The Wisconsin Legislature passed a series of education reform bills designed to make the state compete for nearly $4.5 billion in federal stimulus money.
The Assembly voted 47 to 46 in favor of the reform bills around 3 a.m. on Friday morning after a long closed door meeting among Democrats. The Senate approved the measures earlier on Thursday.
The action came after President Barack Obama came to Madison on Wednesday to tout the Race to the Top grant program.
One of the bills would create a system to track student data from preschool through college. A second bill would tie teacher evaluation to student performance on standardized tests. Another bill would require all charter schools to be created under federal guidelines. The last bill would move grants awarded to Milwaukee Public Schools for student achievement to move from Department of Administration to Department of Public Instruction control.
The bills remove a prohibition in state law from using student test data to evaluate teachers.
Even with it removed, teachers could not be disciplined or removed based on student test scores. And the teacher evaluation process would have to be part of collective bargaining.
Republicans argued that means most schools won’t even attempt to use the test data when evaluating teachers. Attempts by them to alter the bill were defeated by Democrats.
Senate Republicans expressed concern about the teacher evaluation portion, saying collective bargaining could become a hurdle to the Race to the Top guidelines and that teachers should also be disciplined or fired based on standardized testing results, not only rewarded.
“(Obama) said we have to be bold in holding people accountable for the achievement of our schools. Well, trust me, if we pass this legislation requiring mandatory negotiations we’re not bold, we’re a joke,” said Sen. Luther Olson, R-Ripon.
Four education bills aimed at bolstering the state’s application for federal Race to the Top funds were also moved through the Legislature. In the Assembly, passage of a bill allowing the use of student performance on standardized tests to be used in evaluating teachers. Republicans objected to the bill because they say it requires school districts to negotiate how the data is used in the teacher evaluations and would tie the hands of administrators who seek to discipline or dismiss poor performing teachers.
The bill barely passed the Assembly on a 47-46 vote.
The Assembly session wrapped up at about 4 a.m.
It will be interesting to see how these bills look, in terms of special interest influence, once Governor Doyle signs them. I do – possibly – like the student data tracking from preschool through college. Of course, the evaluations may be weak and the content may change rendering the results useless. We’ll see.
In related news, Madison School Board Vice President Lucy Mathiak again raised the issue of evaluating math curriculum effectiveness via University of Wisconsin System entrance exam results and college placement at the 11/2/2009 Madison School Board meeting. This request has fallen on deaf ears within the MMSD Administration for some time. [Madison School Board Math Discussion 40MB mp3 audio (Documents and links).]
Even though testing could test each child simply at the beginning of school and with the same test at the end of the year and give a per student gained knowledge in a subject area it will never occur. The requirement still requires contract approval which will NEVER happen in MMSD. Even though that info would help a teacher understand what her students know and what she needs to cover the fear of being evaluated will not fly.
I don’t know what the Assembly Bill number is, but the comparable Senate Bill SB372 contains the language to subject teachers to evaluation on standardized tests.
The bill allows but does not require that School Boards to evaluate teachers based on exam results but if used requires such evaluaion include
(1) A description of the evaluation process. (2) Multiple criteria in addition to examination results. (3) The rationale for using examination results to evaluate teachers. (4) An explanation of how the school board intends to use the evaluations to
improve pupil academic achievement.
Such evaluation is subject to collective bargaining.
What is the problem with the above? What is missing?
Bloggers on this site have for years emphasized dissatisfaction with not so much the teachers, but the curriculum (especially math, reading, music/arts, languages, writing, AP courses), support, discipline, the administration, the standardize tests (WKCE), the lack of data from MMSD, etc.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the above litany of issues have not been resolved. We ran into immovable objects: a recalcitrant MMSD, recalcitrant Board, continuing education fads from university researchers. We saw proof that those experts pushing Reading First were committing bribery and fraud, and that pretty well knocked the wind out of the proponents who had bought into that particular brand of pseudo-science research. Isn’t Reading Recover still an issue? And, what about that Math study? Did we resolve anything?
In short, we were not winning these wars, and had to go after someone we could win against — and teachers are a convenient target.
Not an innocent target it seems to me, but those, nonetheless, who themselves have been victimized by educational pseudo-science and crappy education at the university level.
The teachers are an enemy we have been able to win against, as these bills illustrate. Republicans, of course, voted NO because it wasn’t an unconditional surrender (and they’re required for vote NO on everything), and the Democrats will vote YES, just to look like some progress has been made.
