Spokane Administrative plan for math is to fix the math program later

Laurie Rogers:

According to The Spokesman-Review, Spokane Public Schools Superintendent Shelley Redinger said in October 2013 that math outcomes in Spokane are “average” and that’s why the school district is focusing on repairing its English/language arts program.

The impression given in the article was that math instruction in Spokane is in an OK place, not great but not terrible, and that attention needs to be paid first to ELA.

Such an impression, however, isn’t what college remedial rates indicate to be true. It isn’t reflected in most high school graduates, nor in most students in any grade prior. It isn’t what I have told the superintendent; it isn’t what she has repeatedly acknowledged to me. It isn’t what she told me that the rest of the Spokane community has said to her. Even board directors appear to have gotten a clue: On Dec. 4, 2013, director Rocky Treppiedi called the district’s math program “a disgrace.” And it is.

I asked Dr. Redinger about her choice of the word “average” to describe math outcomes in Spokane, and she wrote that she chose the word because district scores are “at the state average in mathematics.”

If I didn’t know better, I might accept that. However, I do know better.