Tyrant of OR

Tyrant of OR is an interesting article that was passed along to me, and has gotten me thinking quite a bit. It is the belief that we often feel we have to make a choice between things – that one thing wins and one thing loses. For example problem solving and computation but in reality often we don't have to make a choice. You can do both – it is little counter-intuitive but I like the idea.

At my school we wanted higher ACT scores and more students taking the test.   And the single answer has been rigor.  I have pushed rigor, which is not just more homework (for me it has been less).   And as I pushed rigor, I have also pushed the idea that all students can be college math ready.  So even though math grades did drop at my school, our ACT scores and percentage of students have both gone up.

And to get scores to increase we did not lean the pool of test takers, we increased the count -- challenged more students to see how ACT would rank their college readiness.  Pushing hard on students to take the test and do well.  We have seen our college math placement scores go up AND more taking it -- from 20ish to 22.5ish for score and less 50% to nearly 75% taking it.  Definitely not a tyrannt of OR  -- would those results be the expectation?

Would you expect students to take more math with increased rigor? More students to take the ACT? Cause they are, when I started only a handful of students would take math as a senior – now nearly all the students do. When I started not even half of the students took the ACT test for college placement. This year over ¾ of the graduating class took the test.

Why? Because high rigor raises student performance AND student expectations of themselves. The students know they can perform at high level and that college or secondary schooling are within reach. Not everyone has to, but the problem solving ability, ability to learn are skills that serve students well for a lifetime.

OR does not have to be choice, I am taking AND. 

Dr. Cathleen Becnel Richard is an Assistant Professor at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. She earned her doctorate in 2010 from Northcentral University in E-Learning and Teaching Online. Her research interests include academic advising, distance learning, reflective learning, and service learning. - See more at: http://www.communityworksinstitute.org/cwjonline/articles/aarticles-text/bayou_tchgsustain.html#sthash.uZ3CFLf1.dpuf

Wisconsin Math Council Conference 2014

Reflecting on the two day WMC conference in Green Lake, Wisconsin.  Got back home last night and was just too tired, too overwhelmed from all I saw, too relieved from completing my 2 presentations, just too --- to type my thoughts.

As usual the WMC put on an excellent conference, they brought in good speakers but most importantly teachers stepped up to show what they were doing - which as a small school teacher I am so thankful for.  It is a  stress to present to your colleagues, to put yourself out there, to prepare the presentation.  But the reward for me as a member of the audience is great, I also think there is a huge reward in being a presenter - personally it makes me so much more reflective.

A huge portion of my PLC is this conference, what I look at, what I heard, the networking I do  - those things are the catalysts for how I plan curriculum and instruction.  I always plan improvements from my two, always seemingly rainy, days at Green Lake in early May. 

This year I presented twice; I presented about our school's mission to have a portion (~15-20%) of our class time devoted to mastery of non-negotiables using the ACT test as metric.  It was well attend and overall I felt I did a decent job of telling people about what we have done to improve our ACT math score from 1 point below the state average to 1 point above the state average.  It is a corner of our philosophy of creating students who are mathematically ready for our world.  (Link to Powerpoint)

The second presentation was the one I was more excited and nervous about.  It was titled "Making Homework look like it's 2014 instead of 1985." LINK to Powerpoint  It was based upon how I changed my classroom from my commitment to a June blog entry.  The blog entry reached well beyond the "12 other rural math teachers who occansionally viewed my reflections" (my joke in the conference) and like-wise this presentation was a room "filler."  (The only gripe I have about the conference is when a presentation fills up, many of the really interesting titles only have 50 seats and fill up well before their starting times.)

So as I rolled into the room at 11:00 to set up for my 11:30 presentation, the room filled quickly also, and was full at about 11:07.  Which was good and bad, I felt good about the interest level, good that I could start early and talk about a couple of things that I decided to cut for time (the number one thing I wanted to do was actually record a flipped video based upon the FIZZ course I took, last year at the WMC conference I heard really good stuff about flipping but I always like seeing, so I "showed" a flip).   I felt it went well and I took an hour instead of 50 minutes.

To really simplify the presentation is to say I have done 2 major things - first, no more class time doing homework questions, homework grading or homework chasing.  Homework is assigned as a combo of  things - Khan Academy, some paper/pencil (NO new material on paper/pencil work, I wait until things are mastered before it is assigned as homework) and adding more projects into curriculum.  And secondly, I started flipping my Algebra 1 course - and that has made a difference in how much time we can really do math in my class.  It has improved my ability to give better feedback (while sticking to my motto of "be less helpful").

