Description: Tags: Nmp-09-06-07-Transcript-Final

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
* * * * *
NATIONAL MATH PANEL MEETING
* * * * *
The National Math Panel met in open

session at the Eric P. Newman Education
Center, 320 South Euclid Avenue, St. Louis,
Missouri 63110, on Thursday, September 6,
2007, at 3:30 p.m.
PANEL MEMBERS:
DR. LARRY FAULKNER, CHAIR
DR. CAMILLA BENBOW, VICE CHAIR
DR. DEBORAH LOEWENBERG BALL
DR. A. WADE BOYKIN (NOT PRESENT)
DR. DOUGLAS CLEMENTS (NOT PRESENT)
DR. SUSAN EMBRETSON
DR. FRANCIS (SKIP) FENNELL
DR. BERT FRISTEDT
DR. DAVID GEARY
DR. RUSSELL GERSTEN
DR. TOM LOVELESS
DR. LIPING MA
DR. VALERIE REYNA
DR. WILFRIED SCHMID (NOT PRESENT)
DR. ROBERT SIEGLER
DR. JAMES SIMONS (NOT PRESENT)
DR. SANDRA STOTSKY
MR. VERN WILLIAMS
DR. HUNG-HSI WU
EX OFFICIO MEMBERS:
DR. IRMA ARISPE
DR. DANIEL BERCH
DR. JOAN FERRINI-MUNDY
MR. RAYMOND SIMON
DR. GROVER (RUSS) WHITEHURST
STAFF:
MS. TYRRELL FLAWN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
MS. MARIAN BANFIELD
MS. IDA EBLINGER KELLEY
MS. JENNIFER GRABAN
MR. JIM YUN
MR. KYLE ALBERT
2
C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S
I. CALL TO ORDER AND WELCOME

Larry Faulkner, Chair ................. 3
Dr. Mark Wrighton, Chancellor ......... 7

Washington University
II. ALGEBRA TEACHERS' SURVEY - FINDINGS .. 12
III. OPEN SESSION - PUBLIC COMMENT ........ 29
(a) RICHARD SCHAAR ................. 30

Executive Advisor
Texas Instruments, Inc.
(b) ELIZABETH GNALL ................ 45

Parent
(c) STEVE NOBLE .................... 50

Director, Accessibility Policy
Design Science, Inc.
(d) MARGUERITE BLISS ............... 59

Parent
Clayton Math Matters
(e) PATTY POLSTER .................. 67

Parent/Special Ed Teacher
(f) WILLIAM TATE ................... 73

Professor, Arts & Sciences
Washington University
(g) MARTIN ROCHESTER ............... 84

Professor, Political Science
University of Missouri-St. Louis
(h) JENNIE WINTERS ................. 88

Math & Science Coordinator
Lake County Office of Education
(i) BARBARA ASTEAK ................ 105

Suntex International
(j) MICHELLE PRUITT ............... 111

Columbia - Parents for Real Math
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
2 (3:30 p.m.)
3 DR. FAULKNER: (Presiding). Let
4 me welcome everyone to the opening session of
5 the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The
6 panel was created in April of 2006 by
7 Executive Order of the President to review the
8 best scientific evidence and to make
9 recommendations to the President and Secretary
10 of Education on ways to improve mathematics
11 learning, with a particular emphasis on
12 Algebra readiness and Algebra success.
13 We are here at Washington
14 University in St. Louis, and I would like to
15 thank the University for hosting the Eighth
16 National Math Panel Meeting.
17 Since the Panel's first meeting at
18 the National Academies in Washington, D.C.,
19 the panel has sought to hold its meetings at
20 institutions that symbolize educational
21 achievement, particularly in mathematics. It
22 is fitting for the Panel to be meeting at
23 Washington University which is a top recipient
24 of federal, industrial and foundation research
25 support for its programs in medicine, science,
26 engineering and social science. Washington

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1 University School of Medicine, founded in
2 1891, is ranked by U.S. News and World Report
3 as one of the top five in the nation and its
4 students are ranked first in terms of academic
5 quality.
6 Research has always been integral
7 to the school's mission. It pioneered bedside
8 teaching and led in the transformation of
9 empirical knowledge into scientific medicine.
10 And from the school's earliest days there was
11 the understanding that investigation and
12 practice, are one in spirit, method and
13 object.
14 We, of course, as a National Math
15 Panel, met earlier at Fermi National
16 Accelerator Laboratory and one of the thoughts
17 in asking Washington University if it would
18 host us is the idea of placing, juxtaposing
19 really, a site that is well known in the
20 physical sciences, with another that is well
21 known in the life sciences, here at Washington
22 University.
23 With that introduction to the
24 University and our thanks to the University, I
25 would like to ask if there are members of the
26 audience who need the signing services that