So, I ask, what happened to our supposed concern over lousy curriculum? Should a teacher (or teachers) be held accountable for the results of curricula that cannot work for many kids? Should a teacher be held accountable for misbehavior of kids at school, when the school administration does not support establishing the necessary learning environment? Should teachers be held accountable for school overcrowding? Should teachers be held accountable for kids coming from increasingly homeless and hopeless situations? Should teachers be held accountable for poor allocation of resources because MMSD has no ability or interest in analyzing data?
Seems to me that the easily manipulated public has been duped again.
A quick update on MMSD placement scores: Asst. Supt. Pam Nash is in active conversation with the Testing and Evaluation people who can provide the placement data. This is now moving forward in tangible ways, which is encouraging. My personal belief is that the data that is being requested will provide an important piece of big picture feedback on how we are doing in preparing our students for post-high school educational options.
Stay tuned.
I could not be happier that we finally have gotten the funds to give my son’s teacher a raise. She is amazing. I volunteer with about 6 other parents and we all see what an amazing job she does. She even has to make sure that one kid who is learning English does well. She also makes sure that the one african american kid gets breakfast. The rest of us parents work hard to make sure that our children get the best education possible even under these very difficult situations for my son’s teacher. I see no reason why an old teacher who has decided to stay in the “urban” schools should get paid more than my son’s teacher. The poor people get all of the best, small class sizes, reading teachers and free lunch. It is about time that my son’s teacher gets paid more.
Lucy doesn’t seem to understand that at best assessments are designed for a specific purpose and should not be used for other purposes. A direct quote from the UW Testing and Evaluation Service on the proper use of tests:
“The University of Wisconsin Placement Tests are designed for the sole purpose of placing students into college level courses. The questions on the placement tests are specifically selected with this single purpose in mind. The tests are not intended to measure everything that is learned in high school. Neither are the tests designed to compare students from one high school with students from another or to measure success in college-level courses.”
and
“The experienced teacher also will quickly realize, upon examining the objectives that are measured in the placement tests, that many skills which are taught in high school and which are necessary for success in college are not measured by the UW Placement Tests.”
I assume Lucy’s comments about getting this placement test data is a follow-up to her comments at last week’s school board meeting about the Math Task Force response. She seems to place a lot of value in these placement tests. Perhaps people should take a look at the example exam problems to see if this is the type of mathematics we think is really valuable for students to learn and know in the 21st century. You can find some samples at:
http://testing.wisc.edu/contents%20of%20the%20placement%20tests.html
I do realize the purpose of placement tests and am willing to say so using my own name. MMSD makes a lot of claims about its math curriculum. The value of reviewing the placement results is to get a feel for whether the district’s claims about preparing students for higher education match the results when our graduates move on. This has nothing to do with comparisons to other districts. It has to do with whether MMSD is giving students what they need to have in order to succeed in college.
As for whether the placement tests are really valuable, I can assure you that students who want to enter a broad spectrum of fields – nursing, pre-med, pharmacy, vet med, business, engineering, computer sciences, and any science, social science, or mathematically related field – must have adequate mathematical knowledge and skills. Without those skills they cannot hope to pass mathematical reasoning, statistics, or science classes at a college level. And testing into remedial levels at college is not something that most students or parents would consider educational success, regardless of our personal opinions about what students “need.”
And I say that as someone who doesn’t love math. I just think we have a responsibility, as do the posters who talk about a recalcitrant board unwilling to assess or challenge curricular assumptions.
Doesn’t get more real than that.
I appreciate Lucy’s efforts (and others, including some Board members, UW-Madison Faculty, parents and local teachers) with respect to Math content knowledge and rigor.
Those interested in further background on this matter might have a look at the 2006 Math Forum which Rafael Gomez kindly hosted:
http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2006/02/math_forum_audi.php
The Madison School District’s use of reform math curricula was discussed in this 2004 Lee Sensenbrenner piece:
http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2006/08/sensenbrenner_o_1.php
2004 Madison School Board candidate Melania Alvarez ran based on the District’s math programs:
http://www.zmetro.com/alvarez/alvarez_transcript.html
Madison West High math teachers wrote a letter to Isthmus in 2004 critical of the District’s math programs:
http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2006/03/april_2004_west.php
A previous comment on this thread referenced the purpose of UW Testing and Services placement tests. Yet, and ironically, the Madison School District’s value added assessment program (via the UW-Madison School of Education) uses Wisconsin’s oft-criticized WKCE results…. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction stated: “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”.
http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2008/06/schools_should.php
I cannot emphasize enough the appreciation I have for folks who review and discuss curricular quality.
