Please attend the September 10th Board of Ed meeting
The website for parents in the Plainview - Old Bethpage school district who are concerned about the TERC Investigations Math curriculum and its impact on our children

A NEW SPIRIT

8/30/07

This morning, I had the pleasure of addressing all of the new hires to the teaching staff of our district. I have done this for so many years that it has not been a speech that I spend any time preparing. I tell them a little bit about our union; I invite them to a meeting to put their benefit package in place; I talk briefly about my own personal joys as a teacher in the district.

For the first time in many years, I went to deliver my remarks with a new mission and, I must confess, a great deal of excitement and pleasure. Sure, I still welcomed them, still invited them to the benefit meeting, still reminisced about the pleasures of teaching here, but I also spent considerable time talking about how fortunate I thought they were to be beginning their careers in Plainview-Old Bethpage at this moment of transition, transition to a time of rising expectations for our students, to a time when academic standards were becoming our focus and a consensus was emerging that we want to return our district to a time when it was known as one of the best in the state and colleagues from all over came to see the exciting, challenging academic things we were doing. I asked them to consider the extent to which the state standards aren't very high at all and how all we will accomplish when we meet them is a uniform level of mediocrity. I told them how proud I was that our union has been in the vanguard of the movement for real academic excellence and invited each of them to contribute their thoughts, energy and imagination to this very important enterprise.

At the conclusion of the welcoming speeches by all of the district's notables, I had the opportunity to speak face to face for the first time with Dr. Linda Bruno, our Interim Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction. She picked up on my remarks to the group about this being an exciting time in POB, talking very animatedly about her perception of the exhilarating atmosphere here and her own enthusiasm to be a part of what she expects to be a professionally rewarding stay in our district, her own sense that exciting things are happening here.

I believe very deeply that the stars are almost perfectly aligned for our district to take a giant step forward. I'm not unmindful that what we are attempting to do is difficult if only because it will require changes that will unsettle some. But for the first time in a long while there's a spirit here that I know is the harbinger of great things to come. When we succeed at academically challenging each of our students to the extent of their ability, we will free ourselves of the downward drag of the No Child Left Behind Law and an approach to the education of the young that has denigrated skills and knowledge for too long.

POB Congress of Teachers Executive Board endorses
Lori Weinstein, Gary Bettan and Angel Cepeda
for the POB Board of Education

WE MUST HAVE CHANGE

            The school board election on May 15th will and should be about change.  Our district has been underperforming for too long.  The incumbent Board of Education has enthusiastically supported a philosophy of education that deprecates the value of knowledge and skill in favor of poorly thought-out notions of discovery and “deep thought.”  Thus, little children are too often tethered to computers and calculators for basic information that POB students once had in their heads. Where the Plainview-Old Bethpage schools used to have academic standards well beyond those of the state, gradually teachers have been encouraged to see the state standards as an academic ceiling on their teaching efforts.  To correct a long festering problem with the district’s math program, our union had to take on the role of community consensus builder, so poor has been the leadership of the district.  The members of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Congress of Teachers are capable of accomplishing more for the students of our community.  They require the support and commitment of the Board of Education and an administration .  That is why our union is supporting the change represented by the candidacies of Lori Weinstein, Gary Bettan and Angel Cepeda.

            Lori Weinstein has been a class act in the POB school community for some time.  She has held a number of PTA positions and served on district committees.  That experience, however, is not the main reason for our support of her candidacy.  We support Lori because throughout the years we have known and worked with her, she has demonstrated a talent for asking hard questions, looking at issues from unique perspectives and being unwilling to accept humbug for information.  She strikes us as just what Plainview-Old Bethpage needs if we are to chart a new direction.

            Gary Bettan has demonstrated responsible leadership in the parent crusade to bring sanity to the district’s math program.  We have found him to be pragmatic in his approach to solving problems and a keen builder of consensus.  He prides himself in “thinking out of the box” as a way to find solutions to difficult problems.  We believe his experiences as a business person will enable him to oversee the administration of the district, establishing real systems of accountability.  We especially like the things Gary has had to say about elevating academic standards and focusing on the achievement of excellence.  As the father of young children, Gary has a long range interest in the welfare of the district which we also like.

