Teacher to principal: This prepackaged curriculum doesn’t know my students as well as I do.
I know of many districts who have responded to the increased pressures of high-stakes standardized testing by standardizing the curriculum, in some places, right down to the page number a teacher should be on for any given day. Almost all of the teachers I know realize that this kind of approach goes against what they know about how children learn, but few have responded as dramatically as Ms. S.
Ms. S teaches fifth grade in a small district just outside of a large college town, not unlike Austin, Texas. A couple of years ago, her district adopted Everyday Mathematics, a program developed by the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project and lauded by many. Now, Ms. S has been teaching for many years. Her tried and true approach — whether it’s first grade or fifth grade — is to pose problems that students can solve using a variety of strategies, then help her students to express the concepts behind the strategies they use. She doesn’t show kids how to solve problems; she writes problems in such a way that her students can use what they know to construct their own strategies. In fact, she insists when her students come to her using procedures they don’t understand that they not use those procedures, for the time being. Her highest priority as a teacher is to understand her students’ thinking and to build on it.
As it happened, the year her district adopted Everyday Math, her principal decided to place a large number of students in Ms. S’s class who were considered struggling.
When her district delivered the boxes and boxes of Everyday Mathematics materials to her room, Ms. S took a look at the curriculum. She realized that she could write problems that were better tailored to her students’ needs and understanding and also met district curriculum objectives. So she pushed the boxes aside, closed her door, and began teaching.
Every once in a while, her principal would inquire about what page she was on. Ms. S would tell him, truthfully, “We’re learning a lot.”
All the students in Ms. S’s district take a standardized test at the beginning and end of the year. Students are expected to gain 7-9 points on this test. 10 points is considered quite a respectable gain. At the end of the year, about a week after Ms. S’s students had taken the test, she was surprised to find the principal knocking loudly on her classroom door. When she answered, he told her, with a great deal of excitement, that out of all the fifth-grade classes in the district (about 15 sections), hers was the ONLY class where every single student had met the passing standard for the test. Moreover, he continued, many of these students had gained an astounding 30 or so points between the beginning and the end of the year tests. He asked her, almost rhetorically, “You don’t even use Everyday Math, do you?” “Nope,” she answered. And then she took the opportunity to suggest that perhaps all the money that had gone into the Everyday Math materials may have been better used to support teachers to take the time to learn about their children’s mathematical thinking. Richard Elmore, writing in Harvard Magazine, agrees: “You can’t improve a school’s perfomance, or that of any teacher or student in it, without increasing the investment in teachers’ knowledge, pedagogical skills, and understanding of students” (p. 37).
This year, for the first time, Ms. S has a preponderance of students from the high end of the achievement spectrum. They are challenging in a different way, she says, because they know how to execute procedures such as subtraction with regrouping and long division very well, but often have little understanding of why the procedures work, and almost no flexibility in their choice of strategies. Even with this group, she says, she has to begin the year by posing many types of problems with smaller numbers than one would normally expect at fifth grade in order to help her students develop some flexibility and variety in the strategies they use. It’s worth it; they surpass expectations in the end and their understanding is much, much deeper.
Thank you, Ms. S, for reminding us what teaching is all about.
REFERENCE: Elmore, Richard. (2002). Testing Trap. Harvard Magazine. October, 35-37+.
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I am so delighted to find info that reinforces my decision to pull my children out of our public school. In our district , in South Carolina, after just TWO years of using Everyday Mathmatics, our advanced and proficient test scores dropped by 37 percent!!! Astonishing!!! Ad/Prof kids were now just BASIC or BELOW!!!Adminstration has too much money invested to change it!!!! A FIVE year EXPERIMENT is now in the works,,,It makes me sick
Comment by Kim Peters — November 22, 2005 @ 7:37 pm
Hi Kim. Thanks for dropping by. I’m surprised by your response, since Ms. S is a public school teacher. The problem I see isn’t necessarily Everyday Math – I have a feeling Ms. S would have responded similarly if her district had required her to teach Investigations in Number, Data, and Space or Singapore Math instead. The problem is requiring a teacher to sacrifice matters of professional judgement to follow a set of curriclum materials in a lock-step fashion.
I wonder if the drop in the number of students rated proficient in your district was due to the introduction of Everyday Math or to something else? I recently read a New York Times article that pointed out that South Carolina, along with a small handful of other states, has distinguished itself. Their definition of a “proficient” performance in mathematics closely matches international standards as well as the standards set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Most other states, in contrast, have set the “proficient” bar much lower — which makes them look better, but only temporarily. For example, in Texas, where I live, far more students achieved at the “proficient” level on the state exams in math (61% of eighth graders) than on NAEP (31%). Ironically, striving for high standards is causing South Carolina all kinds of problems:
Perhaps there are more parents, like you, who are worried about the “decline” of public school math teaching!
