A Defective Method

No system is perfect. And no school will ever be perfect. But there's a difference between not achieving perfection and purposely creating a system that you know won't work. My school currently has a system for "credit recovery" that is designed to fail.

Like just about every school, we have some students who struggle in our classes. For a small number of those students, we have a "credit recovery" system in place, where they work with an online learning platform to make up classes they have failed. I have a ton of problems with this, not the least of which is that it's completely designed around the idea of "recovering credit" and not around the idea of learning (or what the student even needs). But even with those concerns, I would be willing to give it a pass if it provided a viable way for these students to jump through the hoops, graduate and move on with their lives.

I haven't ever had any interaction with our system but, yesterday, I had the opportunity to help one of our students who was working on their Geometry class on the platform. I was a tad bit surprised when the problems I was helping her with involved the Law of Sines and the Law of Cosines. Back when I was a full-time math teacher we taught that in Trig, but I figured perhaps with the changes due to Common Core that too had moved down into Geometry.

When I had a chance to look later, however, I discovered that while it's an option in Geometry, it falls in the "+" category, which means it's "Additional mathematics that students should learn in order to take advanced courses such as calculus, advanced statistics, or discrete mathematics." That hardly seems appropriate for a student who is struggling in mathematics and is participating in our "credit recovery" option as sort of a last-chance.

But, again, I thought perhaps it was something we had decided as a school was to be included in our Geometry classes in which case, while I still didn't think it was appropriate for this student, it would at least be consistent with our regular classes. So I went and talked to our Math Department and we don't teach Law of Sines and Cosines in our Geometry classes. Which means this struggling student, who is in our online-only, credit recovery option, is being asked to do more than the students in our regular, teacher-led classes.

But it gets worse. Because after the relatively straightforward Law of Sines and Law of Cosines problems (assuming that's not an oxymoron), she was presented with a problem something like the following. (Because it's in the online platform, I don't have access to it to see exactly what it said but, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, I feel relatively confident that this is essentially it.)

Using the defects method, which relationship represents the Law of Cosines if the measure of the included angle between the sides a and b of ΔABC is less than 90°?

Well, I read that a few times and was stumped. I had never heard of this "defects method." The student couldn't help me with what it was, so I asked her if we could go back and look at the "instruction" she had presumably had over this method previously on the platform. She said we couldn't because she was "locked out" now that she had finished that part. (I can't independently verify whether that is accurate, but she certainly thought it was.) So I googled "defects method Law of Cosines" . . . and found nothing.

Well, that's not entirely true. I found four or five links for it - all with various versions of that same problem that students had posted to various sites looking for answers (like this one). Unfortunately, I had a meeting to get to so I couldn't investigate further at that point, but later I spent more time googling and still came up with nothing. I did find something similar when talking about hyperbolic triangles (and I'm pretty sure even Common Core doesn't include that in high school Geometry), but nothing for 2D geometry. That night I asked on Twitter, and no one knew. And the next day I went in and asked our Geometry teachers, and they had never heard of it.

Now, none of that necessarily means it doesn't exist or that there perhaps wasn't some instruction in the online platform that would help explain it, but it does again make you wonder why it's being included in a credit recovery course for struggling math students. We don't cover it in our regular Geometry classes, none of the math teachers in the building (or who saw my tweet) have ever heard of it, and Google can't seem to find it either. Why in the world was this question there?

There are larger problems here, of course. How and why did my district select this platform? Who is overseeing the content and ensuring that students are actually getting content similar to the courses they are theoretically "recovering credit" for? Why do we think that students who struggled in a regular classroom, with a teacher and classmates to help them, is suddenly going to be successful as a learner in a learn-on-your-own online platform (even if the platform wasn't serving up the wrong content)?

Clearly, this "credit recovery" option is not at all about what the students need. It's not about what they want or need to learn to be successful in their future, it's not even about them being successful right now. It's just a desperate attempt by the adults in our system to somehow, some way, get these students to pass our required courses. As I said earlier, as horrible as that sounds, given our current system, if it actually accomplished that then I'd be okay with looking the other way (while still vigorously arguing to change the system). But it doesn't. We're taking these students that we've already failed and setting them up to fail again.

I still don't know what the "defect method" is in relation to triangles and geometry, but I have a pretty good idea what a defective method looks like in practice. If "defective method of instruction" was a standard, we would "exceed expectations."

The True Cost of Testing: Part 2

My last post on The True Cost of Testing generated a couple of follow-up questions I thought I might address.

One of those questions was what would we do to replace final exams? Don't we need some kind of assessment at the end of a semester/year? Maybe, maybe not, but if you do believe we need some kind of assessment at that point, I suggest an alternative. I wrote about this a while back, I think we should replace final exams with conferencing with students. Meeting with them individually and actually talking with them to see what they know, what they are still struggling with, and what they would like to do next would be much more valuable for the student than a final exam.

Another question focused on what should we do with that freed up time? We have about 175 instructional days with students but, as discussed in the last post, we lose about 17 or so to testing, which means we really have something more like 158. So one possibility is simply to give those days back to instruction. That effectively adds 11% (17/158) more days to our school year without actually increasing the number of days or spending any more money. That's an idea that everyone from Bernie to Donald could presumably support.

Alternatively, we could stick with 158 days. That would save us about 10% of our current budget, so that means we could hire 10% more teachers. At my school, that equates to about 11 more teachers, which could either translate to lower class sizes or additional offerings (or both). Which is better for students, 17 days of testing, or 158 days of instruction with 11 more teachers in the building?

Or perhaps we don't spend that saved money on additional teachers. Since we currently have 158 days of instruction that we're clearly satisfied with, then perhaps we use those 17 days differently. I'd suggest that the 2,150 students and 150 staff members participate in various forms of community service. Think what we could accomplish in our community with 2300 people, 17 days, and $2 million. Think also what the students could learn.

This undoubtedly would take many, many forms, some of them costing no money just donated time, and others taking both time and some money, but let me give just one example. What if we worked with Habitat For Humanity? With $2 million, 17 days, and that many volunteers, I think we could easily build 10 houses for families in need in our community. That's per year. Just from my school. Now only would it provide desperately needed affordable housing, but think of all the students would learn in that process. It could very much be an apprenticeship model, with students doing good while learning.

