administrators to help them prepare to support teachers as they restructure their math classrooms and interface with parents. We work to deepen their understanding of the mathematics we want for all students while helping them to examine the changing nature of their role as observers in mathematics classrooms and facilitators of change in their buildings.
Two to four participants from each of our project schools comprise our Math Support Team (MST). We work intensely with this group to deepen the participants' understanding of essential mathematics, examine and refine classroom practice, and engage in ongoing discussions around issues in mathematics education. Eventually, they will be doing smaller interactive sessions with parents and the public. MST members attend one summer mathematics content course each year as well as quarterly two-day sessions that deal with both mathematics and pedagogical issues. It was fun to have Ed Ahnert and Jean Moon visit our project for two days in January. We wish all of you could have seen Ed on his hands and knees engaged in doing mathematics with our MSTs!
We believe that in order to teach powerful mathematics, teachers must, as learners themselves, have experiences that deepen their own understanding of mathematics. We have designed a series of 9-day mathematics content courses that emphasize the development of conceptual understanding of important mathematics as well as the ability to put mathematical ideas and skills to work in the solving of complex and relevant problems. Over 90 of our project teachers and administrators have taken the Level I course: Patterns, Functions & Algebraic Thinking, and registration has begun for our Level II course: Geometry & Proportional Reasoning, that will be offered this summer. We plan to introduce the Level III course: Probability and Data Analysis, in summer 2001. We are excited by teachers' and administrators' responses to having opportunities to learn mathematics. Teachers have found the courses to be so powerful that they are not only wanting more courses for themselves, but also stirring up demand for courses among their colleagues.
In September of 1999, MEC received a major grant from the National Science Foundation to expand our work to Longmont, Colorado and San Francisco, California and to research the impact of working with parents and the public on these school-based mathematics restructuring efforts. This has provided us with an opportunity to carefully study the impact of and the factors that create parents as advocates.
Preliminary research findings have been most encouraging. There has been a significant shift in parent comments and questions over the course of our first year. While we initially heard from lots of people that they wanted basic skills and proficiency with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division taught in the schools, a fundamental shift has taken place. They now tell us that they want to see an emphasis on understanding, number relationships and a variety of ways of getting to an answer. They want mathematics to be engaging, challenging, and fun for their children. They value problem solving and recognize the importance of persistence over speed. A comment typical of what we've heard from parents: "I've always said—and I said it just today— 'Just learn the rules, don't try to figure it out, it will just confuse you.' My insight now is that the rules have just confused me."
We have been hard at work on a website and you can find us soon at www.mec-math.org. For further information on summer courses, please contact Patty Eng-Buckingham at (206) 722-8569.
Many thanks to Vicki Bachman in Iowa City, IA, and to Cathy Allen in Bellevue, WA, for contributing these articles about their experiences in networking. Ed.
The Iowa City project has spent the past several years focusing on the topic of assessment. Now that our K-2 continuum assessment is being fully implemented in the district's 17 elementary schools, we are beginning to get some significant information about our students and our math program. Last year at the NCTM convention in San Francisco, Jean Moon was able to set aside some time to meet with us (Vicki Bachman and Deb McNulty). Jean helped us think about, and respond to, some of the challenges that are now coming to light thanks to the assessment. Jean listened carefully to our concerns regarding teacher training and curricular needs. She spoke of connections between our work and the Bellevue Project. The very next day, at the Exxon reception, we were introduced to Cathy Allen from Bellevue, and a wonderful conversation began.
The discussion that started in San Francisco continued over e-mail and even more intensely at the Foundation's annual meeting. Thanks to Jean's encouragement, it was decided that Vicki and Deb would take a major field trip to Bellevue, WA—and a lovely place it is! Like Iowa City, Bellevue responded positively and quickly to the shift that was caused by the 1989 NCTM Standards. During those first years after the Standards were written, there was not a great deal of commercial curricular material available. Districts like Iowa City and Bellevue worked very hard to develop appropriate materials. Now that there is worthy curriculum available, our challenges have become more directed toward questions of adoption and teacher training. This year Iowa City is going through its district course review process in the area of mathematics. Many of the teacher training and curricular pieces that we are grappling with are currently being implemented in Bellevue.
