Conference Material

Engaging Parents and the Public

And through this process, we have pushed more and more of the abstractions down earlier and earlier into the grades believing, and I really do think we believe in this country, that we get farther ahead by asking more of our little children. When what actually occurs is we fall farther and farther behind. Because in our push to get through the things that are on the standardized test at the end of the year, we fail to build the foundation on which the future of mathematics for children rests. Children in this country have no mathematical foundation because we’ve allowed the foundation to crumble. The foundation on which work with numbers rests, is fluency with small numbers.

Now what I mean by foundation on which everything rests - I wish I had started this whole session...I forgot an important piece, so I'll go back. It was a piece that Kathy Richardson has helped me look at, that has to do with numbers and young children. And she suggests that young children need to work with numbers at three different levels. They need to work with small number, with middle sized numbers and with large numbers. Because we have so little time, I'm going to focus only on children working with small numbers. Kathy calls little children working with small numbers "level 3" because she says it involves the most complex thinking for a young child. She suggests they need to work with small numbers until they're fluent with the numbers. And by fluent, she means they can take them apart and put them back together with ease. They've just internalized those relationships. This is what our public thinks of as basic skills. I believe they're basic relationships. But whatever we call them, we want children to know them. And Kathy would suggest that a typical 1st grade child who's had a good K-1 program, will leave 1st grade fluent with numbers to six. That doesn't mean six plus six. That has to do with fluency to 12. And Kathy suggests that a typical first grader will leave fluent with numbers to 6. Now if you're skeptical about that, there's a very easy way to check for it. Borrow somebody's 1st grader if you don't have your own. But if you went up to a typical 1st grade child by the end of the year and said to them would you count six of anything? I happen to have tiles. Would you count six tiles into my hand? And they go one, two, three, four, five, six.

And I say how many do I have? And they say six. And I do this. How many am I hiding? A typical 1st grader by the end of the year will respond this way. Four. How many am I hiding? One. How many am I hiding? Three. How many am I hiding? Five. That's fluency. Now if you take that same child who was perfectly comfortable with six and you now say would you count seven into my hand and they go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And I say how many do I have? And they say seven. And I do this. Now if you can't see me, they've just counted seven into my hand and I'm showing three.

That same child, who was perfectly comfortable with six, will now do one of two things. Either they'll respond like this. How many am I hiding? Six. And you'll want to say what just broke down here? Don't say that. Just continue to ask the question and wonder what's going on for the child. Or they'll respond this way. I'm still showing three. How many am I hiding? (after long pause and counting on fingers) "Four". That's not fluency. And Kathy would suggest that we need to immerse children then in seven every place we can until they've internalized those relationships.

Now Kathy also says a typical 2nd grade child who's had a good K-2 program should leave fluent with numbers to ten. Now if you think I'm asking us to water down the curriculum by having 2nd graders leave fluent with numbers to ten, I have to tell you I'm not. Many of my 5th graders came to me out of a traditional K-4 textbook approach to mathematics. This was the first year they were in a classroom where we were trying to align with the NCTM standards. And many of those 5th graders came to me not fluent with numbers to ten.

I had a chance about a month and a half ago to work in, I think it's Cherry Creak School District in Colorado; about the fourth wealthiest school district in the nation. And we had principals watching as I worked with a group of 5th graders on a task that revealed how they think about numbers. And there were several students in that classroom who were not fluent with numbers to ten. And that's not okay. But I think the reason for it was well described by Steve Leinwand in an article he wrote more than a decade ago on standardized tests and their effects on the curriculum.

Steve looked at the issue of the norming of tests and how test makers place items on a test, at each grade level, that are not appropriate to the grade level, but that help identify those children who are working above grade level. So, for example, on a first grade test they would include two and three digit addition and subtraction problems, not because those are appropriate skills for first graders, but as indicators of children working above grade level. And they'd do similar things at each grade level. And in the process of getting children ready for the tests, teachers push to get to the harder items and in the process they are failing to build the foundational skills and understandings. An important part of the foundation for young children working with mathematics is that fluency with numbers to ten. And here's what I mean by that. If I have a 3rd grade child coming to me, new into the 3rd grade, just out of 2nd grade, who's had an opportunity to become fluent with numbers to ten and who's worked with some place value, then it doesn't matter how big or how little the problem that I put up here is.

