WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS: Math in White Plains. By John F. Bailey. Number 2 In a Series, December 27, 2006 : Tight monitoring of test performance during the year and coordinated English and Math instruction has lead to Montgomery County Maryland students retaining and developing their math skills while sustaining their test scores as they progress through Middle School.
Monitoring and Coordination have been a key factor in leading to 90% of Montgomery County 8th graders passing high school mathematics courses at the 8th grade level, 67% of the other half of 8th graders, not taking the high school math, pass the 8th grade assessment, according to the Montgomery County K-12 Mathematics Supervisor.
WPCNR interviewed Leah Casey-Quinn, K-12 Mathematics Supervisor for the Montgomery County Public Schools (which devised its own curriculum for English and Math), discussed how Montgomery County Schools have obtained a 67% Pass Rate for half of their eighth grade students and a 90% pass rate for the other half who do not take advanced math. Montgomery county runs approximately 20% Black, 30% Hispanic, and 34% white in terms of population presenting it with the same educational challenges as the White Plains City School District.
WPCNR: Ms. Quinn, what do you attribute this sustained math performance through middle school to?
Leah Quinn: I think one of the strengths we have is we have a K-12 program where we have aligned what is the written curriculum, the taught curriculum and the assessed curriculum.
In addition to the standards that align with the written, we have instructional guides and assessments that are tools for teachers to use to know what it is they need to have the students know by grade, by unit, from pre-K to 12.
Having all those aligned and having professional development for our teachers, in terms of professional development over the summer and ongoing and monitoring what is the implementation of the program, and monitoring student progress and student data, all lines up so all your arrows are in the same place. It is the strength of the total program that really explains why our students are successful.
WPCNR: Do you test students in the lower grades to make sure the skills are learned?
Quinn: We have a system-wide assessment program by unit.
There are approximately six unit assessments per year per grade level that are on an electronic monitoring system.
There are teacher reports (provided by the electronic monitoring system) so teachers can see the areas in which their students are successful and in which their students need to have some reteaching and reassessment to get at the content they don’t have yet.
The monitoring starts at kindergarten and goes through the beginnings of high school. The monitoring stops at Algebra I.
WPCNR: Do you develop those tests locally in the district? Any data programs you use to do that?
Quinn: They’re locally developed, yes, in our office. The data collection program has all been done in house in Montgomery County through the eighth grade and we are piloting a commercial project for algebra this year.
WPCNR: On teaching basic math skills: Do you do a balance of memorization?
Quinn: It’s very much a balanced program where we feel there needs to be first of all, a conceptual knowledge and that it happens. Not one (basic skills or conceptual knowledge) comes before the other, but that the two, (basic skills and conceptual knowledge) happen intertwined and you need to access all of them at the same time. It’s like braiding a rope, you need all the strands for proficiency.
Quinn said when Montgomery County was writing its successful curriculum in 2001-2002, they based it on the National Research Council book Adding It Up.
WPCNR: How does your district address students with English as a second language to get them to understand the math problems?
Quinn: There are struggles. I’m not saying we have the answers, all of them, but we do feel that having high expectations for the students, and the teachers have high expectations, and having the students believe in themselves, and that in our mathematics, we believe in teaching mathematics from the concrete to the pictorial to the abstract.
If you teach mathematics at the abstract level, you’re going to lose all of the kids, because there the language is most important. But, when you can start concepts by doing something with concrete objects and discussing it, and then having students look at it pictorially, because there are physical objects, that is a very solid way of having students who might not have all of the vocabulary build the vocabulary, so when they get to the written they have built the vocabulary they need to solve the problems.
WPCNR :How do you as math coordinator coordinate with the language or English coordinators in the district to make sure everything is in step.
Quinn: We all work out of the same offices. We develop the instructional guides. We do not develop individual ESOL math units. It’s the same curriculum. The curriculum needs to be the same, it’s just using the instructional strategies that the ESOL supervisors and specialists in the area talk about those strategies. Some of those strategies are having the students act it out, having it physical so the math isn’t just about words being shown.
WPCNR: Could you speak to the consistency of the testing results from K to Middle School?
Quinn: We’re finding as children who have been in the revised curriculum, (since 2002) and it’s not just the curriculum, but all of those pieces I talked about, are now entering middle school, it appears their success is going with them and we are building the success in Middle School now that we have students who have been monitored since elementary school.
That monitoring thing is not only what you monitor, but what you do after you monitor, what do you do if the kids don’t know it then you have to be reteaching and reassessing them.
WPCNR: Do you keep students back?
Quinn: It’s not that you monitor at the end of the school year. It’s ongoing monitoring throughout the school year so it’s not a surprise at the end of the year whether the kids know it or not.
(In our next installment, WPCNR interviews the White Plains Mathematics and English Coordinators on the mathematics – English situation in the White Plains Schools. To reread the interview with Skip Fennel of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in which Mr. Fennel discusses the NCTM Focus on Basics policy, click on http://www.whiteplainscnr.com/article5293.html)