Even with 10 simultaneous houses going up, and even if students and teachers were split into 3 shifts a day at 6 hours each, that still wouldn't take all 2300 of us, so there still would be plenty of other volunteer opportunities going on at the same time for those 17 days. Maybe reading with students in elementary schools, maybe tending a community garden, maybe visiting seniors living in assisted living. And, obviously, we're only limited by our imagination in terms of finding activities that benefit the community while simultaneously teaching our students valuable skills. Part of the learning process would presumably be the students researching what the best use of that time might be.

So, once again, what would be the impact on the culture of learning in our schools? What would be the message we send to students (and teachers) of what we value and who we are serving?

The True Cost of Testing

Next week my school is giving the state-mandated testing to our freshmen, sophomores and juniors. Colorado, like many states, has made some changes this year, and they are definitely an improvement. The overall amount of testing is decreased somewhat, and sophomores will no longer be taking the PARCC exam but instead will be taking the PSAT. While I'm not a fan of PSAT and SAT either, they are at least somewhat useful to some students.

When the news was announced in December, the focus was primarily on three things: the reduced amount of testing, the switch from the ACT to the SAT, and the timing of the announcement. What was missing was much discussion of the merits of testing in general and the cost (both direct and indirect) of the testing. For this post, I'm going to just focus on cost.

I've so far been unable to find anywhere on the Colorado Department of Education site the cost to the state of these state-mandated tests. (I'm sure it's there somewhere, I just haven't found it yet.)  This article seems to indicate that the current ACT for juniors costs about $2.1 million a year, and they are budgeting $1.8 million for the sophomore exam, plus an additional $432,000 for juniors who want to take the writing portion. The cost for PARCC/CMAS (9th graders and 11th graders in science) is harder to figure out, but this article from about a year ago shows the state will pay Pearson about $27 million for PARCC and CMAS. If we assume that the high school portion of that is about 10% (very rough estimate), then add in another $2.7 million. So, somewhere around $7 million in direct costs to the state. That figure, of course, doesn't include the indirect costs of staffing, materials, time, etc., nor does it include the same types of indirect costs to school districts.

But even what little focus there has been on that really quite large sum of money then ignores the opportunity costs that are ultimately paid by school districts (and kids). Let's look at my building as one example. Next week we will spend three days on state-mandated testing. While we run an abbreviated schedule in the afternoons, most folks will acknowledge that the classes held during that time are not optimal for learning. The students who took the tests in the morning are tired, and some students who do not have to take the tests in any given morning choose not to come to school just for the classes in the afternoon (definite surge in our absentee rate). Given all that, many teachers make the reasonable decision to limit their instruction during this time to less critical matters. Not that we don't try to make the time worthwhile, we definitely do, but it's tough to try to reach the same level of learning as in a typical day. So, for me, I consider those three days pretty much lost for instruction. (If you disagree, you can pro-rate the numbers I'm about to share accordingly.)

So what does this "cost"? Well, according to district budget documents, we spend $9597 per student per year (that's including federal, state, and local funds; the amount directly from the state is less than that). We have about 175 days of "instruction" (theoretically), so $9597 divided by 175 works out to just under $55 per day per student. Since we have roughly 2150 students at Arapahoe, a single day of instruction costs roughly $118,000. That means that for each and every day of instruction we choose to "give up," we are "forfeiting" that money. So each day of testing is costing us $118,000, or roughly $354,000 for the three days of state-mandated testing. (Keep in mind that does not include the pro-rated cost of the $7 million the state is directly paying, or the indirect costs to the state and especially the districts that I'm sure adds several million more.)

But, sticking to just the lost instructional time, we're now at $350,000 (just at my school). But there's more, of course. We currently choose to take a day of instruction in the fall to give the PSAT to all Juniors. (Yes, despite the fact that we're now going to be giving it to all sophomores in April, we are still going to turn around and give it to all of them again in October when they're Juniors. Why? National Merit.) So that choice means we're deciding to spend another $118,000 on testing. We're now up to $472,000 (just at my school).

But, of course, there's still more if you don't limit it to state-mandated testing. What other types of testing do we have at my school? Well, we give MAP testing in language arts and mathematics to our students. That's a bit harder to quantify in terms of cost, since we don't devote parts of entire school days to it. Instead, students are tested in their language arts and math classes (twice a year in 9th and 10th grade, just once a year in 11th I think). Making a very rough estimate again, I'll say that equates to about half a day per year per student, so $59,000. We're now up to $531,000 (just at my school).

We also have many students who take AP exams at the end of the school year. When students take an AP exam, they not only miss the 3 or so hours they are writing the exam, but they often miss the entire school day as they are pretty exhausted. There are certainly many arguments in favor of the usefulness, importance and value of AP Exams, but there are also arguments against. No matter which side you fall on, certainly those days are not available for instruction for those students. (And even for those students who are not taking an AP exam, teachers adjust what they are doing in class because so many students are missing due to the AP exams). I don't really have the data to completely quantify this, but our students write close to 900 AP exams in a given year, so if we take 900 times $55 per day per student, that adds $49,500. We're now up to $580,500 (just at my school).

My school also requires final exams each semester. We devote four days each semester exclusively to final exams, so eight days throughout the school year. While there are certainly some folks who will argue that final exams are useful, necessary and important, there are also arguments that they are not. Whichever you believe, they certainly don't much resemble instruction. So eight days times $118,000 adds another $944,000, so we're up to $1,524,500 (just at my school). Since many teachers also take at least one day to review for the final exams, you could perhaps add in more here (although that review has some instructional value, so I'll leave that out for now).

Then you add in the individual tests that teachers give. This is even murkier territory, since I do believe assessment - when it is done well - is very valuable, and how teachers give these assessments varies tremendously. But certainly there are a fair number of teachers who give "unit" tests multiple times a year that take an entire class period. That's time that is no longer available for instruction, so there is an opportunity cost associated with it. Let's make a conservative estimate and say that each students loses 4 days a year cumulatively to these tests. That adds another $472,000, so we're up to $1,996,500.