            Angel Cepeda ran unsuccessfully for the Board of education last year.  While we didn’t support him then, we were not unmindful of his talents.  Throughout this year, we have continued talking with Angel and have had our initial impressions confirmed.  We have found him to be a very thoughtful member of the business community who intuitively knows that the management of our district has been flawed for some time.  We agree with him that there are many ways to improve the delivery of services to the district’s children while controlling costs.  We agree with him too that our schools should be performing at higher levels and aren’t in large measure due poor management and a skewed sense mission. We know that he is not the budget-slasher his opponents have tried to paint him to be, and we have been deeply disturbed by the whispering campaign that suggests that he is not the fine person that we know he is.  Angel believes in giving back to the community that sustains him.  We believe that’s the kind of spirit we need on our Board of Education.

Free Us From the Constraining Grip of Investigations Orthodoxy!
Appeal to PTA from the Teacher’s Union – March 31, 2007

The Plainview-Old Bethpage Congress of Teachers (PCT) sent the following letter to PTA leaders in the school district this week:

Dear PTA Leader,

 The school community is buzzing about math.  Should we keep Investigations?  Should we purchase a traditional math program?  Should we go to the Singapore Math Program in that students in Singapore outscore their peers in the rest of the World?  

            The PCT believes that to a very real extent the math discussion in our community is wrongly focused on math programs.  We believe that our focus should be on what we believe children have to know and how well they learn what they are taught.  In our view, teachers have been asked to spend too much of their time and energy talking about how we teach math instead of what we teach our students about the subject.  

            There is absolutely no question that there are substantial gaps in our current elementary and middle school math curriculum.  There is also no question as to why the gap exists.  The Investigations program while it has a number of worthwhile elements, does not support the development of basic math facts and methodologies that parents of young children expect them to know and which their peers throughout the world do know to a greater degree.  Well aware of these gaps and having few other math materials, often lacking support from their building administrator, teachers have been forced to individually supplement the program, expending considerable time and effort in the process and in the end often being left to feel that they could have done a better job if they had the tools and support they needed. 

            The present situation in math is not acceptable to the PCT members.  It is not acceptable to a very large segment of the parent community who are very publicly demanding change.  What needs to be done? 

            The PCT is proposing a four pronged approach to getting our elementary and middle school math instruction to align with New York State requirements and, more importantly, with common sense.  This approach was developed by the PCT Math Committee made up of the teacher representatives of the District Math Committee plus additional teacher representatives from each building.  Our approach was also approved by the PCT Executive Board, two thirds of whom are teachers in our elementary and middle schools. 

             Here’s what we propose: 

                        1 - Clearly written curricula be developed, aligned with New York State standards and made available to staff and parents in each grade, K-8, delineating what students are required to know prior to the yearly state assessment and by year’s end. These curricula should combine the development of basic mathematic concepts and facts as well as higher order mathematical thinking exercises. 

                        Students in a particular grade should be exposed to the same mathematical facts and concepts regardless of the school they attend.  This has not been the case and must be corrected.  Parents have a right to be aware of what their children are expected to learn and to know that the same expectations exist for all children in the district. 

                        This work can begin immediately and be completed over the summer and ready for implementation in September.  Much of this work has already been done in the recent mapping project, although there clearly needs to be revisions and refinements.                       

                        2 - Retain the current edition of Investigations.  While we do not support a complete “Investigations” approach to the teaching of mathematics, that does not mean that there aren’t some very useful things in this program that teachers want to and should be encouraged to continue to use.  In our view, the current edition of Investigations should be retained.  There is no need, however, to purchase the new edition which while it corrects some of the defects of the original is still not as useful as other materials we believe to be preferable. 

                        3-  Immediately establish a professional committee, with representatives from each building, to recommend the purchase of traditional math materials and texts to be supplied across the grades in each building.  Every teacher needs to have available materials to support instruction in basic math facts and concepts.  These need to be the same throughout the district to ensure that students are taught the same curriculum. 

                        4- Purchase a test prep booklet for each student in each grade to provide review materials to better prepare our students for the state assessments.  Experience at the Parkway school where this approach has been taken suggests that it is an important step in improving the district’s scores on state tests. 

