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This report presented information about the progress of the ACME project in its baseline year. It pulls together information from the perspectives of mathematics teachers, principals, program staff and district administrators as well as from observations of classrooms and professional development sessions. At the end of the first year, the ACME project evaluation revealed strengths that will propel efforts to bring high quality standards-based mathematics education to all children in the district and challenges that need to be addressed to promote districtwide implementation.
Strengths of ACME
The major strengths of the ACME project in the baseline year include the following:
- Most teachers who have not yet participated in ACME professional development and school administrators are familiar with the language of investigative mathematics and highly endorse its teaching practices. Consequently, the eagerness of some teachers and schools to participate in the ACME project may provide momentum for implementation throughout the district.
- During the ACME project’s first year, project staff reported a transformation in teachers’ attitudes toward investigative teaching practice among those who participated in its summer institutes and follow-up professional development sessions. Teachers’ attitudes changed from anxiety, apprehension, and caution to interest and confidence in standards-based practice. Continuing to support this sort of transformation with teachers who are new to the project should further encourage teachers to try to implement the standards.
- A strong point of ACME professional development was the extensive and primarily effective facilitation provided, particularly creating the investigative culture and design of the observed sessions. Across the board, in the first year, facilitators successfully modeled strategies that teachers could adapt in their classrooms and provided a rich collegial environment in which teachers could explore standards-based curriculum and instruction.
- The ACME team forms a community of learners with a shared vision and value for quality mathematics education. This energy stimulates teachers and encourages their collaboration, within and across campuses. The team’s effort to correct issues as they arise constantly further renders the ACME project flexible and in tune with teachers and administrators in the district. The team’s responsiveness to teachers’ concerns and needs as they try out the standards-based curriculum and instruction allows teachers to modify their own professional development.
- A major strength of the ACME project is the alignment of district policies and curriculum as well as the financial and material backing for the project.
Challenges of ACME
The ACME project in its baseline year faces the following challenges in promoting implementation districtwide:
- Teachers’ and principals’ familiarity with the language of investigative mathematics may conceal a lack of deep understanding of NCTM standards and implications for effective practice and students’ mathematical competence. Although teachers and district administrators may communicate in the language of mathematics reforms, their practice may not reflect the same level of understanding. One of the ACME project’s challenges is in determining where more understanding is needed.
- Teachers who had not participated in ACME professional development described their classroom instruction in the baseline year as including both investigative and traditional practice, which may indicate incomplete standards-based instruction. Special education teachers reported somewhat less investigative practice and activities in their classrooms than did mathematics teachers. Although a majority of teachers characterized their teaching practices as including investigative strategies, observations of a random sample of mathematics classrooms in the district revealed instruction that was primarily ineffective as defined by Horizon Research Inc. with elements of effective practice and, in a few cases, effective instruction. The project’s challenge is to help as many teachers as possible understand and put into practice effective standards-based strategies.
- Another challenge of the ACME project is to raise the quality of implementation, mathematics content, and pedagogy that all facilitators provide to the level of effective professional development. This task may pose a serious challenge as the project adds teacher leaders who may have less experience and fewer skills than current ACME staff.
- Maintaining teacher involvement through the years of planned professional development is also a challenge of the project, particularly because the staff development literature shows that it takes several years for teachers to make new teaching practices their own. Additionally, ACME project staff need to garner full involvement and leadership from more school administrators as research shows principals are pivotal in implementing innovations.
- Teachers and principals need to develop time and arrangements for teacher collaboration on the standards-based mathematics curriculum and instruction while accommodating daily campus functioning. In addition, schools need to continue to develop methods to promote more parent involvement in their children’s mathematics education, especially in special education classes.
- A particular challenge to the success of the ACME project is the high stakes state and district assessment system.
- A final challenge to the district is to support structures that will sustain the high quality professional development after the ACME project is complete.
Recommendations
The strengths and challenges of the ACME project in its first year derived from the findings of this evaluation suggest the following actions:
- Foster in the district’s teachers, principals, central office administrators, and community an understanding of the difference between superficial implementation and standards-based instruction that enhances children’s mathematical competence. As with the ACME project’s development of a peer coaching system, the focus should be on identifying teachers and principals who have an understanding of the complexity of standards-based mathematics education and implications for practice and on developing networks for one-on-one or team teaching and learning. Some campuses have teachers and principals who are already fulfilling or could adopt this role, including formal leaders (i.e., curriculum specialists) and grass roots leaders such as teachers who have become inspired by standards-based curriculum and instruction. To reach every campus and teacher in the district, this effort may involve one hundred staff members.
- Continue to address teachers’ various attitudes toward implementation through the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM; Loucks-Horsley & Stiegelbauer, 1992). This research-based model approaches the adoption of an innovation as an individualized processes and presents change as possible in a context that is responsive to individuals’ changing concerns.
- Continue to provide teachers and principals with high quality professional development that addresses standards-based pedagogy, mathematics content, and instructional strategies. Continue to support the professional community of learners that is emerging in professional development and on campuses.
- Encourage ACME staff and teacher leaders to improve their skills as facilitators by developing and carrying out a professional development plan and attending conferences and workshops on adult learning and leadership.
- Continue to communicate monitor the importance of full participation of teachers and administrators in ACME professional development.
- Every campus should make use of time set aside for teachers to collaborate on mathematics education. During professional development and other meetings, teachers and principals could share innovative collaborative practices across campuses.
- The ACME staff need to continue public relations to address the concerns of principals and teachers about the relationship between standards-based mathematics education and the district and state assessment system.
- Lessons learned from the ACME project’s extensive professional development system could be exchanged with the district’s department of professional development to promote and develop a powerful, self-sustaining program.
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