Now, that's waaaaay too many digits of precision, so let's just say $2 million as a rough estimate. We spend $2 million a year on testing . . . just at my school.

Two. Million. Dollars.

We can debate my estimates and I'll freely admit that I'm just ballparking all of this, but at least it gives us a place to start the discussion. If we ignore the $7 million the state spends in direct costs, and if we ignore the additional millions the state and school districts spend in indirect costs, and just focus on what my high school spends on testing each year, $2 million is a good number to work with.

That's the cost of testing.

Yet even that isn't the true cost of testing, or at least not the total true cost of testing. My daughter is a sophomore this year, and in her language arts and math classes they have been doing some practice PSAT items. They are not spending a lot of time on this, but they are spending some. And just because they are practicing for the PSAT doesn't automatically make it a poor use of time, the skills they are practicing may (or may not) be valuable.

But I think we have to acknowledge that in addition to the actual time spent testing, we are impacting what we do in our schools. Even if you believe those practice items are valuable, keep in mind that those items change each year as the tests change. We used to do CSAP practice items, then TCAP, then PARCC, then ACT, and now PSAT and SAT. While those are certainly related, each time the test changes we change the prep we do. I think it's awfully hard to argue the high ground here about how valuable these items are when they keep changing based on which test we're giving.

And it doesn't just influence those test prep items. We change what we do in our classes based on these tests. From major changes like adjusting the entire curriculum, to more minor changes like materials selection and the emphasis we place on different topics within that curriculum, the current test ends up driving a lot of what we do (even if we don't want to admit it). Again, that doesn't necessarily mean that the things we are doing are bad, but I think we need to be honest and acknowledge why we are doing them. The question we need to ask is what would we choose to do with our students in the absence of those tests? Instead of trying to do things better, we should do better things.

It's not just the time (and dollars) spent on actual testing, it's the impact on the culture of learning in our schools. It's the message we send to students (and teachers) of what we value and who we are serving.

That's the true cost of testing.

#myoptoutletter

Our daughter will be opting out of the PARCC testing this spring at my high school. Some folks will applaud this decision, others will vehemently disagree, but we thought it was important to share our thinking. This is the letter we submitted to my administration and the school board this morning.

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February 28, 2015

To: Arapahoe High School Administration and LPS Board of Education

This letter is to let you know that our daughter will be opting out of the PARCC testing in the Spring of 2015 (both the PBA and the EOY). This request is not meant in any way to reflect poorly on Arapahoe High School or Littleton Public Schools. Our daughter loves her teachers and frequently comes home and tells us what a good job they are doing, with specific examples of what she thinks they did well. But as educators with a combined 48 years teaching every grade level (except Kindergarten and 2nd grade) from Pre-K through 12th, as well as professional development for adults, we do not feel like this testing is in the best interests of our daughter or the school.

We feel that the skills that this testing purports to measure reflect a very narrow and flawed version of what it means to be educated; of what it means to learn and to have learned. We don’t necessarily think that the standards themselves are bad; as standards go most of the Common Core State Standards (and the Colorado modification of them) are well written. To paraphrase Yong Zhao, there’s nothing wrong with the Common Core State Standards, as long as they weren’t common and they weren’t core.

While at times we may disagree with a specific assessment one of her teachers gives her (the content, the format, or the way it’s delivered), in general we believe that her teachers are in the best position to assess her progress as a learner (in conjunction with our daughter herself). More importantly, we believe these teacher-given assessments at least have the potential to help her grow as a learner. Standardized testing such as PARCC, however, is mostly designed to meet the needs of adults.

Instead of taking the tests, she will instead use that time to learn. She might read a book, or work on assignments from her teacher, or watch videos on YouTube of things that interest her, or perhaps just catch up on sleep to compensate for the ridiculousness of beginning school for teenagers at 7:21 am each day. Whatever she does, it is more likely to contribute to her growth as a learner than taking the tests, and less likely to negatively impact her and her school as a whole.

We don’t just think that these tests are bad for our daughter, we believe these tests are bad for all the students at Arapahoe, and for Arapahoe in general. These tests are forcing teachers to narrow their focus; to value a fixed, pre-determined set of skills that someone else has decided that all students need over the needs and desires of the living and breathing students that are actually in their classrooms. While there are many criticisms we would make about the curriculum currently being taught and the restraints that imposes on both teachers and learners, we still put our trust in Abby’s teachers to make the best of that curriculum.

But in our current environment, the mandated testing is overwhelming teachers’ abilities to make decisions in the best interest of their students. Because the results of these tests are being used to evaluate teachers, teachers and administrators are being forced to toe the line in order to keep their jobs. While some folks would argue that this “only” represents 50% of a teacher’s evaluation, we have both seen how this has come to dominate all the discussions of teaching and learning in our schools. I would ask school administrators the following question: If there is a teacher who you have observed many times over the years that you feel is a master teacher, and yet the results of mandated testing over a narrow band of skills don’t support that, would you really change your evaluation of that teacher? There is so much more to teaching and learning than students simply performing well on a single test on a single day.

Make no mistake, we believe in high standards, we just don’t think that this approach actually helps promote them. We believe you can have high standards without being standardized; in fact, we don’t think it’s possible to truly have high standards if you are standardized. The goal of K-12 education is not to help all students master a pre-determined, fixed set of knowledge all at the same time and at the same pace. Algebra may (or may not) be important for all students to learn, but it is ludicrous to state that all students must learn it by the time they are fifteen years old. Why not fourteen? Or sixteen? If a student decides they need - and want - to learn Algebra at eighteen and master it then, is that so bad?

Anyone who has had children, or has met more than one of them, knows that each and every student is different and learns differently, yet we continue to act as if they are widgets on an assembly line, performing the same processes for the same amount of time on each one of them, and expecting that they will all turn out identical at the end of the line. Not only is this not true, we shouldn’t even want it to be true. We say we value diversity and each individual student, that we value and cherish the individual personalities and strengths of each and every child, yet we’ve developed a system that values conformity and compliance over individuality and initiative. We say that we value critical thinking, yet we are apparently unwilling to model it for our students.