Comment by Susan Empson — December 1, 2005 @ 5:28 pm
It’s really too bad she actually threw them out. In fact, it makes me wince.
But, hey, I am curriculum writer!
If Ms. S and the Everyday Math authors sat down to chat, they’d probably be delighted with all they have in common. And the text is kind of a long-distance way to have that conversation. At the very least, the texts can provide some resources so Ms S doesn’t have to invent EVERYTHING. Maybe geometry is not Ms S’s stong point. Then Ms S might really be able to use some geometry materials to incoporate into her approach.
Plus, I don’t think it’s possible to evaluate materials as quickly as is implied here.
And, you know, tried and true is great, but I think we should all be open to learning more, refining our practice. Seems like a combo of PD on children’s thinking and how EM might be used in advanced teachers’ practice might have helped.
But like I said, I am a curriculum writer, so my perspective is no surprise.
Comment by Jennifer Knudsen — February 28, 2006 @ 2:00 pm
I bet principals wince when they read this story too. (And let me hasten to add, my goal is not to make anyone — curriculum writers, principals, other teachers — wince. It is to make a point about the essence of teaching.)
I agree with you, Jennifer; there is always something for teachers to learn. I know Ms. S. would second this. I also don’t necessarily advocate whole-sale rejection of a year’s worth of curriculum materials. Surely, there is something to be culled. But there is no way I would say to Ms. S that she wasn’t exercising the best professional judgment when she decided she’d be better off writing her own materials, because, as unorthodox and impractical as her response was, she remained accountable to her students’ learning. They learned more than any other fifth-grade class in the district and, according to Ms. S., parents have told her over and over how much their children love math in her class. These two things, to me, are the bottom line.
Comment by Susan Empson — March 21, 2006 @ 10:57 pm
I really really HATE this new math. I really wish I knew what I could do to get it out of our schools. I have a 2nd grader thats struggling in it. Heck I’M STRUGGLING!! Its bad when the parents can’t even help them. They learn something one week and move on the next. How can they learn so fast? In my opinion they can’t. Since when did we have to learn our x’s tables 1-10 in ONE week?? I also have a 9th grader that didn’t have this math. He did very well without it. Hes in all honors classes. So why do we have to change? I have a business in our town and I talk to alot of parents. All but ONE (out of 2 dozen) hate it and their children are struggling also. I also know that our math scores have declined since this new math came in. I don’t understand it. If something doesn’t change soon, I’m pulling my son out. There are other schools..
I’m also in SC…
Comment by Jennifer — March 28, 2006 @ 10:22 pm
Hello, Jennifer from South Carolina. What new math do you mean? Although Ms. S doesn’t use Everyday Math, she teaches in ways that are probably very different from the way you were taught.
You’re right that learning the times table in one week is unrealistic. Is the fast pace of your second grader’s math class due to a particular curriculum program, a district pacing guide for teachers, or something else?
Comment by Susan Empson — March 29, 2006 @ 8:29 am
One more round, Susan…
What if a teacher didn’t want to get involved in an innovative program, one you’re involved in? And her reasoning was that her students already score the highest in the district and the children and parents are happy with her teaching.
What would you say to her or her principal?
And for my name-mate, Jennifer: new programs get adopted all the time. It’s hard to say what’s going on at your kid’s school from what you say. But yes, if my kid had to learn times tables in one week, I’d be down at the school asking why–or first, asking if it’s really true. But I wouldn’t say that just because things seemed fine before, we shouldn’t consider a change. All of us are looking to improve, in education, in business, in our personal lives—it’s an American tradition, really.
Comment by Jennifer Knudsen — April 1, 2006 @ 10:39 am
What if a teacher didn’t want to get involved in an innovative program, one you’re involved in? This is easy. I’m a researcher. I’d use her for comparison with the innovation.
Seriously, for me the question is how teachers’ expertise is regarded and respected. There is a delicate balance between teacher autonomy and building a shared vision as a community, with a principal as instructional leader. I am frankly amazed at the extent to which Ms. S’s expertise is not recognized and drawn upon in the system of which she is a part. It’s a real flaw in how schools are set up that teachers can work in virtual isolation.
(Researchers like me are only on the periphery of these systems and usually have abysmal results with non-volunteer samples. So I’d want to know more about what the expert teacher was doing, but wouldn’t want to insist she join the innovation.)
Comment by Susan Empson — April 4, 2006 @ 10:42 pm