posted by:
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Bob Box
on March 2, 1998
at 6:32PM
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subject:
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Professional development to student outcomes
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Hi, I'm Bob Box, PI for the Mesa Systemic Initiative. We are a K-8 math science project just beginning our third year.
Mack succinctly described the key issue. What's the ruler? Alignment of professional development, curriculum and assessment is a huge issue here.
Unfortunately, teachers in our state may participate in excellent professional development aligned to NCTM or NSES standards, yet when they pick up the newspaper, their school is compared to other schools in the state based on state testing with a different set of criteria.
Thankfully, I heard Dr. Williams say at that first meeting of LSCs that "We know when teacher performance changes, student performance changes. We're not going to assess student performance." (If anyone heard that differently, please note.)
An interesting sidebar- In the process of mathematics curriculum adoption ALL 25 publishers have claimed NCTM alighment. Yet many of the materials are very traditional. It is quite possible that teachers might say, "I teach to NCTM standards" simply because the textbook says so!
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