We believe in a vision of education that focuses on the needs of each student over the needs of the system. We believe that school should be a place where students are encouraged to pursue their passions, and then actually prepare them to achieve those passions. That doesn’t mean we don’t value community; we believe one of the greatest strengths of the concept of public schools is bringing together students with different strengths and different backgrounds into a common space where they can learn and grow together. Where they can find others who share their passion, but also learn with and alongside those who have other passions. We believe that the way you meet the needs of society is by meeting the needs of each individual student. If you truly meet each student’s needs, then in the end you will meet the needs of society.

For all of these reasons (and many more, but this is already fairly long), we are choosing to opt our daughter out of testing. We have given her the option of opting out each year but this is the first time she has chosen to do it; previously she has never wanted to stand out and “be different” than the other students. She is aware enough now to understand, however, that taking these tests is not only not in her own best interests, but also not in the interests of her friends, classmates and teachers. We think this is important enough that we would give her this option even if it did “negatively” impact Arapahoe or Littleton Public Schools but, thankfully, with the recent changes at the state level surrounding the 95% participation rate, that will not happen.

Which is why we also have a request for the leadership of Arapahoe and Littleton Public Schools. Littleton Public Schools is the highest scoring district in the Denver Metro area, and one of the highest scoring districts in the state, and Arapahoe scores very well as a school. This puts the school and the district in a position where others might listen if they stood up and said this is not in the best interests of our students. A school and a school district that always come out looking good under this system is in the unique position of making the case for why this approach is fatally flawed. Instead of simply reacting to events and the decisions of others, we would ask you to lead.

We - the students, parents, educators and citizens of Colorado - need you to be proactive, not reactive. Instead of reacting to and appeasing the folks who are imposing this system on us, we need you to advocate for a different version of learning, a truly higher standard of what we expect from our schools, a vision for what school can and should be. We don’t need schools that are “better” at scoring well on standardized tests, we need schools that are different, and we need you to advocate for that vision and for our students. We hope you will. Our students deserve nothing less from us.

Sincerely,

Karl and Jill Fisch

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More Information

Colorado Department of Education

• Assessment Home
• PARCC Testing: Math and Language Arts
• CMAS Testing: Science and Social Studies
• Colorado Law
• Parent Information
• Letter from State Commissioner of Education to Superintendents re: 95% penalty removal (pdf)

 Denver Post

• Article on holding districts "harmless" if don't reach 95% participation
• Opt-Out Movement: Just say no to new Colorado assessments

United Opt Out

• Main Page
• Colorado-specific Page
• FAQ with Colorado Department of Education
• Refusal Guide for Colorado (updated February 2015, pdf)

Update 3-4-15: LPS has a page (not sure if it's brand new or was just updated) with FAQs about PARCC/CMAS that includes a mention of opting out.

The Textbook Is Not The Curriculum

I thought I'd give a little update on two of my previous posts. Despite overwhelming opposition by the professionals that we pay to teach our students mathematics, our district went ahead and adopted the Agile Mind materials. The rollout this fall has been less than smooth, including many technical issues that have been slow to be addressed (students not being able to login, students not being able to load the materials, some of the materials loading but not others, etc.). We are diligently working through those technical issues and I imagine we will solve them reasonably soon.

But the other concerns the professional mathematics educators expressed regarding the materials are not so easily addressed, and many of them are coming up in the day-to-day use of these materials. The Algebra team at my school (Algebra being the only course where they are required to use the Agile Mind materials at this point, although Geometry and Algebra II will be required in the future) has been extremely frustrated up to this point. Being the dedicated teachers that they are, they aren't giving up, they are still trying their best to make this work, but they have been burdened by the expectation that they must use these materials. (And, as stated previously, Agile Mind seems to be designed to work as a script, not a resource.)

As a result of the technical problems with Agile Mind, I have had a fair amount of interaction with the Algebra teachers around Agile Mind (full disclosure: I'm not teaching Algebra this year so am not experiencing this myself), and I've mentioned several times that they don't have to use these materials. Like any textbook or other approved materials, it is simply a resource for them to use. The only expectation of them is to help students learn the mathematics curriculum as decided by the Board of Education, and they can use their professional judgement on how best to do that. Every time I've brought this up they look at me and say, essentially, they been told they must use these materials. (Apparently it was even mentioned that the district can "track" how often students log in, and therefore how often teachers are using the materials, although it's somewhat unclear as to which half of this the emphasis was being placed on.)

Which brings me to why I'm writing this post. I have a daughter who is in ninth grade and is taking Algebra at Arapahoe, so therefore is using the Agile Mind materials. She recently brought home a letter from the district saying that all the students would be surveyed three times throughout the course of the year to help determine the impact on mathematics instruction and achievement of the use of the Agile Mind materials. The purpose of the letter was to allow us to opt-out of the survey if we wished, per School Board policy.

Normally we wouldn't have any issue with our daughter taking a survey such as this but, for the first time, we are choosing to opt her out. It's not just because of the 45 minutes of mathematics learning she will miss out on while they are taking this survey, although that's certainly part of it. But it's because of the letter itself, and how it reflects on the above discussion and my previous blog posts. Here's the full text of the letter.

Do you notice anything about this letter? Here's what I noticed. It refers to the Agile Mind Curriculum in the header and three separate times in the the first paragraph. It's not a curriculum, it's materials that have been adopted to support the curriculum. This may indeed just be a slip of the keyboard (although four times in one paragraph is a whole lot of slippin'), but the problem is that - whether it's a slip or not - that is exactly how it's being implemented by the district. It's being treated as a curriculum, not in support of the curriculum. Not only is this exactly what the professional teachers of mathematics feared back in the spring when we were discussing this, it is in direct violation of the curriculum adoption process in our school district.

I've stated before that I think the materials adoption process in our district is deeply flawed, but at least it was a process that was more-or-less followed, even though the results of that process were not ideal. But clearly the process for curriculum adoption was not followed, and so for the district to now be referring to this as the Agile Mind Curriculum in a formal communication home to parents is stunning.

