Thursday, November 20, 2008

New WA Math Standards ... Seattle does not care

It is absolutely amazing....
the following comes from Director Harium Martin-Morris:

In talking with the staff, it was explained that the reason the reports still have the old GLE standards for math is because that is what the students for the 2008/2009 school year will be tested on for the WASL. The report card next year will reflect the new math standards as will the WASL

The alignment of EDM to new standards is currently underway according to Ms de la Fuente.

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This means that despite the fact that new k-8 standards for math were in place in April 2008 the SPS just decided to ignore this for another school year.

SPS is prefectly content to bumble along with the Everday Math pacing plan for another entire school year. WOW!!! let us just waste another year.
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Now since EDM implementation occured with a large increase in math teaching time during the school day in 2007-2008 you would expect an increase in Seattle Math WASL pass rates from Spring 2007 to Spring 2008 vs State where the math content time taught during the school day was likely nearly the same in 2008 as in 2007.

White students in the SPS compared with white students at the state level
... pass rate differentials
grade ... 2007 ... 2008 .. change
3 ... +9.6 ... + 12.2 .. (+2.6)
4 ... +14.7 ... +13.2 .. (-1.5)
5 ... +15.4 ... +13.5 .. (-1.9)

So the EDM implementation year 2007-2008 in which there was a large increase in instructional time ( at most schools from at least 25% increase to a 40% time increase at others ) was accompanied by a pass rate decline relative to state averages for white students in grade 4 and grade 5.

Is the board now telling us that they agree with the Central Staff that a continuation of the EDM pacing plan makes sense for our students..... Please explain that to parents of White 4th and 5th graders.

Let us see what happens when a real math test shows up in Spring 2010. No wonder those 60 profs at UW signed a letter saying that scholastic math k-12 is in increasingly sad shape. The SPS response .... ignore everyone.

Imagine what could have happened with that large increase in instructional time and competent math leadership. .... Keep waiting.....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

SPS not only doesn't care about standards, they aren't thinking about students or teachers. This curriculum is poison in the classroom. It should be used with care or bad things will happen in classrooms.