The Leona Group May 23, 2011 Steve Leinwand American Institutes for Research SLeinwand@air

1. Translating the Vision of the9-12 Common Core State Standards into Highly Effective H.S. Math Programs The Leona Group May 23, 2011 Steve Leinwand American Institutes for Research SLeinwand@air.org

2. Agenda 8:15 – 9:00 - District Leadership – Perspectives, leadership opportunities and timelines 9: 15 – 11:00 – ALL – Why bother? Glimpses and implications of the CCSSM 11:15 – 12:15 – Coaches and teachers – Doing the math 12:45 – 3:00 – Coaches and teachers – Instruction and professional collaboration

3. Opening Gambit Your knowledge, experience, insights, creativity, energy and expertise are desperately needed to improve K-12 mathematics education. (If you don’t feed inadequate…..)

4. The key things we know People won’t do what they can’t envision, People can’t do what they don’t understand, People can’t do well what isn’t practiced, But practice without feedback results in little change, and Work without collaboration is not sustaining. Ergo: your job, as leader, at its core, is to help people envision, understand, practice, receive feedback and collaborate.

5. And one key perspective: Most teachers practice their craft behind closed doors, minimally aware of what their colleagues are doing, usually unobserved and under supported. Far too often, teachers’ frames of reference are how they were taught, not how their colleagues are teaching. Common problems are too often solved individually rather than by seeking cooperative and collaborative solutions to shared concerns. (this SOP won’t help us in the coming years)

6. Critical next steps • Build familiarity with the CCSSM • Course by course discussions • Professional collaboration • Crosswalks • The mathematical practices • Think 15% per year • Focus on instructional quality/opportunity to learn

7. Rollout Timeline, hopefully • 2010-11: A year of comprehensive planning (clarifying what needs to be done when) • 2011-12: A year of study (analyzing crosswalks, curricular implications, policy shifts) • 2012-13: A year of piloting and collaborative discussions • 2013-14: A year of curriculum and policy implementation and an assessment moratorium • 2014-15: A year of accountable implementation

8. So what can we do? Potential structures for professional sharing: • Structured and focused department meetings • Before school breakfast sessions • Common planning time – by grade and by department • Pizza and beer/wine after school sessions • Released time 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. sessions • Hiring substitutes to release teachers for classroom visits • Coach or principal teaching one or more classes to free up teacher to visit colleagues • After school sessions with teacher who visited, teacher who was visited and the principal and/or coach to debrief • Summer workshops • Department seminars

9. So what can we do? Potential Strategies for developing professional learning communities: • Classroom visits – one teacher visits a colleague and the they debrief • Demonstration classes by teachers or coaches with follow-up debriefing • Co-teaching opportunities with one class or by joining two classes for a period • Common readings and CCSSM sections assigned, with a discussion focus on: • To what degree are we already addressing the issue or issues raised in this article? • In what ways are we not addressing all or part of this issue? • What are the reasons that we are not addressing this issue? • What steps can we take to make improvements and narrow the gap between what we are currently doing and what we should be doing?

10. So what can we do (cont.)? • Technology demonstrations (graphing calculators, SMART boards, document readers, etc.) • Collaborative lesson development • Video analysis of lessons • Analysis of student work • Development and review of common finals and unit assessments • What’s the data tell us sessions based on state and local assessments • What’s not working sessions • Principal expectations for collaboration are clear and tangibly supported • Policy analysis discussions, e.g. grading, placement, requirements, promotion, grouping practices, course options, etc.

11. In other words • Reduce the professional isolation • Enhance the transparency of our work • To raise the quality of what we do

12. Discussion Question Which of these CAN’T you do and why?

13. Agenda 8:15 – 9:00 - District Leadership – Perspectives, leadership opportunities and timelines 9: 15 – 11:00 – ALL – Why bother? Glimpses and implications of the CCSSM 11:15 – 12:15 – Coaches and teachers – Doing the math 12:45 – 3:00 – Coaches and teachers – Instruction and professional collaboration

14. Today’s Little Goals • Provide some perspectives on the array of problems with the current high school math program. • Provide more than a glimmer of hope thanks to the new CCSS for Mathematics. • Provide a range of examples of current and future practice. • Present some of the implementation issues that will need to be faced.