While in Bellevue, Deb and I were able to attend a DMI workshop with Cathy. We then had lengthy discussions about assessment, staff development possibilities, funding sources and curricular issues. Cathy guided us to think about a great many aspects of district-wide curriculum adoption in advance of encountering them directly. It was incredibly helpful to have concentrated, uninterrupted time to ask questions, share ideas, and generally get a sense of a bigger picture.
Many thanks to Jean Moon for her insight, to Cathy Allen for her wisdom and time, and once again—for about the zillionth time (just an estimate)—to the Foundation for expanding our horizons.
Last year at NCTM, Jean Moon introduced me to Vicki Bachman and Deb McNulty from Iowa City. Jean thought that perhaps Bellevue and Iowa City had a lot in common, and that we might be able to learn from and share ideas with each other. At our Exxon meeting in Dallas in September, Vicki and I had some time to talk and get to know one another. We found that our districts had many similarities. Both were about the same size and had similar challenges. We decided to remain in touch so that we could share the work each of our districts had done and, hopefully, learn from each other's experiences. We found we not only had much in common in our work, but we began a nice friendship as well.
In December, Vicki and Deb, supported by Exxon, came to visit us in Bellevue. Bellevue's teachers have been participating in the Developing Mathematical Ideas (DMI) Modules for the past year. Iowa City was interested in learning more about DMI and in looking at Bellevue's recent implementation of the Investigations curriculum. Bellevue, on the other hand, was looking for better ways to assess K/1 students' understandings of concepts in the Investigations curriculum. Iowa City had been working very hard on their K-2 assessment model.
During their visit, we attended two sessions of DMI Module 2. Deb and Vicki shared their K-2 assessment model with me, and we had plenty to talk about around both of these subjects. We also discussed Bellevue's experiences in the recent implementation of the Investigations curriculum.
It was a great experience for Bellevue! We had been working on ways to assess student understanding at all grade levels, but were not particularly happy with the model we were using at K/1. As Deb and Vicki shared their model, I began to realize that this model might be adapted easily to work with our program. Soon after the Iowa City friends' visit, I met with two of our kindergarten teachers and shared with them the model and materials that Deb and Vicki had brought with them. They were very excited about the possibilities. They wanted more time to think about ways that this model could be adapted to work with our curriculum in Bellevue, and asked me to leave the materials with them so that they could look it over more closely. During this time I also had an opportunity to meet with some other K teachers and gave them an overview of the model and asked for their input. All seemed very excited about the prospect.
Last week I met again with the two K teachers. They had worked out some "first steps" in beginning to look at this assessment model for Bellevue. We decided to bring a team of teachers together for further input. Our first K assessment meeting is scheduled for next week! We have also invited some Grade 1 teachers to this meeting so that they are able to begin to think about what might be effective assessments for Grade 1. We are very excited about the possibilities.
We have continued to stay in touch with our new friends in Iowa City, e-mailing back and forth often. Not only is it a worthwhile collaborative effort, it's wonderful to see another district's experiences, especially one that has much in common with our own. I really appreciate ExxonMobil's support of this kind of opportunity. I know Bellevue has really benefited from it, and I have made some very special friends as well!
Miriam Leiva, who contributed an article for the Nov/Dec 1999 Intersection, reports that one of her project teachers, Charlyn Walker, has been awarded an NCTM Travel Grant to travel to Makuhari, Japan this summer for the ninth International Conference on Mathematics Education, ICME 9 (see Intersection, October 1999).
Charlyn, a third grade teacher, has been a member of Miriam's project since 1992. She recently earned National Board Teacher Certification. Miriam writes: "Charlyn is an outstanding member of our math family and she will be a great representative from the United States, NCTM, and the Exxon Education family."
After working with the Albuquerque Exxon Math Assessment Project for the last three and a half years, Cheryl Brown-Kovacic has accepted a position with the New Mexico State Department of Education. She will serve as the Director of Assessment and Evaluation.
The position is focused on statewide, mandated assessment programs, K-12, including a high school competency exam, a writing assessment at grades 4 and 6, an achievement assessment in grades 3 - 9, and a reading assessment at grades 1 and 2. Although the State Board of Education directs the assessment and accountability program, Cheryl has hopes of influencing the philosophy and direction of the program.
Congratulations, Cheryl! Please keep us posted. Ed.
Many thanks to Joan Akers for forwarding this review of a recent title by Alfie Kohn. Ed.