I recently ran across this problem in a new MMSD Algebra textbook:
Page 171 Problem 3
0.152 = 0.3m – 0.43
What are the “hidden denominators” in the equation?
Multiply each side by 100 and solve the resulting equation.
I asked someone who knows about such things and here is the response:
“What I do not understand is why 100 was suggested. 1000 makes sense since it gives integers, and 10 makes sense since it gives 3m and the rest is easy enough to deal with. Why suggest 100?”
There is much, much to do.
When I mentioned “recalcitrant Board” in my comments, words which Lucy mentioned, I’m a bit uncomfortable thinking she believed these words were directed against the members of this particular Board. That wasn’t my intent.
I was specifically referring back to previous Board’s that as a whole, did not address curriculum issues independently, opting instead to rubber stamp administrative decisions.
RE Jim’s MMSD Algebra problem and “hidden denominators”.
I had not come across this “hidden denominators” labeling before, but it might be a good approach, as might be “scaling”.
As for using 100 instead of 10 or 1000, I understand and agree that 100 is the better choice. Here’s why.
In my younger days doing statistical analysis, I commonly, as the data indicated, transformed the data into ranges of values that could be intuitively grasped. The purpose was to let the data speak to you, to tell you how it wanted and deserved to be treated, and how the data related to each other. Sometimes this required transforming into z-scores, sometimes ratios, sometimes squaring or taking the square root, or inverse, or log, but scaling was always (?) part of the process.
I don’t think it’s arguable that numbers between 1 and 100 are intuitive for most, and most of us, if we have any math gymnastics ability, can “see” answers quite readily with numbers in that range.
Take Jim’s problem. Having multiplied by 100, the equation is about
15 = 30m – 45 => 60 = 30m => m is about 2.
We’re not so comfortable with rounding 152 to 150, or 430 to 450, and 300 is just a “big” number. Intuitively, there just too many zeroes in these numbers, and changing 430 to 450 is a change of 20 (a lot), while the change from 43 to 45 is only 2 (just a little).
Try scaling by 10. **Stop! Don’t look to the end of this comment (where my rationale is). Do it yourself, and see if you like 10 and if there are any problems using a scaling of 10.
Then, look at the value of m! It’s 2 !!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s a number between 1 and 100, just like the other numbers in the equation. The answer just seems to go along with it.
Getting an answer of 2 when the other numbers are 152, 430 and 300 just seems out of place.
Finally, and perhaps more esoterically, attempts to scale to values between 1 and 100 allows one to see both orders of magnitude and reasonable detail. If I’m successful in this scaling, and I have some numbers between 1 and 10, and some more numbers in the 100’s, then there is perhaps 2 orders of magnitude difference between the lower and upper values — this might mean either I have outliers, or two or three different populations (small, medium, large). Again, the purpose is to get a feel for the data, and the relationships. This can be taken much further, but I’ll stop now (and my knowledge is rusty).
I agree there is much, much to do, but by whom?
******************************************
Scaling by 10 results in
1.52 = 3m – 4.3
Whew! I’m still lost. How do I estimate the answer to m? Intuitively, I want to truncate 4.3 to 4; maybe 1.53 to 1, or should it be 1.5? — maybe chopping one number at the 10ths place while chopping the other at the 100ths place? I don’t like that, intuitively. And, I would never estimate 4.3 to 4.5 — ever. Further, I don’t see 3 as 3.0, then I don’t see the numbers ending in 0 and 5, and how nicely 0 and 5 work together.
It might be interesting to know in which of the many different Algebra textbooks used in the district Jim found this problem. I am reluctant to make any judgments about a textbook based on one problem taken out of context, but I’ll share some thoughts on this particular problem anyways.
I’m going to give the authors the benefit of assuming that this was an attempt to get students to think about using their prior knowledge of properties of equality to write an equivalent equation containing “nicer” numbers. Jim questions the book’s directions to multiply by 100 and Larry goes on at length about what number to use and why, but neither mentions what I think is a much more important point. Why does the book tell which number to multiply by at all?
Think about the learning that could take place if students discussed with each other the ideas Larry outlines in his post. Given the opportunity students might begin to develop the depth of understanding Larry demonstrates. By just telling the students what to do the textbook has essentially robbed them of that opportunity. Even a very basic problem like this one can be used to develop true understanding of mathematics if that is really the goal.
