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Math Help for Parents & Kids

Monday, February 26, 2007 Board of Ed Meeting

For those of us who felt alone in our opposition to the Investigations math program we learned otherwise Monday evening. Over 200 parents and community members assembled for a Board of Education meeting to voice our concerns about our math curriculum. Although not an agenda item, interested parties spoke out at Public Participation and the discussion continued past midnight.

The meeting began in the Board room and, for lack of seating, was moved to the Mattlin auditorium to accommodate the larger than usual crowd.  Parking was at a premium, and at one point, a police officer stopped by to announce that parents needed to move their cars from fire zones.

Speaker after speaker relayed their experiences with the Investigations math program.  Parents described their frustrations with unrecognizable math homework and their children’s frustrations with multi-step procedures. Historical perspectives of parents who have been struggling for years as well as fears from parents with younger children were mentioned. Although some parents admitted to liking certain aspects of the math curriculum as a supplement, they were most concerned that their children did not have basic skills in adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Some parents have spent large amounts of money on tutors to help their children learn basics. Others have home-schooled amidst tears and fighting. While teachers were applauded for helping to fill the gaps, some parents felt that the math curriculum should be equal across all classrooms and schools, accomplished by a standard text and supplements. Standardized test preparation has become the parent’s burden and not enough time is allowed for learning concepts that appear on these tests. Questions about the formation of the math committee were raised. Notably, a college math professor from St. John’s University who lives in our community spoke out about his research into this type of math instruction and his strong feeling that it is not appropriate for higher level learning and that it needs to be changed.  A few community members spoke out to say they came just to hear and learn more. Many school principals, PTA representatives, the teacher’s union president and a few teachers were present. Roberta Silver, district Math Chairperson, was not.

Although at times tensions ran high, the Board of Ed allowed every speaker their turn without limit and responded to inquiries. Superintendent Dr. Brooks and Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Mrs. Hodrinsky answered questions. All were seen writing notes as speakers were talking.

We have heard that many of you were disappointed to be unable to attend this meeting. You can write a letter, send an e-mail, or call Dr. Brooks, Mrs. Hodrinsky, Ms. Silver, your school principal or any board member to let your voice be heard. There will probably be the need to attend other Board of Ed meetings in the future.

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Notes from the Feb 26th Board of Ed meeting

My name is Gary Bettan and I am a concerned parent in our community. Some of you may know me from the soccer or football or other fields. I'd like to talk to you now about something I find much more important than sports. Our kids education.  The POB school district is not providing our children with the Math education they will need to be successful in life. I feel so strongly about this that I have decided to become actively involved in changing the Math program in our schools. You have probably been contacted by email already about the Math petition going around http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeubbeq/

I want to thank all of you who made it to the meeting. I realize it went very late and many of you left before I had the chance to address the Board. I wanted to share with you  (and those who could not attend ) what I said and how the BOE responded. When I finally had the chance to address the board (after 11PM) I tried to make several points that I feel are extremely important.  I had prepared a big letter I was going to read, but after sitting and listening, I decided that what I needed to do was ask some specific questions and get some straight answers.  I want to summarize them for you here, as well as supply you with some very interesting graphical data that really drives home these issues. The chart at the end of this email was taken from the Newsday website. Click here to see the scores

The first point I wanted to make addressed an issue that several parents had pointed out. One I find quite disturbing. Parkway schools students are doing significantly better then the other Elementary schools. (The data below firmly supports this. I wish I had had this chart available at the time I was addressing the board. I found it last night). One of the parents's pointed out that the Principal and teachers at Parkway are heavily supplementing the TERC Investigations program with traditional math lessons. The board reaction to this was to suggest that the teacher’s from all the schools coordinated their efforts and shared these tools and supplements with each other. I found this suggestion preposterous! If the TERC Investigations curriculum were well thought out and made sense it would not require these supplements! 

I can not think of more damning summation of TERC Investigations! I found it ridiculous and I had to point out that if we had a textbook based math curriculum with uniform worksheets throughout the district we would not need to do this! TERC Investigations is a poorly written and implemented curriculum. I applaud the principal and teachers of Parkway for recognizing the gross deficiencies of the TERC Investigations and for having the guts and brains to go against the directions of the administration by teaching our kids more traditional math!! Unfortunately those of us in the other elementary schools have been left with the short end of the stick. We as parents must hold the Board of Ed and the administration responsible for this. We all deserve the very best education, regardless of what part of town we live in. 