At times it has been hard to maintain, in the presentation I talked about how I went too far in the first semester and let my pendulum swing too far back in the second semester.  There is a sweet spot which I will try and hit next fall.  In the end, it is not about being "perfect" next year. 


You will never hear about 20% improvement in 1 year with me teaching, but all of the work that has been done is making Juda 3-4% better every year, year after year.  And that continuous improvement is all I chase; and I believe it is what we all should be chasing.

Progression of Homework

So I am still thinking about homework, how to do it (or should I), how much value does it have, what is the best thing for my students?

Where I started teaching just 8 years ago I ran a traditional class - or at least the class I was use to in High School (even though I was more than 15 years removed from it).  I did like many first time teachers - I taught  like I was taught (quite a bit). 

Class started with checking homework, I usually collected it too.  But we spend time grading it, answering questions and then answering more questions.  Then correcting what students did incorrectly the evening before, or copied in the hall.  And the whole time - 6 students really focused while 20 were zombies - eyes open and nothing going on.  Then I would be pressed to teach the lesson.

I quickly moved to just collecting and handling questions by doing a different problem with similar content so everyone could work it.  That quickly help, at least everyone was involved.  But I still had a ton of questions from homework and misconceptions to "clean up" from students trying to do their work and doing it incorrectly.  And why wouldn't I have to fix misconceptions?  I was assigning something  new, something that we had just been introduced too.

Then I started not assigning new concepts immediately, we would do new in class together for a number of days, and then my question time quickly decreased I would lead the problem as I walked the isles. 

And now over the span of years I have migrated where I supply solutions and just have students turn in their work occasionally.  That way a student who is struggling can have an extra day, find time for help in the class or study hall.  It opens up a ton of my time to help students during the hour. 

And there you see the progression, I no longer consider homework really important.  Otherwise I would be "on my students" to be done every day.  But homework is for the student, it is what he/she needs, thus I give some flexibility.  

The students know they are responsible  for the material in the text (I sure say it often enough) and their grade is based on their knowledge of that material.  I often joke that students "can learn through homework or through test and quizzes, I really don't care which way."  Note, in my class, grades are based upon summative recursive assessments on mastered material.  And since the quizzes are recursive, always focusing on mastered material students are continually "practicing" twice per week. 

Now is good time to mention that my goal is not their grades but the knowledge they leave my school with, are they college and career ready.  (They can be a pain with some students or parents sometimes - but when is last time a person was asked about their Algebra 2 grade when applying for a job?) 

I don't care how they learn it, students that play school do the work and earn a better grade typically.  But the student who really won't play school still typically gets the skills!  And a D in my class means they are ready for the next course.   (I find the D thing to be an epidemic - if a student gets a D and cannot do the work - how are they ready for college/career -- no wonder we have 30-40% of college students doing remedial math!)


And over the span of time the end results have gotten constantly better.  I have had better results on the ACT test, better results on the class assessments, better results from students who report back to me about how they are doing in their jobs or in their college math courses.  And that is because I feel I have increased the time a student does math!  I went from most students being zombies, who spent 20-30 minutes per day on math with homework, to an entire class doing math for 45 minutes, 5 days per week minimum.  Now the 6 students with questions just wander in before school or during homeroom for help.  My room is now a whirling dervish of math activity!   The homework is beyond that, and so if a student copies it (and that never happens) he or she is still doing 45 minutes of work per day.

Now I am pushing for less paper & pencil and more instant feedback practice - websites (Khan, IXL, textbook), spreadsheets, etc.  The hard part is changing me, I still find myself more comfortable collecting homework, than checking website reports -- and weird as that sounds it takes a lot more time to change me than to stay the same.   

I know practice is important and I will keep working for a balance between paper/pencil (a skill that must be maintained) and some sort of on-line portion (which I think gives students better feedback and increases the return on their practice time).

Most importantly - we will keep on trying to be better each day.

Changing - The goal is to be better.

We are in the middle of a shift or moving towards the extreme end of a pendulum swing currently with the Common Core Standards.  We can already see people now moving against the core and I don't think it is bad or good - it is too much too fast.  And that is the problem with education - lets be great tomorrow - students must get there and be great - immediately.  But my goal has never changed in my eight years of education since I came from private industry - I simply want to be slightly better tomorrow than I was today. 