So, as a professional educator, as someone who has a fair amount of experience teaching students mathematics, as someone who is fairly well connected to the on-going discussions around learning and what's best for our students, as a staff member in Littleton Public Schools and at Arapahoe High School, and as a citizen and taxpayer, I have a question. But let's ignore all those roles and I'm just going to ask this question from one perspective:

As a parent of a ninth grader enrolled in Algebra at Arapahoe High School in Littleton Public Schools, I'd like to know what the LPS School Board is going to do about this?

An Open Letter to the Littleton Public Schools Board of Education

This post is kind of an addendum to my last post. On Tuesday of last week the district asked our Math Department for a list of our concerns over the materials that were being recommended. Since the Board meeting was on Thursday, the department met after school on Wednesday and generated the letter below. The letter was shared with the district and, to their credit, they shared some of the bullet points with the Board when they made their presentation. To the best of my knowledge* (see update at bottom), the entire letter was not shared, so I thought I would share it here.

There are two other high schools in our district, plus a small, alternative setting. At the Board meeting the Math Department Chair of the next largest high school (we are the largest, 15 teachers in the department) spoke against the materials adoption, stating that 10 out of the 11 math teachers in her building opposed it (you might recall from my previous post that we had been told something different). The third high school is apparently in support of the materials although, again, we're hearing second hand from at least some of those teachers that, and I paraphrase, "we felt like we didn't have a choice so why fight it."

The School Board will decide on the materials adoption at their next meeting on Thursday, May 8th.

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To: Littleton Public Schools School Board

From: Arapahoe High School Mathematics Department

Re: Concerns over materials adoption

As you know, LPS is in the process of adopting new materials in order to implement the newly revised Colorado Content Standards in Mathematics (which, in turn, align with the Common Core State Standards - Mathematics, or CCSS-M). As is the usual process, a committee was formed to preview what materials were available, then review selected materials, then make a recommendation to the Board on what materials to adopt. While this process has worked reasonably well in the past, we have concerns that the materials that are being recommended this time are not in the best interests of our students.

First, a bit of context. While there has been a lot of discussion both locally and nationally around the Common Core State Standards (not just the Mathematics ones, but the Language Arts ones as well), it’s important to keep in mind that these standards are still relatively new, especially in the context of textbook development cycles. Consequently, many of the choices that are currently available from textbook publishers are not (yet) of the quality we would like.

In addition, we are very much in a transition period between print resources and digital resources. While we clearly are headed toward digital resources, textbook publishers have not yet figured out the best way to utilize this new medium. (There are also questions of how the publishers will maintain revenues and profits, but we will not go there as part of this discussion.) Many publishers initially just tried to port their existing print resources to an online format, usually as some combination of non-editable PDF’s and non-editable web pages behind a login. While that was a natural first step, it really didn’t provide any advantages for the end user over a print textbook (in fact, it was probably more difficult to use). (It did, however, provide a cost-savings to the publishers as digital is much cheaper than physical; a cost savings that sometimes was passed along to the customer, but often was not.) This is an example of “Substitution” phase in the SAMR model that LPS uses for 21st Century Literacy.

Over time publishers began receiving feedback that customers did not like this and began to investigate better ways to take advantage of the affordances of digital platforms. The Agile Mind materials that the committee is recommending we adopt is an attempt to both address the new CCSS-M Standards and take advantage of those digital affordances. In our opinion, however, they have not successfully addressed either one.

Here’s a brief - although not comprehensive - list of some of the concerns we developed in a department meeting.

• Much of it is not editable (exams, lessons, activities in PDF form or online) - can’t be easily customized. A physical text would not be editable either, but we feel like other digital resources are much more customizable (our own fledgling efforts on ck12 (still very much in alpha form), test generator-type software from previous publishers, Google Sites/Drive, etc - all have the ability for us to modify).
  
  
• Not adaptable across our level of instruction such as remedial, on track, and advanced. This ranges from concerns from our Learning Support Services folks about reading level of the text (not adaptable to lower reading levels) to concerns about the ability to extend for our more advanced students. This also includes concerns about how we implement the various intervention models we have developed in our PLCs over the last few years using these materials, including how our Study Center personnel will utilize it.
  
  
• There are not enough examples and daily practice provided without considerable supplementation.
  
  
• There are concerns about being able to utilize the Smart Board environment like we currently do while simultaneously accessing the Agile Mind materials on screen. Many of us have developed many digital resources that we use with students in class. We understand that you don’t have to follow the Agile Mind script exactly, but that calls into question what the advantages are of buying this resource.
  
  
• These materials are built to be delivered in a fairly particular way. While the publisher argues that the teacher has great flexibility, the materials themselves only work for a while if you follow the “script”. While teachers are under no obligation to follow that script, if they do not, then these materials are not of much use to them. In addition, the Agile Mind script requires more days of instruction to complete the curriculum than we currently have.
  
  
• There is a concern with all students having access to the Internet at home in order to fully utilize this program. While that is certainly a goal of ours and we are heading that direction (both at AHS and in LPS), the district currently cannot guarantee this. If we are going to adopt materials that are only available with an online connection, then we would have to guarantee (and provide for those who cannot afford it) both equipment and high-speed Internet access for all of our students. (In comparison, the ck12 book we are creating is online, but can also be downloaded in PDF, ePub, or mobi formats for use offline without an Internet connection if necessary).
  
  
• While we haven’t had time to explore the materials fully, we have already discovered some technical issues (for example, there are issues on pages with scroll bars and the “interactive” dragging and dropping). In addition, the user interface is not particularly well designed. There are issues with the size of the print (if you’re projecting and kids are very far back in the classroom). While there are zoom options available on browsers, the interface itself doesn’t adjust well making it not very usable with a class.
  
  
• Cost (including additional cost of printing the student activity sheets). While we have not been told an exact cost, we’ve heard numbers like $500,000 thrown around. Whatever the final number is, we think that would be a reasonable investment in materials that would help our students become better learners, but we don’t feel it is a reasonable investment given the quality of these materials. Especially when you consider the following budgetary concerns (these are just three recent examples that come to mind):
  
  
• Our Deaf and Hard of Hearing Teacher is being let go due to budgetary reasons, despite the fact that we still have students in need of those services, and the fact that we have two sections of students who are taking ASL as their World Language and will now not be able to continue with that.
  