15. Today’s Big Goal To provoke and inform your thinking about the need and directions for significantly revising the traditional Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II courses to ensure relevance, real rigor and fairness that truly meets the needs of all students.

16. Where we fit on the food chain Economic security and social well-being    Innovation and productivity    Human capital and equity of opportunity    High quality education (literacy, MATH, science)    Daily classroom math instruction

17. Opening Premise Mediocre mathematics achievement and unacceptably stark achievement gaps are the symptom – not the problem. If we conceive of it as an “achievement” gap, then it’s THEIR problem or fault. Alternatively, it is a system failure, the heart of which is modal instruction that fails to provide adequate opportunity to learn, that is the problem. If we conceive of it as an “instruction” gap, then it’s OUR problem or fault.

18. The System Problem A depressingly comprehensive, yet honest, appraisal must conclude that our typical math curriculum is generally incoherent, skill-oriented, and accurately characterized as “a mile wide and an inch deep.” It is dispensed via ruthless tracking practices and focused mainly on the “one right way to get the one right answer” approach to solving problems that few normal human beings have any real need to consider. Moreover, it is assessed by 51 high-stakes tests of marginal quality, and overwhelmingly implemented by under-supported and professionally isolated teachers who too often rely on “show-tell-practice” modes of instruction that ignore powerful research findings about better ways to convey mathematical knowledge.

19. Quite a mouthful and not a pretty picture. But when little of what we do works for more than 30% of our students; And when most of us really aren’t comfortable putting our own kids in many more than 30% of available classrooms; We’ve got work to do!

20. So let’s take a look at some context-setting sound bites or perspectives:

21. 1) Let’s be clear: We’re being asked to do what has never been done before: Make math work for nearly ALL kids and get nearly ALL kids ready for college. There is no existence proof, no road map, and it’s not widely believed to be possible.

22. 2) Let’s be even clearer: Ergo, because there is no other way to serve a much broader proportion of students: We’re therefore being asked to teach in distinctly different ways. Again, there is no existence proof, we don’t agree on what “different” mean, nor how we bring it to scale. (That’s the hope of the CCSS for Math)

23. 3) The pipeline perspective: 1985: 3,800,000 Kindergarten students 1998: 2,810,000 High school graduates 1998: 1,843,000 College freshman 2002: 1,292,000 College graduates 2002: 150,000 STEM majors 2006: 1,200 PhD’s in mathematics (the best case I know for 113 9-12 math for normal standards vs. the 43+ math for nerds)

24. 4) A critical perspective As mathematics colonizes diverse fields, it develops dialects that diverge from the “King’s English” of functions, equations, definitions and theorems. These newly important dialects employ the language of search strategies, data structures, confidence intervals and decision trees. - Steen

25. 5) Another critical perspective Evidence from a half-century of reform efforts shows that the mainstream tradition of focusing school mathematics on preparation for a calculus-based post-secondary curriculum is not capable of achieving urgent national goals and that no amount of tinkering in likely to change that in any substantial degree. - Steen

26. Non-negotiable take-away Make no mistake, for K-12 math in the U.S., this IS brave new world.

27. Full disclosure For better or worse, I’ve been drinking the CCSSM Kool-aid. Leinwand on the CCSSM in the 2011 Heinemann catalog.

28. A Long Overdue Shifting of the Foundation For as long as most of us can remember, the K-12 mathematics program in the U.S. has been aptly characterized in many rather uncomplimentary ways: underperforming, incoherent, fragmented, poorly aligned, unteachable, unfair, narrow in focus, skill-based, and, of course, “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Most teachers are well aware that there have been far too many objectives for each grade or course, few of them rigorous or conceptually oriented, and too many of them misplaced as we ram far too much computation down too many throats with far too little success. It’s not a pretty picture and helps to explain why so many teachers and students have been set up to fail and why we’ve created the need for so much of the intervention that test results seem to require. But hope and change have arrived! Like the long awaited cavalry, the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Mathematics presents us – at least those of us in the 44 states that have now adopted them (representing over 80% of the nation’s students) – a once in a lifetime opportunity to rescue ourselves and our students from the myriad curriculum problems we’ve faced for years. COHERENT FAIR TEACHABLE

29. So to high school and the task at hand:

30. My First Premise As currently implemented, high school Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 are not really working and meeting neither societal or student needs.