            The PCT believes that if all of our recommendations are adopted, we will be able to ensure that all children in a grade will be taught the same concepts and that their teachers will have access to the same library of resources to facilitate math instruction.  Additionally, each teacher, whether new or experienced, will know what they are minimally expected to teach and will have the materials necessary to do so without having to spend inordinate amounts of time searching for materials, often being encouraged to pirate copyrighted materials.  Most importantly, they will be freed from the constraining grip of “Investigations” orthodoxy and able to tailor their math instruction to meet the needs of the students in front of them and their own skills and imagination as teachers. 

            Parents will have the deserved comfort of knowing that their children know basic math facts and processes and will be better able to appreciate some of the more interesting aspects of the Investigations program. They will have renewed confidence that their children are not falling behind so that they will not do poorly at high school math and the SAT. 

            I hope you will find that the PCT math proposal addresses the concerns many parents have expressed and that your representatives on the District Math Committee will support it as well.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me. 

Sincerely,
Morton Rosenfeld
President, PCT 

      

Sensible and encouraging, this four-pronged approach was developed by the PCT Math Committee and approved by the PCT Executive Board. It is important to note that the PCT Math Committee is made up of teachers who serve on the district Math Committee as well as additional teacher representatives from each building. 

PTA leadership is listening very closely. They have been working very hard to represent us on the Math Committee. They understand parents’ concerns and want to change the bottom line about math in this district. Now it’s up to the Board of Ed. 

The Math Committee will be making their recommendations to the BOE at the Monday, April 23, 2007 Board of Ed meeting. The teacher’s stance is quite clear: 

  1. Math curriculum development K-8 to be uniformly used throughout district
  2. No need to purchase the new edition of Investigations – use what we have to maintain worthwhile elements
  3. Establish a committee of teachers with representatives from each building to recommend purchase of traditional texts and materials
  4. Purchase test prep booklets for each student

 PCT asks that PTA representatives support their position as well. 

Administration has been sending mixed signals of blended approaches with obvious favoritism towards Investigations’ side of things. They claim to be listening but don’t seem to be quite so open to changing course as they continually defend the virtues of reform math that just isn’t doing the job.  Many parents are concerned that the administration is saying one thing, while planning to continue investing in and teaching the failed constructivist agenda, despite the recommendations of teachers on the Math Committee. Fear of bait and switch tactics from the administration highlights a growing distrust between the community and the people running our schools. 

It’s no surprise teachers find the present math situation unacceptable, as do parents. Especially middle school teachers who are spending time re-teaching concepts that may have not been given the proper attention in elementary school. Hopefully this cycle will end and, in September teachers will be “freed from the constraining grip of Investigations orthodoxy.” 

Attend the April 23, 2007 Board of Ed meeting, 7:45 pm, Mattlin Board Room (Washington Avenue).  Feel free to contact our parent advocacy group to express your concerns via email: info@pobmath.com

 legacy.pobmath.com

Teachers are Listening 

Parents aren’t the only ones recommending the district not purchase Investigations second edition, the Plainview-Old Bethpage Congress of Teachers (PCT) is also. The latest edition of their newsletter the Pledge reports that the PCT Math Committee recommends “clearly written curricula be developed, aligned with NY State Standards and made available for staff and parents in each grade, K-8, delineating what students are required to know prior to the yearly assessment and by year’s end.”  Visit http://www.pobct.org/ for the full story. 

At Parent Math Nights last week at Parkway and the K Center, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Mrs. Hodrinsky explained the district’s plan to use the new and improved version of Investigations. Investigations 2 will take care of all the short-comings of the first edition and administration promises to fill any remaining gaps.  In addition, parents will receive a hand book. PCT recommends developing curricula to develop basic mathematical concepts as well as higher mathematical thinking exercises. They suggest purchasing traditional math materials and test prep booklets, while using the existing Investigations for some of what they dub its “more interesting aspects.” It makes sense. After all, they are in the classrooms and know what they need to get the job done. 