  
• Apparently spending $15,000 on blinds to cover the windows next to our classroom doors is too much, even though we need them in a lockdown situation in order to prevent intruders from seeing into our classrooms and targeting our students.
  
  
• Apparently we can no longer as a district support individual student logins to the network. Instead, all students at Arapahoe will use a single login. This affects all students and teachers, but particularly affects instruction in Technology Education, Business and Journalism.

While not a comprehensive list, we feel these concerns are more than enough already to question the adoption of these materials. We want to be clear that we are not resistant to change, nor are we unwilling to look at new approaches, we just don’t feel like the materials we have seen so far (and, specifically, the Agile Mind materials), meets the needs of our students. Instead of adopting - and spending the money on - materials that are not up to our quality standards, we would propose the following.

• Don’t adopt anything at this point. Perhaps some outstanding materials will come along in the future that will be worth adopting but, at the moment, these are not outstanding materials.
  
  
• Instead, let's use a small part of the money that would’ve gone to this adoption and invest in professional development. Since we’re beginning this transition with Algebra, why don’t we get a group of Algebra teachers together and develop materials and come up with the types of activities we want to do with our students? We feel that we could come up with materials that were at least as good as those proposed for adoption, and probably better for our students, for substantially less money.
  
  
• In addition, that professional development is much more likely to impact our students in a positive fashion than simply purchasing these materials. Learning theory tells us that humans actively construct their own knowledge and are active meaning-makers. This is not only true for our students, but for our teachers as well. Adopting canned, pre-scripted materials is unlikely to actually impact classroom practice or student learning. If we want to actually impact classroom practice, then professional development - with teachers co-creating materials and activities - is the way to do that.
  

We feel that there has never been a better time to be a teacher or a learner. We fully agree that the affordances of digital technologies and resources can improve our instruction and our students’ learning. We simply disagree that the Agile Mind materials - or any of the materials that were previewed - will actually do that. We feel that investing in professional development - investing in us - would not only be less expensive, but much, much more helpful for our students.

You trust us with your children, please trust us with this.

Sincerely,

Arapahoe High School Mathematics Department

Update 5-1-14: We've been told that the entire letter was shared with the Board of Education.

Burden of Proof: A Textbook Example

My district, like many I imagine, is in the process of making the transition from our existing math curriculum to one aligned with the updated Colorado Math Standards (pdf), which in turn are aligned with the Common Core State Standards - Mathematics. This post is not going to be about the Common Core State Standards themselves (you can thank me now), but about the "Materials Selection Process."

Traditionally in my district (as in many), when new curriculum is adopted a committee is formed to select new materials to support that curriculum. (Although, interestingly, I recently found out that in my district there is no dedicated budget for that, they just "find" the money each time they need to do this.) Once the committee researches, previews, and reviews the various materials available, they make a recommendation to the Board of Education. After a period of time for public comment, the Board then decides whether to adopt the materials.

In many areas, particularly Math, this has traditionally been a textbook-selection process. I was not part of this committee, but the process this year was a little different for a couple of reasons. First, because the Common Core State Standards are still fairly new (at least in terms of textbook publishing cycles), there are not a lot of good choices out there. Second, we are clearly in a transition period between the traditional print-based textbook and online "techbooks".

The committee ended up deciding on Agile Mind. (Well, sort of. Apparently some folks on the committee weren't entirely thrilled with the choice, and others felt like they really didn't have much choice so didn't say anything. But, in any case, that's the recommendation that's going forward.) The math teachers at my school were then asked to review the materials briefly before a webinar from the company and to share our thoughts and concerns. Here are some of my thoughts.

To summarize those thoughts, my feeling is that this isn't a good choice. While I like some of what Agile Mind is doing (I've used some ideas from the Dana Center in my Algebra class), overall I wasn't really impressed with their online techbook (with the caveat that I haven't spent enough time with it to do a fair and thorough review). It just doesn't seem to leverage much of the affordances of digital over print (see the thoughts for more on that).

I found it both interesting and convenient that for the webinar Agile Mind chose "Topic 18: Modeling with Quadratic Functions" to demo their product. I had recently taught an abbreviated version of this topic (abbreviated because we are transitioning to the new curriculum this year, so we have some of the old and some of the new), so I could compare what they clearly felt was their "good stuff" with what I had just come up with on my own.

Conveniently (again), Agile Mind starts their unit with a modeling activity built around shooting a basketball. They have an animation of two players shooting a basketball, one overhand and one underhand. You really have to see the animation to get the, umm, full effect, but I'll share a screen shot here that should give you an idea.

Source: Agile Mind, Algebra 1 CCSS Edition, Topic 18, Student Activity Sheet 1

It turns out that I used a similar activity borrowed from the MTBoS (MathTwitterBlogosphere). Which version do you think makes better use of digital resources? Which version do you think is better pedagogically? I think the MTBoS version is much better, but that's certainly debatable. What's not debatable, however, is that I can modify, alter, adjust, customize, and add to the MTBoS version as I see fit, where it's difficult to do that with the Agile Mind version (their techbook is behind a login, student activity sheet is a PDF, you can't customize their techbook).

I could go on about things I don't particularly like about Agile Mind (as well as things I like - for example, it has a cohesiveness and flow that a "put-together" set of lesson plans like mine may lack), but the point of this post is not really to criticize Agile Mind. The point (I knew I would get to it eventually) is that the "materials selection process" we (and I imagine many districts) have in place is fundamentally flawed. The default assumption is that if we are revising the curriculum, then we need to purchase new materials, and those materials are going to be in the form of a textbook (either print-based or digital, but still essentially a textbook).

I think that is wrong. I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the context of what it's like to be a learner today. It completely misses the advantages and affordances of digital over print (or at least open digital over pre-digested, closed digital resources). I think that for all "materials selections" from here on out, the default should be to not purchase a new textbook. That doesn't mean a new textbook can't be purchased if it's decided that's the best option, but it means the burden of proof should be on those that want to purchase a new textbook to justify why we should. To use the trendy term, what's the "value add" of these materials?