31. A brief justification for my premise: • Increasingly obsolete and useless symbol manipulation focus at the expense of functions, models, applications, big ideas and statistics • An impossible to “cover” scope and sequence • 1200 page tomes • 1st half of Algebra 2 = 2 to 1 dilation of Algebra 1 • Extraordinarily high failure rates • Turns millions off to mathematics • Designed for a very narrow slice of the cohort • Neither relevant, rigorous, nor fair!

32. In blunter terms: No wonder HS math is often referred to as “a rotten geometry sandwich stuffed between two stale slices of algebra”

33. My Second Premise The 9-12 Common Core State Standards have the potential to resolve many of these problems.

34. Some perspectives to support my first premise

35. Just for fun… Simplify: 45 √2 + √7 - 9 (√2 - √7) Actual retail value: 11.08

36. Versus substance too rarely addressed If 0 < x < 1, which of the following is greatest? • 1/x • √x • x • x2 • What if x > 1? • What if x < -1?

37. Not convinced? Feast your eyes on the Algebra 2 Final Exam

41. A little synthetic division perhaps? Or perhaps you would prefer ignoring all of the technological advances of the past 25 years and just do some factoring for fun? Talk to engineers about what math they use and how they do it

42. To summarize our expectations…. Simplify Solve Factor Graph vs. Simplify Solve Factor Graph Find Express Display Model Represent Solve Predict Demonstrate

43. And what are the outcomes? Achieve ADP Algebra I 2009 Exam 33,446 students (KY, OH, RI and NJ) Level Scale Score % of Students Advanced 850-575 1.6% Proficient 574-450 16.4% Basic 449-387 26.2% Below Basic 386-300 55.8% Ave. Scale Score: 384 (850-300)

44. And what are the outcomes? Achieve ADP Algebra II 2009 Exam 102,396 students (13 states, 60% AZ & IN) Level Scale Score % of Students Well –prepared 1650-1275 3.5% Prepared 1274-1150 11.1% Needs preparation 1149-900 85.4% Ave. Scale Score: 1032 (900 - 1650)

45. Additional ADP Findings • On both the Algebra I and Algebra II exams, students earned, on average, only 11% and 14%, respectively, of the possible points available on constructed-response items. • On the Algebra II exam in both 2008 and 2009, nearly one-third of the students earned no points on the 2-point or 4-point constructed response items. • And we claim they’re ready for the 21st century???

46. So Why Bother? Look around. Our critics are not all wrong. • Mountains of math anxiety • Tons of mathematical illiteracy • Mediocre test scores • HS programs that barely work for half the kids • Gobs of remediation • A slew of criticism Not a pretty picture and hard to dismiss

47. Yes, Virginia or Houston or whoever, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!!! (and no amount of tinkering around the edges is going to fix it)

48. Enter the new Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (www.corestandards.org) Not perfect, but clearer, fairer, and more coherent

49. The Math Field of Activity The heart of ensuring instructional quality and producing high levels of student achievement includes four key elements: • A coherent and aligned curriculum that includes a set of grade level content expectations, appropriate print and electronic instructional materials, with a pacing guide that links the content standards, the materials and the calendar; • High levels of instructionaleffectiveness, guided by a common vision of effective teaching of mathematics and supported by deliberate planning, reflection and attention to the details of effective practice; • A set of aligned benchmark and summative assessments that allow for monitoring of student, teacher and school accomplishment at the unit/chapter and grade/course levels; and • Professional growth within a professional cultureof dignity, transparency, collaboration and support. (What, how, how well and with what support to do it better)

50. But….as we need to acknowledge • Our curriculum is stale, • Our instruction is underperforming, • Our assessments are mediocre, and • Our professional development is essentially useless!