Petition signers’ message is clear - we want to see Investigations gone. We want traditional math methods taught and learned. We want text books not parent hand books. We won’t settle for mediocrity. Our children should easily exceed the state’s math standards, not just meet them. And not just because of test prep – but because they understand the math concepts. Anything else is a compromise we are unwilling to settle for.

It’s comforting to read that the union feels “the PCT needs to provide a better math education to our students and allay the fears of many parents that their children are not developing basic math skills.”  This is a far cry from Dr. Brooks’ statement on News 12 Monday evening that “I don’t have any evidence that the program is to blame for the issues that they are saying it is to blame for and, so unless and until I have evidence to show me that, there’d be no reason for me to say we’re changing the program. We’re going to try to make it better…”  

Clearly the teachers are listening and are looking to provide a viable solution for our children while others refuse to see the obvious clues of low test scores and listen to what parents have been saying. In the same edition of the Pledge, PCT President Morty Rosenfeld writes an article urging teachers to raise academic standards and restore pride in the district that he fears lost, “...over 800 citizens have signed an e-petition calling for changes to our math program. Does anyone want to suggest they are happy with what they are getting? Go and read some of their comments.”  He boldly states, “I ask you to believe that we can demand more of our students and have our supervisors and parents support our efforts to get children to achieve more.” 

Connected Math, the Investigations continuation counterpart in our middle schools, also needs to be removed as soon as possible. Hopefully common sense will prevail and a petition will not be necessary to bring that change about. Parents don’t want to see our children go down the Investigations/Connected Math drain. It looks like the teachers don’t want that either. 

Check out the new Math Help page on legacy.pobmath.com for math web-sites to strengthen your children’s basic math skills!

ACADEMIC STANDARDS
By PCT President Morty Rosenfeld

On Monday, March 5, Dr. Brooks and I took the first small step on the long and difficult road to raising our district’s academic standards. Over the course of the next month or so, we will be speaking to the faculty of each school demonstrating the commitment of labor and management to the cause setting a process in motion to broaden our expectations for the students of our community.

We will never raise the bar for our students unless you and each member of the PCT decides to do so and unless you are supported in your efforts by the district’s managers and the Board of Education. I ask you to believe that we can demand more of our students and have our supervisors and parents support our efforts to get children to achieve more. I ask you to believe that Plainview-Old Bethpage can be about the pursuit of excellence again.

That’s not to say there won’t be obstacles. We all know there will. What I hope we can believe, more and more each day, is that working together, united in the effort, we can raise our district’s academic standards and restore some of the pride in our district I fear we have lost.

I’m often asked, “Why is raising academic standards a union or labor issue?” I believe that education unions must develop an agenda to counteract the erosion of the public’s confidence in our schools. While it is worse elsewhere, there are troubling signs of dwindling public confidence in Plainview-Old Bethpage. As I write this, over eight hundred citizens have signed an e-petition calling for changes to our math program. Does anyone want to suggest that they are happy with what they are getting? Go and read some of their comments.

As union members we have to stand for quality and high standards. It’s not just an ethical obligation. It’s plain old self-interest. A public who do not have confidence in their schools don’t support them, and those schools lacking public support decline further earning even less public confidence. We must not let that happen in Plainview-Old Bethpage. I ask you to begin thinking about supporting the PCT by helping it lead the struggle to raise the district’s academic standards.

PCT MATH COMMITTEE
MEETS
CONSENSUS BUILT

On March 1, the PCT Math Committee, comprised of the teacher members of the District math Committee plus representatives from each of the schools, met for the latest of a series of meetings to hammer out the position the PCT needs to provide a better math education to our students and allay the fears of many parents that their children are not developing basic math skills. Some urgency has been lent to this process by the advent of a parent group that seeks to remove the Investigations program for our district.

The PCT Math Committee has come up with a series of recommendations which they believe will both improve math instruction in the district and calm parental fears that their children are being left behind. The Math Committee recommends:

1 - Clearly written curricula be developed, aligned with New York State standards and made available to staff and parents in each grade, k-8, delineating what students are required to know prior to the yearly state assessment and by year’s end. These curricula should combine the development of basic mathematic concepts as well as higher order mathematical thinking exercises.

2 - Retain the current edition of Investigations.