Personally I have worked hard at making my curriculum "college and career ready" - using the ACT as my guide (an Aligned by Design mentality).  It is the test that about half my students need to do well on and does indicate whether they are ready for college math or not.

 I started this mission on college readiness in 2010 following a conference (another subject another time).   And the mission was simple and small, to start reducing the percentage of students taking remedial math in college.  My mission, now three years later, is for all my Algebra 2 students to test into credit math at college or tech school, which is something education currently struggles with - somewhere from 33-40% test into remedial, non-credit college, math.  I have had success in this by making my students accountable for all math - at all times.  So Algebra 1's grade is 50% pass material, Geometry is 50% Algebra, Algebra 2 is 50% Geometry and so forth.  We don't take time on the material but simply use recursive assessments to make sure students use it enough not to lose it.  I think of it as two, 15 minute power review sessions during the week -- except the review session is just a quiz.  But the important thing is, it is one small thing to be just a little bit better tomorrow than today.

Either way, no matter what I do or how I do it - I just want my students to be better than yesterday.  Just to progress  daily - 2% improvement year after year is the goal.  By doing that I have had success, so my question is not what is the next big thing I am doing - but what is the next small thing.  The large pendulum swings just does not work.

Does math homework work? (Really work?)

Practice is a key for learning math.  I don't believe there is much argument with that in the math world.  Some people need a little practice, some more - but how that practice is done, when, etc is a really big difference between math teachers.  The carrots and sticks we use, I wonder if we think about that often enough.  When is homework effective, how much should we give and on what topics?  To really discuss homework, we have to think about what our goal is mathematically.

My goal is not the Common Core, I run to its standards but my goal is to have students ready for college credit math, and have the ability to do math in a problem solving context for the world.  They need to a toolbox of skills but also the ability to handle problems including finance, research and justification.  So homework is for building the toolbox and using the tools for problem solving & revision. 

And since I accept that homework is to reinforce previous knowledge versus to learn new things or to work on projects - I use homework differently.  To start with I do not assign current material - because I need conceptual understanding before I let a student work on it alone.  And if that is the case why take precious class time reviewing it?  Secondly the projects I assign, starting every October for the remaining part of the year, are big multiple revision, multiple solution exercises.  This two prong approach meets my philosophy and the goal I have for my students.

My class periods are for working and gaining understanding on topics that may too difficult for homework.  And remember everyone once struggled with 2*6, meaning there is time where it is hard, a time where it can be practice with guidance and time it can simply be reviewed in homework.

That thought process leads me to provide all solutions to daily practice homework - they need to do the work. but the students need to know they are doing it correctly.  It has also lead me to using computer programs for practice - I use Khan mostly - because it is free.  It is also fights the number one problem - just doing anything to finish.

I was one of "those" students back in the day - I either copied, wrote just answers, used old homework assignments (just change the section number on the top), or just did not do the homework.  It may have slowed my progress but like most 16 year old students I did not  care.  How many students that age really think that math is important?  Especially the context-less math that usually gets assigned.

So as we assign the homework - that you know the A/B students will do it just for the assessments (the tests) and that the C students are copying and that the rest are not doing - is it really working?  What is it for?  Are those low B students on-down really ready for the world and college?

Does your math homework make sense?  It is a question I continually ask myself.

Turn-over today feels different. Has teaching lost respectability?

So another staff member is on the move again.  Small schools are accustom to it.  In a small district you find yourself with more preps and less pay.  It is simply more work for less money.  Thus there is a lot of turnover.

Those that work in a small school do it for a variety of reasons: young staff gaining experience so they can move on to more money, local people who live in the area (that can be hit/miss on quality - really lucky at my school), or the truly power hungry (like me - I love teaching it all and making the final decision on how to deliver curriculum, 9th - 12th).  Fortunately in the past we were respected and appreciated by the super-majority of people which is a fringe that made teaching worth it, that though is slowly back-sliding to a simple majority.

And without a super-majority the fringe value disappears, I end up dealing with people that think you teach because you are inferior at your trade, or that anybody can teach, and those moments are some of the most infuriating/depressing moments of my year (a super-majority suppresses these people).  Without the super-majority the year after year raises that kept pay stable (based on real buying power) are gone; raises when they are not frozen are less than cost of living.  That drives people to make decisions on finances, because bad pay and bad public perception is a horrible combination.  And though we say we want the best in education, we pay for mediocrity.  And as we backslide more, the number of people who will work for less and feel like "getting their ass kicked by public perception" keeps decreasing (and professionalism will disappear too, people act as expected).