Alfie Kohn, the long-time champion of progressive education, has written a new book that takes on the current national movement to raise student achievement by implementing rigorous standards. Like his other books, including No Contest: The Case Against Competition and Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes, Kohn questions conventional wisdom and current school reform efforts.
The book is divided into two main sections--the first identifies the problems, and the second suggests ways to begin solving them. In addition, the book includes two appendices and extensive chapter notes and references.
Chapter 1, "Forward . . . into the Past," serves as an introduction and comes before both of the main sections. In this chapter, Kohn contrasts two models of schooling—the Old School model and progressive classrooms. He characterizes traditional classrooms as places where teachers lecture, students do worksheets, and the emphasis is on memorizing isolated facts.
Progressive classrooms are where "a community of learners—as opposed to a collection of discrete individuals—engages in discovery and invention, reflection and problem solving." (p. 3) Kohn argues, that despite political claims to the contrary, we have never left the traditional model, and this model has not served our students well.
Part One. Part One, Tougher Standards Versus Better Education, includes five chapters: (2) "Getting Motivation Wrong: The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement," (3) "Getting Teaching and Learning Wrong: Traditional Education and Its Victims," (4) "Getting Evaluation Wrong: The Case Against Standardized Testing," (5) "Getting School Reform Wrong: The Arrogance of Top-Down Coercion," and (6) "Getting Improvement Wrong: Confusing Harder with Better."
Chapter 3 challenges the Tougher Standards movement because of its emphasis on the "basics" with a focus on narrow memorization and recall of facts and procedures at the expense of conceptual understanding. Proponents of this approach assume that learning the basics has to occur before, rather than at the same time, students are learning to think and reason. What is to be learned is broken down into many isolated facts, and the purpose of schooling is to train students to produce correct answers. Kohn states that the transmission version of teaching and the behaviorist view of learning "sees humans as essentially passive responders to the environment rather than active thinkers and meaning-makers." (p. 65)
In Chapter 4, Kohn argues that norm-referenced standardized testing makes our schools worse instead of better. He critically examines why our society is so concerned with numerical results that simply compare one student to another rather than provide meaningful information about what students have learned. "No matter how many students take the test, no matter how well or poorly they were taught, no matter how difficult the questions are, the pattern of results is guaranteed to be the same: exactly 10 percent of those who take the test will score in the top 10 percent, and half will always fall below the median. That's not because our schools are failing; that's because of what 'median' means." (p. 77)
Other chapters in Part One continue this theme of challenging what is currently happening in our schools. Part Two, For the Love of Learning, includes four chapters: (7) "Starting from Scratch," (8) "Education at its Best," (9) "Getting the 3 R's Right," and (10) "The Way Out."
Part Two. Kohn begins Part Two by discussing the purposes of schooling. Do we want students to know a lot of stuff or to be good thinkers? Most of us want both. He also thinks about the purpose of schooling in terms of promoting individual or social goals, and in terms of promoting humanistic or economic values. We need to look at how well school practices support our common goals.
Kohn makes some broad recommendations for superior schools. ". . . in place of superficial facts, we emphasize deep understanding. In place of fragmentation, we seek to integrate; we bring together skills, topic, and disciplines in a meaningful contest. In place of student passivity and isolations, we value learning that is both active and interactive. . . . kids are taken seriously." (p. 131) He describes some classrooms and discusses several teaching practices, such as starting with a question rather than facts, that are supportive of students learning.
In Chapter 9, Kohn debunks the critics of Whole Language and discusses how the Whole Language approach goes far beyond decoding in helping children learn how to read, write, and spell. He also illustrates how students' understanding of math can be enhanced, and references the NCTM Standards for its message that math classes should revolve around making meaning and promoting thinking.
The last chapter addresses some of the stumbling blocks to change. The practice of giving grades is one obstacle. Since the purpose of grades is to communicate information about student performance, and since grades provide no real information, other tools can be more informative. Performance assessments that provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their proficiency by actually doing something are more authentic than tests. Student/parent/ teacher conversations around a student's portfolio of work are the best way of keeping everyone informed. When it is important to monitor the performance of entire schools or districts, systems such as NAEP, the New Standards Project, and the Learning Record, are far better than norm-referenced standardized tests. But whether our children will continue to be subjected to endless drill on basic skills to prepare them for a standardized test is a political question. Kohn closes Part Two of his book by outlining several approaches parents and teachers can take to change this practice.