Is that child going to be able to do 63 take away 30 without much of a struggle? Sure they will. What will they get? 63 take away 30? 33. So we have to deal with eight now. Well, a child who's fluent with numbers to ten, can automatically see that that eight could be a three and a five. Take away the three and get to 30 and take away the five and get to 25 with no struggle at all. But they aren't coming to us able to do that because they've never been asked to explore those relationships and they haven't developed the fluency with numbers to ten.

And I believe the reason they haven't is because it is very, very difficult for a K-1-2 teacher to honor that the real work of a young child, or one of the important works of a young child, is to become fluent with numbers to ten when they have enormous pressures to get through what's going to be on the test at the end of the year. So in the process of getting to that test, getting children ready for that test, we have gotten very good at doing what I call, "creating illusions of learning".

And what I mean by that is if we're forced to teach something that is developmentally inappropriate to our children, sometimes the only thing we know how to do is to give them a recipe and enough practice with the recipe so that hopefully they'll get through the test at the end of the year. But it breaks down. And we all know it does. Are there any first grade or former first grade teachers in the room? Do we teach subtraction to first graders in this country? Second grade teachers or former second grade teachers? Any of you here? Do we teach subtraction with borrowing to second graders in this country?

What about third grade teachers or former teachers? Any of you here? Teach subtraction with borrowing to third graders? What about fourth grade teachers or former fourth grade? Do we teach subtraction with borrowing to fourth graders in this country? What about fifth grade teachers or former fifth grade teachers? Any of you here? Do we teach subtraction with borrowing to fifth graders? What about sixth grade teachers or former sixth grade teachers?

And that wasn't unique to subtraction. I could have done the very same exercise across the grades with nearly any other area of mathematics we wanted to take a look at. And I have to ask, "How much longer are we going to do this before we say something's not right here?" And I think the something that's not right is we've taking this wonderful world of mathematics that's all about relationships and sense and order and we've broken it into isolated pieces and we've taught our children it's about memorizing recipes. Mathematics is not about memorizing recipes. It is about understanding relationships.

Now two things that I think carry enormous weight and are very damaging in terms of the future of our nation with regard to norm referenced tests. The first one is our push to get through the bigger things and failing to build a foundation. The second thing that troubles me greatly is that because we have high stakes and enormous pressure, we work all over this country to get our test scores up. Because nobody is willing to stay at the 50th percentile. So the Whatcom County district worked really hard to get their scores up to the 56th percentile. But so did lots of other districts around the nation. And we have lots of evidence that, in the process, we've artificially inflated scores. We actually have researchers who have watched this, who have written papers that they've titled things like "Returning to Lake Wobegon Where All the Children Are Above Average." Do you know what happens when most of us successfully raise our test scores? The test gets renormed. So what we worked really hard to get up to 56th percentile now has to get renormed back to the 50th percentile. Test results get published and the public thinks the test scores have dropped. Well, student performance may or may not have changed a bit. But now that it has been renormed back to the 50th percentile, we have to work even harder to get the test scores up because we're not going to stay there at the 50th percentile. And once we get them up again, the test gets renormed again. It's an inescapable cycle.

But what I find most insidious about these tests is that all anyone who wants to shut down mathematics reform in this country has to say to the American public is a very real statistic. Now this is real. All they have to say is, "Do you know that one out of three children in this nation -- one out of three children in this nation, is functioning below the 34th percentile? And our public is up in arms. This is intolerable.

You're laughing, but this is intolerable. And what are we going to do about it? And by golly, what we do about it is we make those norm referenced tests even more high stakes in this nation. And we don't understand, I really don't think we understand, that we are using an assessment system that by its very design guarantees that no matter what we do and no matter where we are - we can be first in the world, we can be a ship about to go under. That test will not tell us that. But by its very design, it guarantees that fully half of our children and roughly half of our schools will always be at or below the 50th percentile. It is a mathematical given.

And I would suggest that it is an unethical way to measure progress in mathematics – to use a test that guarantees that there will always be fully half of our children below the 50th percentile and thus considered inadequate. Many of these children will be considered failures when it comes to mathematics.

These days we hear legislators and governors give speeches about public education that suggest that we must target those schools that are schools in trouble, and that we need to be relentless in ensuring higher test scores from these schools. And all too often the target schools are those identified as below the 50th percentile on norm-referenced tests. I want to say, people, there's mathematics here. As long as we are using norm-referenced standardized tests to measure progress, we will always have fully half of our students and roughly half of our schools below the 50th percentile.