And I feel it is that backslide from a super-majority supporting education to a simple majority that contributes to the number of staff moving on to non-teaching positions -- the percentage of staff leaving education as a whole seems to be quickly growing.  When I started 8 years ago staff left for one of two reasons -- a new teaching job or retirement.  But that seems to be changing, now a small district cannot be called a statistical significant experiment, but this year 50% of the staff that resigned has left the teaching profession.  And this is not because of our local district or board, but a nationally undermining of education.

More decisions about what is important, how we teach and how we test are happening further and further from our district.  More of my dealings are with 'people' (or departments, state agencies, etc) that want to hold me accountable but limit my tools.  People in my area, Board members, parents, school supporters want to give me the tools, but the funding occurs way above them.   And the further away you get from our district the less the minority thinks about education, and all it takes is a simple minority to rule education through misinformation, when there is no super-majority supporting education it starts to lose.  Everywhere I hear education as a whole is broken, but my kid's school is good -- that is the minority selling snake-oil; schools need to be more responsive and work harder on continuous improvement but that is a detail, not a reason to rail against public education (or to simply starve it which is what I think is happening).    Soon what the minority screams about education will be correct because we will have starved it of its good people.

It is the perception that the minority is selling that all education is broken that is breaking all schools.

Summer School Math - Passion makes it fun.

So today was the first day of our school's summer Math class - a skill practice class.  I like the idea, coming in 12 days total scattered over 5 weeks for 90 minutes a session.  Just hitting up the things we had already worked on, it is a way to help them recall skills (build on some concepts) and just make sure the students don't backslide.  I did a little recruitment by saying it would be different than the school year (wasn't sure how though when I said it) and got a 1/3 of the 9,10 & 11th graders.
 
So I started with a "scavenger" hunt -- where the clues lead to practice problems that they completed in teams.  I ran the 2 classes with passion, I was really pumped up - and that in turn pumped them up!  They practiced math, ran the halls and overall had a relaxed first day.  I am following up with some relay games coupled to practice problems, then I want to do some sort of "math lab."  (That is the part I have not figured out yet - I have to create/find/steal some sort of math lab.  The lab needs to make sense to supporting/growing skills.)

But first things first, today went well.  Math was fun...

Results....

Starting 4 years ago I divided my class time into 3 distinct parts.  There was skill time, concept time and project time.  Concepts and projects are the most important so we spend about 70-80% on those during the week.  The skills which is simply quiz time take about 20% of the time; it is just previous mastered material put into a quiz without clustering or grouping.  Sometimes a few problems that are the same type are together but usually it is just one maybe two.  It makes the students' sharp with their skills and keeps the topics current.  It is about  50-55% of a student's grade in my course in High School - assuring material is mastered and stays mastered.  If you want to see the quizzes, check out the google doc.

It is this graph shown in the blog that makes me feel like this works.  By committing that previous skills are important, and making students continually accountable in an assessment, they retain the skills and concepts better.  And by maintaining some level of practice my students are more ready for new material and at the end of high school for post-secondary math.  These quizzes are graded as right or wrong, no partial credit (passing is 70% and up).    The idea is simply that what you use you do not lose....

Traditional/Reform Math Balance -- Stop the Pendulum!

Well - today was the Wisconsin ACT conference.  I been looking hard at my data for about week and the presentation went well today!

Not only was I able to show what Juda has been doing to improve math scores, but I really feel like I am walking between the traditional and reform math - I am nearly dead center between the peaks of the pendulum swing of reform math and traditional.  Taking a little of both and making it work.

The crux of my presentation is using the ACT low band standards to create reoccurring quizzes coupled to student expectation/accountability to  raise ACT scores.  The presentation walks the 3 year path I have taken to raise scores.  The data is pretty good too!  I show a good correlation between the changes that have been done to raise ACT scores from 21.2 (ish) to 22.6 (ish) -- {with R^2 value of 0.68}.

The results are good, it is definitely the traditional thought of math taking about 20 minutes per week to have recursive quizzes that are majority of a student's math grade; but as I finished I dearly wished for more time in my speech today at the ACT conference to describe the other 180 minutes of my class per week.  The mixture of concepts, discovery and large projects with multiple answers (the reform side).