The next point I made was that I felt the Board of Ed and Dr. Brooks were selling our children short and all too willing to settle for mediocrity. Dr. Brooks kept talking about how many of our kids passed the test. I felt he was missing the bar. We are an affluent community of doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, small business owners, and other professionals. One of the main reasons we moved to Plainview was to provide our children with the best possible education. Look at our community and our children and what we pay in school taxes.  We don’t want our kids to just meet the minimum standards, we expect them to exceed these standards and excel. 

Less then 20% of our middle school children are achieving level 4 (Exceeds the standards) results on these tests. I told him that the parents of POB expect 40, 50 or even 60% of our kids to be achieving these levels. Dr. Brooks kept trying to tell us that the 3^rd and 4^th graders where doing much better. He was right, the ones in Parkway are. But in our other schools, especially Pasadena this is not the case. While the results of our 3^rd and 4^th graders are better than those of the middle school, I do not think this bolsters advocates of TERC Investigations. Not at all! In fact, I see it as supporting the research of mathematicians, university professors and other critics of Investigations. By 5^th grade the children are performing 2 years below where they need to be. 

The test results below support this. Not only are fewer of our middle school children exceeding expectations, look how the numbers jump for level 2 (Meets some but not all the standards or partially meets the standards).  1 out of 5 (20%) of our middle school students are at level 2!!! These are the “TERC Babies” the first wave of children who have been subjected to the new curriculum. At POB Middle school almost 1/3 of the 6^th grade children failed to meet state standards! This is not from a calendar / scheduling issue with the 5^th grade students as Dr. Brooks claimed during the meeting. This is hard-core statistics that prove beyond a doubt that our kids are not doing well in math.  

My final point was about the Math Committee that the Board of Ed appointed to investigate the problem and propose solutions. This is a committee made up of teachers, parents and the administration. They have a very challenging task ahead of them, and I want to personally applaud and thank everyone on it.  I am certain they are doing the very best they can to fix this problem and help our kids. Unfortunately the deck is stacked against them. Why? Because although they were charted to fix the math problem, they are not allowed to even consider other curriculums or alternatives to TERC!  

I want to add that getting this information from Dr. Brooks and the Board of Ed was like pulling teeth. I had to ask them repeatedly to give me a direct answer to the question “Is the committee allowed to look at other alternatives to TERC Investigations”. Finally Dr. Brooks admitted that the committee was not allowed to consider any other alternatives to TERC Investigations.  Unfortunately this is a tactic very often used by school boards to distract parents and communities. Tell them you have set up this crack committee to investigate a problem. Even allow the parents to participate. Just don’t tell the outside world that they are extremely restricted and limited in what they can do.  

My friend Jeff Stein spoke up later to dig into this issue further. He pointed out that the Board of Ed is much like the Board of Directors of a major corporation. They should recognize the CEO (or in our case the Superintendent) is biased in this situation. He has an agenda that he wants to push through. He should! That’s why we hired him in first place, to lead us. The Board of Ed has a responsibility to oversee and balance this. It’s great that they appointed a committee to recommend supplements and fixes for Investigations. They should also have encouraged them to explore alternatives to TERC. When they appointed this committee and told them they were not even allowed to look at other curriculums, they were in fact putting blinders on them. How could we expect the best possible solutions for our children under these conditions? 

I think that we, the parents of POB, made a strong statement the other night. At one point we had about 200 people at the meeting. Math was not actually on the agenda - we put it there! And we have to keep it there. Unfortunately as I get more involved in this I find that Math and TERC Investigations is just the tip of the iceberg in our schools. We are suffering from a lack of accountability and leadership in our school district. I do not and will not blame the teachers for this. It is up to the Board of Ed and the Superintendent’s office to set up clearly defined curriculums, goals and assessment tools. These programs must be applied and enforced across all our elementary schools equally. We are doing lots of things right in our schools; we need to expand on them. We are also doing lots of things wrong, and we need to eliminate these mistakes. The only way this can be done is by a proactive management.  

I want to thank everyone who attended the meeting, and give extra thanks to those of you who spoke up. Not just about Math, but about security at our schools and the Old Plainview development plan. I urge everyone reading this email to get more involved! Make sure you go to the Math nights being set up at all the schools. Ask tough questions and demand answers. Do not settle for double talk or empty promises. Come to the BOE meetings, call or email your principal or the superintendents office. This is our community, these are our schools, and most important they are our children. We all need to start getting our priorities in order and get this fixed. We’re already paying for it with our high taxes; lets not make our kids pay for it with their futures!

Gary Bettan
Concerned POB Parent

Follow this link to see the P-OB scores