We haven't been told how much this adoption is going to cost, as I don't think they've negotiated that yet, although the figure of $500,000 has been thrown around (not sure if that's an initial cost, or a 7-year cost, or what). I'm going to assume that this will cost somewhere between $50,000 and $5 million. Whatever the final figure, I think that's an egregious waste of money.

Here's what I propose instead. Don’t adopt anything at this point. Perhaps some outstanding materials will come along in the future that will be worth adopting but, at the moment, these are not outstanding materials. Instead, let's use a small part of the money that would’ve gone to this textbook adoption and invest in our teachers. Wouldn’t it be amazing to get a group of Algebra teachers together for two weeks over the summer and come up with the types of activities we want to do with our students? (Maybe $15,000 or so, depending on the number of teacher and number of days - we currently pay $150/day stipends for teachers doing curricular work.) That would give at least one full day to work on each unit in CCSS-M - wouldn’t that be a better use of our time and money? Wouldn't that end up developing materials that were at least as good as - and perhaps better - than the materials we could purchase for substantially more money? And, more importantly, wouldn't investing that money in teachers developing the activities be much, much, much (did I mention much?) more likely to impact teachers' practice?

Adopting Agile Mind (or anything else I've seen out there) isn't likely to change what happens in the classroom with kids. (Or, if it does, it will change it in a negative fashion by providing a script-like experience for students.) But give teachers time, guidance and resources (including tapping into the MTBoS), and I think you will not only develop an outstanding resource that will get implemented in the classroom, but will also influence teachers' practice, and therefore student learning.

If the burden of proof is indeed on those wishing to adopt/purchase new materials, I would suggest that they haven't fulfilled that burden in this case. And I would suggest that districts and School Boards everywhere reevaluate the processes they have in place for curriculum adoption and materials selection. If you can't justify how and why a new curriculum or set of materials is going to help your students become better learners, then you can't justify the purchase price. Instead, consider investing in your people, and their ideas. That's truly a better way to develop agile minds.

Inertia, Obedience, and Faith

This past week I proctored TCAP for the last time. Unfortunately, it was only the last time because the name and content of the test is changing next year. Long-time readers of this blog (both of you) will know I have a bias against testing anyway, so take this with a grain (or ten) of salt, but giving this year's test was even more deeply distressing than normal.

You see, while I have doubts of the efficacy of this test in any given year, this year was obviously a bit different in my school. Given the events of December 13th, and all that has gone on since then, I don't see any way these tests had any statistical validity or reliability. If that is indeed the case, then why give them?

To me, it boils down to a pretty simple question:

Is there anyone on the staff who honestly believes that the best use of our limited time with these students, this year, is spending it giving the TCAP? Or would it be better for them to be attending their regular classes, with their teachers and their peers, learning as part of the Warrior community?

(Keep in mind that freshmen and sophomores took the TCAP for about 10 hours over three days, juniors and seniors stayed home for that time, then we ran a shortened schedule of classes in the afternoon.) While it's certainly possible there might be a few folks that would answer in the affirmative (return to normalcy), I think the vast majority would not. So, again, why give them?

I think the answer lies in a combination of inertia, obedience, and faith. Inertia, because once testing is in motion it tends to stay in motion. Obedience, because folks "higher up" have decided we should do this, so we do. And faith, because even though many of us question the value, we have faith that somehow the system, or the people running it, have made (and will make) the best decisions for our students.

I question that last one. While there are certainly many, many people more knowledgeable than I am about teaching and learning, I'm not so sure there are many, many people who are currently making these decisions that are any more knowledgeable about the future than I am. That's not to say that I am knowledgeable about the future, I'm not. But neither are they, and so much of the justification for the Common Core and standardized testing rest upon assumptions that, at best, are partially accurate.

I've written before about the changing world of work. Yesterday I came across two separate articles that contest some of the assumptions so many folks are making. First, via Will Richardson, I came across this post from John Robb:

Technological change is rapidly killing entire industries and job categories without replacing them. Across the board, incremental productivity improvements are making it possible for employers to get by without hiring new people (even the head of the biggest employer in the World has plans to replace most of his workers with robots). However, that won’t be where we see the greatest losses. Those losses will occur in the industries that are completely gutted from the arrival of products and services that make them obsolete.

As this trend strengthens, we may see results similar to what we saw with the agrarian economy. If that occurs, the extreme endpoint of this decline may be a world where most of the commercial activity in goods and services we see today — from education to health care to manufacturing to transportation to retail to legal services — is accomplished by less than 1% of the people it used to require.

That means only 1 of the hundred jobs being done currently will be left. More strikingly, it’s very likely this won’t take the 200 years it took agriculture to go from 95% of the population to less than 1%. It’s going to be much, much faster this time due to the speed at which improvements can be distributed (software/data). Given this catalyst, we may find ourselves more than half of the way there within twenty years.

Another catalyst will be economic crisis. With each successive crisis, there will an increased competition for the remaining economic scraps. This competition will force companies to use technology more aggressively as a replacement for workers. Economic crisis will also force bankrupt governments to radically reduce their expenditures. This shortfall will drive a willingness to bend regulations to adopt alternatives that provide significant benefit for a fraction of the cost, despite vocal opposition from existing interests.

This process is both inevitable and irreversible. Our world is being upended. Get ready.

This echoes some of what I wrote about previously in terms of the future of work. Is Robb right? I don't know. I suspect he is partially correct, and partially incorrect. I don't know if 1% is where we will really end up, but I think the trend he is pointing out is accurate. And I agree that it will happen much more quickly than when we transitioned from an agrarian to an industrial economy.

What does this have to do with TCAP or the Common Core? I think a better question is what do TCAP or the Common Core have to do with a future that looks like this?

The second article I came across discussed similar topics, although perhaps not with quite the same economic-Malthusian perspective. Richard Florida was recently interviewed on WGBH's Innovation Hub program. The entire podcast is 27 minutes and worth your time, but I'd particularly recommend the portion from about 18:30 to 21:37.


