Advice for Bellevue & Issaquah educational decision-makers

An absolutely astounding characteristic …..
of most Puget Sound School districts is:

their seemingly universal failure to look at relevant data in this area and State, when making decisions.

Seattle searched the nation to find slightly positive “DM” data in Madison Wisconsin, while ignoring the Bethel School District. Bethel began using Discovering 3.5 years ago. Bethel has 18,000 students.

Below you will see the change in WASL Math performance that occurred with the KCP “Discovering” Math Series adoption.
Note: the last column is the difference of the Bethel Subgroup when the State subgroup score is subtracted from it.

(six data blocks inserted here -- then the Summary)

Note the CHANGE in performance from Spring 2005 to 2009
for each subgroup:

-8.4 = WHITE (-17.7 - (-9.3))

-4.3 = BLACK (-3.3 - 1.0)

-11.5 = American Indian ( 0.60 -12.1 )

-6.1 = Asian / Pacific Islander (-21.0 - (-14.9) )

-18.3 = Hispanic Students ( -6.0 - 12.3 )

-10.6 = Low Income Students (-8.6 - 2.0 )



Great Adoption Bethel ….
These books serve everyone poorly and they are "Mathematically Unsound"

Many school districts continually fail to look at “the Evidence”. It takes a Superior Court Judge to look at the evidence and say:

“The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there is insufficient evidence for any "reasonable Board member" to approve the selection of the Discovering series.”

{Note the absence of reasonable people in Issaquah SD thus far.}

What can be said about the members of Adoption Committees and Instructional Material Committees that produce these recommendations?

What about Dr. Rassmussen in Issaquah, who on Feb 25, released a four-page letter explaining why he was recommending the "Discovering Math Series" to the school board for adoption.
(Whatever was Dr. Rassmussen thinking ???)


Read all about it here: "defending the indefensible"

Decision-Makers,

Please intelligently apply relevant data in making selections of instructional materials.

The failure to use evidence is inexcusable.

Please read and use:

NMAP's "Foundations for Success"

and this document from the M.A.A. website.

What is Important in School Mathematics

Thank You,