And yet those tests are driving us and driving districts all over the nation to do things that most of us in this room know are not the right direction if we want to raise student performance and introduce students to the compelling joy and utility and power of mathematics taught for understanding. So let me stop, and invite your questions, comments and/or rebuttals at this point.

Q: (...inaudible) Lake Wobegon, everybody's above average. (...inaudible)

Parker: So this doesn't apply to Minnesota. You're right.

Q: (...inaudible)

Parker: It does put a burden on the rest of us.

Q: I think to be (...inaudible) to what you said is the media. Many of whom are math phobic themselves. That's why they've gone into writing. And don't know very much about the math reform movement except for what they hear. And, secondly, the media is, as many have commented, are only interested in conflict. And so emphasize at its most extreme positions. Even though they're not substantiated. And of course the political officials take their cue from what they read and the public reaction. So you have the circular effect.

And I'm wondering, if in addition to parents, if there could be some sort of forum for newspaper editors like the one in Washington here, the National Press Club, or some other forum where much of what you say could be presented to them in very much of a hands on way so that they could see sort of what the issues are.

Parker: I think that is enormously important. And any of you who are political creatures. I'm not one, but I would love to work with people who have ideas about how to do that. Because I do think, again, in addition to working with parents. I actually think the press has been misinformed. And I think when we were all busy writing to each other and working hard to change things for kids, other people that didn't think we were doing the right things were writing to each other. But they were cc'ing everything to members of the press. So I think on about a two year time line ahead of us. They really helped form the media's belief systems about mathematics in this country. So we're in a catch up mode.

I don't know how to get to those folks. But I do think that's our challenge. And I do also think it's a fairly simple, direct, compelling argument. But one that we haven't found the appropriate forums to help people say, "Oh, my gosh, look what we're doing."

Q: That's true even of some of the best national media. On NPR, about a month ago, there was a news article read by a reporter on the value of the Russian ruble having fallen. And the comment went it had fallen to seven rubles to the dollar. Which represented a 100% decline in value and didn't even notice that that was a rather foolish statement to make. It was corrected the next day after someone had called in.

Parker: But we don't have to look far for examples of that. And I think part of our job is convincing the parents that mathematics is used to make sense of the world. It is also used to persuade and to influence. And if we are not knowledgeable, then we are easily misinformed or we are easily persuaded of things that we might not be were we more knowledgeable. So again, I tend to believe that the only way to counter a very purposeful misinformation campaign is to build a purposeful educational process. And I think building a knowledge base is the only way to counter the misinformation that is being disseminated.

I don't think we've found adequate ways to do it. You know, I'd like to believe that coming in and spending two hours with you folks and flying away is going to make a difference. But I also know that every one of us is running as fast as we can run to get through Tuesday. And I don't know how we bring together the minds and the thinking around how do we strategically position -- I'm looking out at the faces -- and there are lots of you sitting in this room that could be having a pretty powerful impact on politicians, on the press, and on parents. And the question is how do we get the momentum going to do that? Is your hand up?

Q: One thing that didn't come up today. And clearly, many of the parent groups you've been talking to had this organized group that really are anti-reform. But in our schools and districts I've been working in, sometimes parents have a very legitimate point. Because, in fact, reform programs are not being implemented as intended or not being completely implemented. So when parents say there's no basic skills in the program--

Parker: They may be right.

Q: They may be right. And my question is, have you seen any games coming home? And they say no. Then in fact they are right. The program they have been experiencing has been the one devoid of an important component.

Parker: Yes. I absolutely agree with that, Diane. And that's part of when I said I could maybe do justice in a day, but not in the time constraints. I absolutely agree. And I'm real honest with parents that I am not here to defend the status quo. And I don't want to teacher bash either. I can absolutely say, from a teacher's perspective, being asked to do something big and complex that they don't understand without adequate levels of support, and I don't see adequate levels of support happening in many places in the country, I don't know why too many teachers would say I'm going to jump into this one. Knowing that it's not what our public wants.

And so I think right now we have a lot of teachers who hear their profession asking one thing and they think they hear their public asking something different. And in that environment I think it's too few teachers who have either the knowledge base or the support or the courage to take on the depths of changes that we're talking about. But what I also would suggest to you is one of the most exciting things about working with the public is it is very easy to get parents and the public to say, "My gosh, I had no idea. Of course it needs to happen."