Florida doesn't see things quite as direly as Robb does. He feels that humans have always done a good job of adapting and creating new forms of work. But he also says,

What we're going to have to do as a society is create a new social contract. This is our choice. A new social contract which says we should probably work fewer hours, we should have a shorter work week, we should pay people more and we should engage more human beings more fully. But we're going to have to organize that society; the magic of the market and the magic of innovation isn't going to do that . . . [We have to have a conversation about] how do we build a new social contract that empowers and engages workers, creates a middle class, for this innovative economy.

So how do we build an education system that empowers and engages students, that allows them to create, and in turn creates innovators for this new economy?

Our world is being upended, yet our education system is being standardized; driven by inertia, obedience and faith. I guess I just don't have that much faith that TCAP or the Common Core are going to help us get where we need to go. And I'm beginning to wonder if we have the capability to overcome our own inertia and tendency to be obedient.

The New NCLB: No Curler Left Behind

The Denver Post is my local newspaper. I always find it interesting that during the Olympics they prominently run a "medal count" graphic each day, showing which countries have won the most medals. It's always struck me as kind of silly, as if the number of medals says anything about the success and worth - or lack thereof - of both the individual athletes and the countries they represent.

I've also always marveled at how different the Post's (and others') coverage of education comparisons is from their Olympic ones, and wondered how it might look if they covered the Olympics the same way they do education. Thankfully, Richard Florida has come through with a post that does it for me (in a way).

Because, really, it shouldn't be the total number of medals we're comparing, right? After all, does anyone really expect Slovenia to get more medals than the United States? So it was good to see Richard Florida point out that the United States is currently coming in a dismal 22nd place (behind Kazakhstan) in medals per 10 million people at Sochi.

Unfortunately, that's the good news. When you rank countries in number of medals per GDP, the U.S. comes in even worse: 23rd. (Jeesh, even Kazakhstan rose up to 17th).

Where's the outrage in Washington, D.C.? Why isn't the Denver Post writing editorials decrying the state of the U.S. Olympic program? Why isn't NBC holding a day-long "Olympic Nation" (with accompanying website) to figure out what we're doing wrong? I mean, if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre Olympic performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

Well, I for one will not stand idly by while our children's future slips away. Clearly we need some changes, and we need them fast. So I propose a Blue Ribbon panel to examine this issue. I think we should get someone eminently qualified to lead this panel. I propose Bill Gates, but I suppose I'd be okay with someone like Eli Broad.

This really needs to be a public/private partnership, however. After all, the Olympics are a national priority and surely the government has a role here. I think we should come up with a new government program with incentives to the States to develop better Olympic athletes. Given the prevalence of racing in the Olympics, I thought Race to the Top sounded pretty good, but unfortunately I found out that was already taken. So instead I propose we call it NCLB: No Curler Left Behind. Perhaps we could get the Governors of all the States together and they could come up with some new standards for our Olympic athletes. (Personally, to be successful in today's world I think that all of our athletes should be well-versed in the four C's: Curling, Cricket, Camel Racing and Caber Toss.)

But it's not enough to create the commission and choose some extremely successful businesspeople and politicians to head it, we need some concrete proposals to get the discussion started. Clearly our athletes are not measuring up to expectations and I think we all know part of the reason - they simply aren't being held accountable. I think we need to have them test their abilities more frequently against the competition so we can find out what's working and what's not, and then make the necessary adjustments.

So my first proposal is to hold the World Championship in each Olympic sport three times a year, once every three months. That will give us some formative data in order to make better decisions. If some athletes aren't performing up to expectations, perhaps we can hold them back and have them repeat a season or something.

My next proposal is so obvious I can't figure out why it's not already in place. Whose idea was it to have the Olympics only once every four years? If we have the World Championship in each sport three times a year (in the first nine months of the year), then at the end of the year we should hold the Olympics. Each year, not once every four years. Surely holding the Olympics every year would hold the athletes (and their coaches and trainers) more accountable?

And since corporate sponsorship is a big piece of how we pay for our Olympic Team,  perhaps we can ask Pearson to get involved in developing the criteria and then performing the judging of the Olympics? Since we're well into the 21st century, I think we should utilize the amazing technology we have available to us and test our athletes on computers. True, it's not quite the same as actually performing on the ski slope or the ice rink, but it is much more efficient and makes it much easier to compare them. We could then develop Performance Leveraging Committees (PLC's) to analyze the data and improve our implementation of NCLB.

Now, some folks will worry about the athletes, coaches and trainers who are struggling a bit but, when push comes to shove, if they aren't cutting it, we should be cutting them. If after a year or two of world championships and Olympic competitions they aren't winning Gold medals (or at least making Adequately Yearly Progress toward the Gold), then we should disband those teams and send them to more successful teams. And, frankly, we shouldn't limit those teams under the umbrella of the United States Olympic Committee, we should get the market involved. I mean, why should Park (PARCC?) City and Steamboat Springs and Lake Placid and Colorado Springs get to hold a monopoly on U.S. Winter Olympics training? A little competition would do Team USA some good, wouldn't it? Who wouldn't want to be part of Team Coca Cola Skeleton Racing in Atlanta?

I haven't though this next idea completely through yet, but it's pretty exciting so I thought I'd share it anyway. What if we flipped the Summer and Winter Olympics? I mean the Russians are basically already trying that by holding the Winter Olympics in the beach resort city of Sochi, why shouldn't we try a 100% flipped environment here in the U.S.? That would be some disruptive innovation right there.

Now these aren't my only ideas, but I don't want to dominate the conversation too much. I think we can all agree that if we would just raise the bar a little bit and hold these folks accountable, their performance would improve. (In the case of the Summer Olympics, I would suggest we literally raise the bar; perhaps to 10 feet in the high jump, and 25 feet in the pole vault. After all, our athletes should be outperforming the rest of the world.) And we should learn from those countries that are currently kicking our butt. If it works in Slovenia and Latvia (I've heard some people refer to it as the Slavic Miracle), it should work twice as well in the U.S., right?

I have a lot more to say, but I'm getting a little tired and my eyes are getting red, so I think I'll sign off for now, but I hope this idea goes viral. If I get some time tomorrow I think I'll extend this idea to the NFL. I hope the Broncos are listening . . .