Part Three. The final third of the book consists of documentation supporting the assertions made in the text. Appendix A: The Hard Evidence addresses the difficulty of interpreting research findings and how research is used (and misused) to support particular belief systems. (For example, Kohn analyzes how E. D. Hirsch, Jr. misuses research in his books.) In addition, Kohn examines some of the research on teaching young children, whole language, mathematics instruction, open classrooms, and other approaches and concludes that nontraditional schooling is backed by impressive research findings.
Appendix B: What to Look for in a Classroom provides a simple chart of concrete observable features for parents to use when looking at classrooms. The chart lists eleven features (such as furniture, teacher's voice, class discussion) along with columns headed "Good Signs" and "Possible Reasons to Worry."
Kohn includes extensive chapter notes in the book (63 pages of notes for 237 pages of text). The book took me a long time to read because I kept flipping back and forth between the text and the notes. Besides providing the reference for citings, the notes expanded on thoughts presented in the text with additional quotes and comments. The list of references, with runs thirty pages, shows the extent of Kohn's review of the research in preparation for writing the book.
The Schools Our Children Deserves debunks current conventional wisdom about how to improve students' achievement by careful documentation and reasoned arguments. The book raises critical issues that need to become part of the public forum if improving schools is to move beyond the current media and political rhetoric. This book is a must for all educators and parents (and politicians and media people) who are concerned about providing the best education for their children.
The publisher is Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1999. $24.00. Ed.
Sherrie Reynolds, an associate professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX has a new book, Learning Is A Verb, The Psychology of Teaching and Learning (Holcomb Hathaway Publishers, 2000, $18.95). Sherrie says she wrote it "with the Exxon teachers in mind."
Visit www.hh-pub.com/book.php3?book=HH1249, call 480-991-7881 or e-mail sales@hh-pub.com to learn more.
I've ordered my copy. Would anyone like to borrow it to review for Intersection? Please let me know. Ed.
In the most recent issue of the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse publication, ENC Focus: The Reality of Change (Vol. 7, no. 1, 2000), readers can find an article by DMI's Virginia Bastable entitled, "Help in Making Change: Summermath for Teachers Serves as a Model." Receive a print-copy of the publication and/or begin a free subscription by contacting ENC at 1-800-621-5785 or at editor@enc.org.
Thanks to Bob Witte for forwarding this item. Ed.
The National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century, chaired by former Senator and astronaut John Glenn, invites your input.
The Glenn Commission has created an interactive discussion forum site to gather ideas on ways to ensure high quality teaching in mathematics and science at all grades nationwide. Visitors can watch presentations from Commission meetings and offer comments about what they've heard (or not heard) and about what other visitors had to say.
The Commission is preparing a report for Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley in the fall of 2000 that will include recommendations and action strategies to help ensure that an adequate supply of highly skilled individuals enter and remain in the math and science teaching profession. The recommendations will also help make certain that throughout the span of a teacher's career, he or she has the opportunity to learn, generate, accumulate, and share knowledge about math and science content and teaching methods.
For more information, visit www.ed.gov/americacounts/glenn.
Applications are being accepted until May 1 for summer sessions of the Developing Mathematical Ideas Leadership Institutes, DMI L I and DMI L II/III to be held at Mount Holyoke College.
For dates, application forms, and more information, please call (413) 538-2063 or e-mail smt-dmiinfo@mtholyoke.edu. Read more about DMI at www.edc.org/LTT/CDT/DMIcur.html.
Thanks to Chris Ohana for noticing the error in Kappan's web site address published here last month. The correct address is www.pdkintl.org. Ed.
Before the frolicsome breezes spirit you away for spring break, why not submit an article about what you've been doing? Joe Gonzales wrote: "Much good work being done by you goes almost unnoticed." That certainly happens if no one knows about it. This is your forum to share news about your project. Please use it.
Thanks to all who took the time and made the effort to contribute to this issue. The next deadline is Monday, March 20. Please send contributions to Jean Ehnebuske, 105 Hideaway Cove, Georgetown, TX 78628; phone, (512) 869-1580; fax, (512) 869-8477; e-mail, jean@intersectionlive.org. Thanks!