Everyday Math adoption in Issaquah

Here is a great piece that Mike Miller wrote on the up coming Lake Washington School District math adoption process.

It sounds like you’re in for a chess match, but I suspect the Lake Washington School district will give you only a partial view of the gameboard. We went through an elementary adoption in Issaquah several years ago. I was not involved at the outset of the year long process. I became involved about half-way through the process.

It didn’t take me long to realize that the district administration did not want genuine parental input. Parental participation was limited to “rigged” & leading Zoomerang surveys, PTSA presentations by district administrators (late in process, decision already made), and informational nights to introduce parents to the new curriculum. Appeals to the school board (limited to 3 minutes) fell on deaf ears. In fairness, I suspect (but cannot prove conclusively) that maybe half of the school board members (along with many teachers & parents) were duped by misleading information from district administrators.

The following describes sequential deceitful steps in a textbook adoption in Washington D.C. Each of these steps was followed in Issaquah (except 1), yielding validity to the author’s assertion that this could be a nation-wide script.

Tactic 1- State the traditional approach is a failure.

This is where the district will not only disparage a traditional approach, but they must also make the case that the outgoing text is outdated & antiquated. The district will likely claim to seek a “balanced” approach that “blends computational fluency with conceptual understanding.” Shouldn’t that be the goal of every curriculum?

Tactic 2- Discredit those against the adoption as being ideologically/ politically motivated, or as being unqualified to render a professional “educator’s” opinion.

After presenting my concerns to the school board (I had left the microphone) one of the board members dismissed my testimony by saying that well meaning but generally uninformed parents can find all types of misleading information on the internet. Then sitting comfortably in his chair, he used his laptop to pull-up an article quoting a pro-reform NYC school administrator almost directly refuting my testimony. I’ve also heard WTM referred to as a “right-wing conservative group” (although not in my district).

Tactic 3- State the success of any program depends on the teacher.

This was done in a presentation by the administration to the school board as a lead-in to the accompanying “professional development.”

Tactic 4- Bring in teachers from different school districts as witnesses.

This was also done in Issaquah. Additionally, one of the candidates for the position of Issaquah Superintendent touted how well the curriculum under consideration had done in the district he was presently in. He’s now Issaquah’s new Superintendent. Teachers from other districts were also brought in to serve as facilitators for the “introductory curriculum nights” where EM was unveiled to parents. This proved to be a smart move by the district, as the evening was quite contentious with a bunch of angry parents.

Tactic 5- Bring in a witness from a University.

This tactic was not used in Issaquah to my knowledge.

Tactic 6- Assemble your own expert panel and have an independent consultant summarize the results.

This tactic took a bit of a twist in Issaquah. Our district formed a “workgroup” comprised of teachers to develop guidelines for curricula selection (facilitated by district administrators) , as it sounds like their doing in LWSD. Then the same “workgroup” recommended that the piloting that had been promised parents be eliminated, and go straight to “in depth studies” of Everyday Mathematics. They changed the process without parental input, totally eliminating a promised side-by-side piloting of finalist curricula. The following excerpt describes what the district did next. This is an excerpt from my presentation to the school board. No response was ever given.

“Immediately following the Workgroup’s decision to recommend that EDM be the sole curriculum to move forward for “in-depth studies,” the District, in an attempt to alleviate parental concerns (both over curriculum and procedural issues), stated on their web-site that a relationship had been entered into with NorthWest Regional Education Laboratories (NWREL) to conduct “studies of efficacy” on the curriculum in question (Everyday Mathematics) . The District’s implication was that an unbiased study by a presumably prestigious independent organization should alleviate any questions surrounding the curriculum. There is however, evidence that would suggest a possible conflict of interest. Our own Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Terry Bergeson, has been and continues to be a strong advocate for these “new-new curricula.” In fact, according to Everyday Mathematic’s own web-site, research compiled either by, or under the direction of Dr. Bergeson (Teaching and Learning Mathematics) is associated with the curriculum’s development. Additionally, a visit to the NWREL web-site will show that the same Dr. Terry Bergeson sits on the Board of Directors for that organization. Officials of ISD must either know, or should have known of this connection. The implication is that the District was not interested in a truly objective study, but rather a “rubber stamp of efficacy” to placate any parental resistance.”