Now that creates a very interesting tension for a community. Because when parents are saying, yes, we want this, the problem becomes so how do we deliver? But I actually think that's a healthier tension than the current tension which is, "I can't do this because it's not what our public wants." So I do want to recognize that there's real cause for concern on a lot of their parts. But I want to turn it back to one of our challenges I believe as a community, and that involves parents and teachers and administrators, is to say how are we going to get teachers the levels of support they're going to need to be, first, learners of mathematics and then support as they change their teaching practices.

And I worry a lot that we're in one of the only professions that doesn't recognize the magnitude of support needed for change to occur. A couple more questions. You folks can leave whenever you have to.

Q: One of the things that came up in the discussion here was trying to influence the media at a national level. Maybe another approach would be to influence the media at the local level. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's the same in your situation, education reporters are usually the ones that come and go with great regularity. And are usually the least informed about what you're doing. A wonderful venue to present a lot of this is right at a school board meeting. And I don't know how many of you on a regular basis actually bring your kids or staff in and demonstrate to the school board what you're doing.

And in many of your communities, your school board meetings are televised. They're reported on in the newspaper. And it's a wonderful way to really show what you're doing. And, you know, you were showing some wonderful things about how you were dealing with parents and what have you. The audience can change and just be your school board. Your school board are parents in many cases as well. And they also have a constituency that they represent. So you may want to think about, as at a grassroots way, of beginning to influence the spin doctors or the news media by putting up your own case at a local school board meeting.

Obviously your boards have approved the intervention that you've started in your district. They need to receive the information firsthand as to what's actually happening.

Parker: Okay, I want to respond to that in two ways. If I can remember the second one. But the first one is I agree that the school board is a very important audience. When I come into a district, I ask them to get their school board out as part of the public venue. And I have seen many cases where it was the school board members who, through their response, gave courage to the administrators. And I think it is because they live in those two worlds of business and school that they can take in the ideas a little easier than administrators can. So I do think it's an important audience.

The second issue is something that I only learned the hard way. And I'm going to use a case. When I went into Palo Alto the first time, we had probably 400 parents there. And the session started at seven and ended at nine. The custodians kicked us out of the building at 10:30. The next day, there were about four calls to the school board and to the administrators basically saying who brought her in? Who made that decision? Where did the money come from? We want to see the books? We don't want this to happen again. And the PTA heard that this happened and the PTA said, "Oh, yes, we do and we'll raise the money to bring her back."

So first of all, I think educating the public breaks the hold that some of these small numbers of people have over entire communities. But what I learned the hard way is I think whenever we have public sessions, we have got to start building a databank of people who have been participating, who we know are knowledgeable, and who we can count on in the long run. So I, just this year, have started having parent feedback forms at every session And it has three questions on it, I believe. First of all, it thanks them for participating. And then it just gives them statements to finish.

And the first one says, "What I valued most about this session was..." And the second one says, "I would like to know more about..." I can't remember the third one, but I have it with me someplace if you see me in the halls tomorrow. (See below) And then it says, "Would you like to be notified if we have further opportunities? And if so, how do we reach you?" And it asks for a name, an address, e-mail numbers, phone numbers. It does two things. First of all, it helps the district build a bank where they can say if we've got an issue that comes up, here are some parents that we know are knowledgeable because they've been at this session.

But secondly, when the three phone calls happen after I leave, that district's got 250 parent responses that say things to a person like, "This was so eye opening. Of course this is extremely important. What can we do to help?" But I think that's the kind of strategic thing that we haven't necessarily thought about as we've gone about our endeavors and I think it's real important. Yes.

Q: I hate to beat the school board horse, but I'm in my seventh year on being on a school board. And this is kind of a statement to the National Science Foundation folks here and the NCTM board of director types. I have never seen anything about any of this on one of the National School Board Association's annual meeting conventions. There is virtually nothing. Most of the people in this room can't affect that, but most of the people in this room could affect it at the state level. And the state school boards have meetings every year also and I don't see any of us talking about it there.

Parker: I have volunteered to numerous people. I would volunteer my time to get on any national or state school board conference. I haven't been invited yet. So if you have any way to get the invitation out there. I do agree. It's an enormously important body of folks. We're ready to go socialize. You're very welcome. You're very welcome.