3- Immediately establish a professional committee with representatives from each building to recommend the purchase of traditional math materials to be supplied across the grades in each building.

4- Purchase a test prep booklet for each student in each grade to provide review materials to better prepare our students for the state assessments.

The PCT Math Committee believes that if all of their recommendations are adopted, we will be able to ensure that all children in a grade will be taught the same concepts and that their teachers will have access to the same library of resources to facilitate math instruction. Additionally, each teacher, whether new or experienced, will know what they are minimally expected to teach and the materials necessary to do so without having to spend inordinate amounts of time searching for materials, often being encouraged to pirate copyrighted materials.

Parents will have the deserved comfort of knowing that their children know basic math facts and processes and will be better able to appreciate some of the more interesting aspects of the Investigations program.

LOSING CONFIDENCE (10/25/06)
by President Morty Rosenfield, Plainview-Old Bethpage Congress of Teachers

   Readers of this column will recall the many times I have expressed concern for the ironic and irksome actions of the leaders of public schools who often unwittingly help the enemies of public education by contributing to the public’s loss of confidence in the institution.  Much to the chagrin of some in labor’s ranks, I have also suggested that union leadership often commits the same mistake.

   My most recent experience of this came at the last meeting of the Board of Education of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Schools when, during the public participation portion of the meeting, a group of citizens rose to question the Board and the administration about the reasons for the disappointing scores on the last battery of state math assessments.  They were particularly disturbed by the much lower than expected scores racked up by our middle schools, scores that overshadowed the improvement in our elementary results.

   Members of the public who spoke mostly blamed our poor showing on the Investigations math program, a constructivist approach to mathematics that claims to provoke children to a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts.  They wanted to know why their intellectually normal children couldn’t adroitly answer simple arithmetic questions and why they as educated parents were unable to understand their children’s math home work.  Talking to several of the parents after the meeting, I learned that in some cases parental concern for the quality of the math instruction had caused them to hire a tutor or send their children to the local Kumon, this despite the fact that our teachers have never directed more effort and attention to math before, to say nothing about the financial resources that have been committed to improving our math results.

   The only answers members of the questioning public received from the superintendent and his assistant were that the scores weren’t really bad at all.  Yes, there needs to be some attention paid to the 5th, 6th and 7th grades, but in general we are doing fine.  While one board member passionately expressed her outrage at the results and raised a number of questions about what we are doing in math, the remainder of the Board sat silently.  Not one responsible person would credit what the parents were saying – our kids do not know basic math as well as they should. 

   What do parents take away from such a meeting at which they are told things are actually going quite well when they know that’s not true?  Must they not conclude, as those I spoke to did, that the people running the schools do not understand what is going on?  Must they not feel anxious for the academic welfare of their children and wonder why yet another public institution is so unresponsive to their needs?  Must they not feel impotent to overcome a bureaucracy that says point blankly nothing is going to change, at least this year?

   The parents at the Board meeting were in very much the same position as our teachers who are deeply disturbed by our lackluster scores but who feel they are missing the support of the district to address the reasons for our problem.  Our members are very practical people who don’t cling tenaciously to a particular educationist doctrine; they want our students to do as well as they can, but they are tired of feeling that they have to engage in a subversive activity to teach our young people what the society expects them to know.   They are tired of trying to explain to parents why their children are weak in arithmetic and why they have to spend hours with them trying to figure out their math homework.  Their experiences are slowly causing them to lose confidence in the system too.

     When people lose confidence in an institution, it loses confidence in itself.  Common to every school district that was once outstanding but has now declined, is its incremental acceptance of lower and lower academic standards, a focus on how children are taught instead of the content of instruction, the blaming of others for its declining fortune, toleration of increasingly unacceptable student conduct and the loss of a common understanding of its central mission, the education of youth.  Over time, these factors erode everyone’s concern for the institution and their confidence in it.  This lack of confidence very gradually reaches the point where citizens are prompted to look to home schooling, charter schools and private school vouchers to educate their young.

This page is brought to you by the POB Math Posse. A group of concerned parents in the Plainview-Old Bethpage School District. For more information about this website please contact info@pobmath.com