I would like to think that we can all agree that we want students to understand math, not just be able to do math. Many students who end up hating math do so because it makes no sense to them. They see it as a bunch of rules that they can’t remember and have no connection to anything outside of math class. Students that can remember all the rules and apply them to the right problems are successful in math and like it. (In my younger days, before I got older and I like to think wiser, I was in this group.)
My criticism with the UW placement exam, and others like it, is that it reinforces the perception that what is important in math is being able to remember the rules and when to use them. This is a very narrow view of mathematics. Assessing understanding and deep knowledge of mathematics is difficult to do. It is certainly not going to be done using a multiple choice exam. The UW Testing and Evaluation Service acknowledges that the placements exam was designed to be easy to administer and score. The exam is designed to get a quick snapshot of the type of math knowledge that is easy to measure. This information is then meant to be used for a very narrow and specific purpose.
I think we have to be careful about how we use this type of data. We have to keep in mind that just because the data is easy to get does not mean it is valuable data to have. The most difficult measurements to obtain would often be the most valuable to have.
(Even though it may offend some that I choose to remain anonymous, I do have my reasons for wishing to do so in this particular forum. If that means that some people will disregard what I have to say, then so be it.)
I’ve posted a photo of the textbook, including the problem noted above here:
http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/photos/2009/11/algebrammsd2009.jpg
I also found question 2 interesting. Why 9 and 27?
The photo of the textbook page clears much up. My answer to use of 100 as the multiplier, though correct, is not relevant to the obvious goals of the exercises in this section of the book.
Clearly, these exercises are meant to teach students some mechanics of manipulating equations and inequalities containing fractions and decimals, and to show the students that scaling (and use of common denominators) can make finding solutions more tractable and to show that this manipulation does not change the solution.
The original question which suggested multiplying by 100 was not meant by the authors to suggest that use of 100 was the better scaling factor, but as part of the exercise in the mechanics. The authors go on to tell the student to convert the equation to fractions and then solve the problem, then discuss what the student found. This is all quite reasonable given the goals of authors.
As for question 2, and why 9 and 27. Both 9 and 27 are common denominators and either can be used to simplify and solve the equation. Perhaps a key issue in this problem, is that one does not have to use the lowest common denominator (9 in this case) to remove fractions — any common denominator will do.
We can take these ideas further, especially in light of the push to use calculators in K-12 education (supported by national standards groups).
The use of calculators, manual computation, decimals, and fractions might take the student into areas they are not ready for, but that does not mean we as adults should ignore the issues that seem present.
Manual computation will most always give the correct answer (assuming the student does not make mistakes). Such is not the case using a calculator and might differ depending on the calculator.
If the calculator encodes numbers using decimal representations, then the answers will be correct. If, however, the calculator encodes numbers using binary representations, then the answer one will get may be “incorrect”.
Just as fraction 1/3 cannot be exactly encoded using a decimal representation (0.333333 ….), the decimal 0.1 cannot encoded exactly using a binary representation (0001100110011…).
What the above means is that the scaling one uses and even the order of calculations — especially division — will make a difference in the answer one gets using a calculator (This is true even for manual evaluations!).
Using Jim’s originally posted problem to illustrate use of a calculator
0.152 = 0.3m – .43
the student should scale by 1000 (by hand) to remove all decimals before using a calculator to ensure the calculator will represent the numbers exactly, giving
152 = 3m – 430
The next step is to add 430 to both sides, giving
582 = 3m.
Mathematically, it is also correct to divide both sides by 3 first, giving
152/3 = m – 430/3.
But, whether using a calculator or manually, one shouldn’t perform the divisions by 3 because the resulting answers will be repeating decimals and the resulting answer for m might differ from the (more correct) answer received if one delayed the division to the last operation.
Why do I raise these issues? Besides showing some practical issues that can be lurking, one must take a cautionary approach to evaluating and criticizing textbooks, teaching, educational goals, age-appropriate material and student readiness, testing and other student and school evaluations. We tend to bandy-about the terms “understand”, “proficient”, “advanced”, “reform”, as though we ourselves know what these words should mean.
Do I believe students should be taught and know the material illustrated in this comment or in previous comments? I don’t know. I find knowing this material useful and important, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it can or should be part of the K-12 curriculum. If the textbooks do not address these issues, or the teachers don’t know this material, should that be cause for concern? It’s quite easy for me to raise these issues to further an agenda of criticizing K-12 education, but I can also raise these issues merely for discussion.
But I do know that to say that one “understands” something is quite relative, and there is often quite a bit more that can be learned even in the simplest of problems.