Bill Bush is leading a project to develop three tools that will help teachers and school administrators analyze curriculum materials as they implement the Standards. One looks at the treatment of key content areas in each of four grade bands (K–2, 3–5, 6–8, 9–12); one analyzes how well the standards for mathematical practice are integrated into the materials; and one analyzes pedagogical aspects of the materials. The project is funded by the Brookhill Foundation and Texas Instruments, and plans to release the tools in June 2011.
Author: Bill McCallum
MARS tasks
As we prepare for the first advisory board meeting of Illustrative Mathematics later this month, I have been looking around the web for sources of tasks and problems. Inside Mathematics is aligning its tools with the Standards. Click on Tools for Teachers, then browse the grade levels to see tasks from the Mathematics Assessment Resource Service (MARS) at the Shell Centre. You can see other sample MARS tasks here. I’d be interested in people’s thoughts about these.
Ed Silver’s comments on Common Core at AMTE
I can say that I had nothing to do with the Common Core standards. (Not bitter.)
Big question: what is going to be possible to do this time that it wasn’t possible to do before?
There are echoes of the new math in some of what is going on now, and there are lessons to be learned from more recent reform efforts.
Project at Michigan that is focusing on coherence across grade levels. The New Math had its take on coherence; NCTM Curriculum and Evaluation Standards, PSSM, and Focal Points all had their take. When I was here in California in the 1980s, California had a progressive framework, followed in the 90s by a framework which many saw as a U-turn. Teachers saw a radical shift. In the 10 years I’ve been at Michigan, teachers have had three different sets of standards. Some teachers are numb to it.
On the content side, the big thing that Common Core brings is understanding to the expectations. Banned in Michigan and many other states, because of assessment. I’m not sure that 50 years after the New Math we are any closer to figuring out how to assess understanding. We also have the standards for mathematical practice, but still not in the content. (Good to call them standards.)
To the extent that the assessment can be seen as driving attention to the practice standards, the conversations with teachers will be a lot easier. Not sure that the outline of content is any better than any other we have had. New Math and PSSM had unintended consequences (back to basics, math wars respectively).
The important issue is scalability. Teacher education is a state driven enterprise. Now that everybody is adopting the same set of standards. That allows for collaboration across institutions and across state lines. That’s a very exciting project. AMTE can be at the forefront of doing that work.
NCTM-AMTE-NCSM-ASSM joint task force on the Common Core
I’m on a panel right now where Gladis Kersaint is reporting about a report of the four mathematics teaching organizations in the title. (I cannot resist the temptation to give this initiative the meta-acronym NANA, whose logo should be a big sheepdog shepherding us through the standards.) The report outlines 6 goals:
- Clarify the meaning
- Support stake holders
- Prepare and support PK-16 teachers
- Support the development of high quality formative and summative assessments
- Promote research
- Develop a governing structure
Big question on number 3: what do we need to do now?
- Assessment examples
- Capacity building and leadership development (interpreting the standards)
- Professional development materials (raise awareness, how to change what you are doing now)
- Dissemination efforts
Long term efforts:
- tools for teachers
- tools to help administrators recognize classroom implementation
- examples of student work
- think about professional development that is differentiated based on the needs of different teachers (novice, veteran, …)
- mathematics content courses that can help people understand how the mathematical practices can be implemented in content
AMTE presentation on TEDS-M
Maria Teresa Tatto from Michigan State University is presenting about the TEDS-M study, an enormous study which looked at teacher countries from Poland to Botswana. It surveyed institutions of teacher education, teacher educators, primary teachers and secondary teachers, for both mathematics knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. They will have some training for teacher educators on accessing the data in September 2011 in Washington D.C., where you will get the database on a memory stick!
Technical manual for the Common Core
Jason Zimba is working on a technical manual that will describe higher order structures in the Common Core standards, such as flows, streams, and ties. Here is an example of what is meant by a flow. What I like about this diagram is that it illustrates the way mathematical ideas are unified as the subject progresses. For example, the disparate ideas of whole number, fraction, decimal, integer, and rational number are unified in an understanding of the number system. Mathematics doesn’t branch out and get more complicated, it collates and compacts ideas into more powerful and denser ideas.
What is the right sort of testing?
Interesting article about testing in the New York times, which argues that the effort of retrieving information helps learning. Marcia Linn’s comment is relevant to the Illustrative Mathematics Project:
“More testing isn’t necessarily better,” said Dr. Linn, who said her work with California school districts had found that asking students to explain what they did in a science experiment rather than having them simply conduct the hands-on experiment — a version of retrieval practice testing — was beneficial. “Some tests are just not learning opportunities. We need a different kind of testing than we currently have.”
The Illustrative Mathematics Project
This project, described in more detail here, will collect sample tasks and problems for the Common Core State Standards in mathematics. At the moment it is in the phase of setting up a nationally representative advisory board, and developing a website for the display of the standards and sample tasks.
Progressions for the Common Core math standards
The progressions project for the mathematics standards, described here, is coming along. Currently we have initial drafts for progressions on Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Number and Operations in Base Ten, Fractions, Geometry, Measurement and Data, and Statistics and Probability, and are having these reviewed. We should have some progressions we can share by the end of February.