I also think the reason there is success at Juda is the continuous improvement approach we are taking in the math program.  Never moving too fast, doing incremental change with target improvement goals always in the front of our team's mind.  I am very excited now to make the next step.  I really believe we are on our way for another full point of improvement in the next year.  So basically from 21 to 23.5 - that is a 10 percent improvement!  At the same time more of the students are prepared for college credit math.....

So today was a good day, a day to "bask" a little.  But I hope people see it and can use it too.  'Cause as math instructors we need to stop the chaos of the huge pendulum swings - we need to map the plans and make the improvements.

Results oriented

So what is my goal with my math students?  That is the question I am addressing, it is my "over-arching" question as I review the first half of the year and think about the remaining year & more importantly future years.  Am I trying to create little mathematicians/engineers (no), am I trying to create drones (no), I am trying to give them the problem solving skills they need to succeed in the world. I ask this "goal" question as I pull together ACT data from the last 2 tests and measure my students (thus myself).  The real challenge is tying the ACT to the CCSS to the skills really needed by my students.

The ACT is just a measurement made popular by colleges, but it does provide insight.  Making my students unafraid of problems with numbers that require thought and processing is my goal, the ACT does not measure that well at all.  But it does check the basic skills, it does indicate whether they are ready for college and/or career.  The skills/material we learn is just the tools we need for problem solving (now and later).  So as I enjoy my time off and lie around getting healthy (I was sick nearly all of December - 18 straight days of misery) I think about the CCSS (Common Core Standards), how it ties to the ACT and I wonder why there are so many standards in the CCSS.  An example may help....

I was talking with another local math teacher at a basketball game and she asked if I was still not teaching matrices in Algebra 2, and I am not.  The reason is if I put in big mathematical problems with processes there simply in not enough time to do it all.  I have no problem pushing matrices out of Algebra 2 into Pre-Calculus (I teach matrices in Pre-Calc in May - thus you see how little value I believe they have),  Some students need them for college but it is something that can easily be picked up at college and I use that Algebra 2 time for problem solving and being really good at the Algebra/Geometry.  Maybe in the future more Algebra will go from grade 8/9 to 7/8 then 6/7/8 & allow time for more topics, but right now there is no time for matrices.

I judge myself (and my students) if they are ready for college level math (not remedial) and/or career.  I judge myself (and my students) on whether they know the basics conceptually and understand that effort/studying is the key to math success (not math IQ).  But I learned one thing in my previous career you need measurements.

Data is the key to knowing where you are and where you are going, running by gut feel is the worst thing - so I track a few stats.  I track scores on the recursive quizzes I give, I track the ACT scores (it is what students need to do well on), and I track, what I believe may be most important, post HS data to really judge my students.  My post HS data is math placement and first math course success in college (that is the best part of a small school - tracking 20 out of 30 students is easy).  Funny thing is most schools that I have spoken with don't track post HS success -- but heck I view that as my true end-product.  I am unsure how the CCSS should be tracked, I am waiting (with baited breath) for the Smarter-Balanced exam and see the data it provides.

All the success, failure, tears, etc don't matter if I create a student who cannot handle the next challenge.  I continually chant that the students want me to be hard, so they struggle & learn with me, versus struggling later in college or career.  But how does this all this tie to the CCSS and its practices?  That is the question I cannot quite answer yet.

So as I pull together my ACT numbers I see many successes.  Our trend is great, our scores are good, but there are still students on the fringe and those are the ones that I will try and set up systems to help.  My favorite discovery  is my D students can do math -- and that is important key -- if they can pass they have the basic skills and thus can succeed - otherwise they should stay for more instruction (so my line in the sand seems correct for passing/repeating students).  The data lends to the idea that grades are timed-based thus not a great indication of ability.  A student who does poorly in my Algebra class does not escape it in Geometry, they continue to practice and do quizzes through-out Geometry on  Algebra topics.  That allows the student who need more time to get it, it also makes sure the rest remember it.   And it seems to work, my Juniors/Seniors do well compared to the rest of the country (where 5 years ago they were slightly below the rest of the country).

So I have found some success with recursive quizzes bi-weekly on previous topics that were taught conceptually.  I have found a gap in my measurements and the CCSS, which I am unsure on how to bridge.  I have found that while the CCSS spells out lots of good things, but it fails to point out the great, which as a small school teacher makes deconstructing them a priority with all my free time with 7 preps!   Yet I know this is a slow progression, just like in business, the CCSS cannot be achieved over-night, and I will continue to track data, ask the big questions, and push for 3-5% improvement per year -- which is results oriented!