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1 are being delivered right now? If so, we
2 will continue. If not, we will discontinue
3 the signing services with the recognition that
4 of course we can always re-institute them if
5 the need arises. So, let me ask if there is a
6 user of the signing services or users of the
7 signing services right now in the audience?
8 If not, we will discontinue the services.
9 [No Verbal Response]
10 DR. FAULKNER: Let me now
11 introduce Dr. Mark Wrighton, long time friend
12 and colleague; a fellow chemist. Mark
13 Wrighton is the fourteenth Chancellor of
14 Washington University in St. Louis, and has
15 served in this position since 1995. He is a
16 renowned chemist, with his Bachelor's Degree
17 from Florida State and a Ph.D. from Cal Tech.
18 Dr. Wrighton started his career at MIT as an
19 Assistant Professor in 1973, -- '72. And over
20 the next twenty-three years has been promoted,
21 or was promoted to increasing levels of
22 academic recognition in leadership at MIT. He
23 held chairs in chemistry and then served as
24 Provost from 1990 to 1995.
25 As Chancellor of Washington
26 University in St. Louis, Dr. Wrighton is

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1 responsible for a number of important
2 achievements, such as a two-fold increase in
3 undergraduate applications, 165 new endowed
4 professorships for faculty, a newly created
5 program in biomedical engineering, completion
6 of thirty buildings and the successful
7 completion of a 1.55 billion dollar campaign
8 for student scholarships, professorships,
9 other endowed program support and new
10 facilities.
11 He serves on the boards of Brooks
12 Automation, Cabot Corporation, the Danforth
13 Plant Science Center and A.G. Edwards, and he
14 is a Trustee for Barnes-Jewish Hospital, BJC
15 Health Care, St. Louis Art Museum, the St.
16 Louis Science Center, the St. Louis Symphony
17 and other organizations.
18 Mark Wrighton is past chair of the
19 Business Higher Education Forum and the
20 Association of American Universities. He is a
21 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
22 Sciences and the American Association for the
23 Advancement of Science (AAAS). From 2000 to
24 2006 he was a member of the National Science
25 Board. Mark Wrighton is also the author or
26 co-author of more than three hundred articles

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1 in professional and scholarly journals, and
2 served on the editorial advisory board for a
3 number of professional journals. He holds
4 fourteen patents.
5 But, as I indicated, Mark Wrighton
6 is a long time friend and colleague. It is a
7 pleasure to draw on his hospitality here at
8 Washington University, and we thank him for
9 joining us today. Mark.
10 DR. MARK WRIGHTON

11 Chancellor, Washington University
12 DR. WRIGHTON: Thanks for the
13 generous words and welcome to Washington
14 University. You are on the campus of one of
15 the greatest medical schools. I say that with
16 pride, but with relatively little knowledge
17 about medicine, as my own background is in
18 organic chemistry. And I should tell you
19 though that it has been extremely rewarding
20 for me in these dozen years plus that I have
21 been at Washington University to come to know
22 what a great resource we have, and what a
23 great contribution we make to the Greater St.
24 Louis community.
25 The work that this National Math
26 Panel is doing is extremely important, and it

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1 is rewarding to see so many talented and
2 important people spending time on this
3 important endeavor. I want to express my
4 gratitude on behalf of many in higher
5 education for the work that you are doing and
6 especially to Larry Faulkner, for taking on
7 the important role of Chair.
8 Just a couple of weeks ago, I had
9 the opportunity to meet Secretary Margaret
10 Spellings. I had the opportunity earlier to
11 hear her speak and meet her in a kind of meet
12 and greet situation. But, recently I was
13 invited to be part of a delegation of college
14 and university presidents led by Secretary
15 Spellings to travel to Latin America. And on
16 that trip I came away with a very strong
17 conviction that Secretary Spellings is very
18 effective and very, very committed to
19 advancing education in our country, which we
20 all recognize as so vital to our success.
21 Right here in St. Louis where you
22 are meeting and not so far from this very
23 site, we have a public school system that is
24 struggling. In the news here there is a
25 discussion of an examination that is given to
26 prospective members of the Fire Department of

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1 the City of St. Louis. The failure rate on
2 this examination among graduates of the city
3 schools is so significant that even the Mayor
4 has acknowledged that we face a crisis.
5 Things that people should know graduating from
6 high school in this community are just not
7 with these students.
8 Children who are developing, of
9 course, become adults, and our country will
10 only flourish if these adults are going to be
11 competitive in the world. It is clearly an
12 environment today where young people will face
13 employment challenges if they do not have a
14 great education, including mathematics.
15 I think back on my own experiences
16 as a child. I remember being very interested
17 in numbers. I started as a child. I think I
18 was four or five years old when I decided to
19 start writing all the numbers I could and put
20 all of them down on a piece of paper. So,
21 pretty soon I had this voluminous stack of
22 papers and I wondered where it ended. And
23 that was an exercise that caused my parents to
24 wonder about me a little bit; who is that
25 small nerd that they have nurtured? But, my
26 parents were very encouraging of my

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1 inquisitiveness and activity. Ultimately I
2 got a chemistry set and partially damaged my
3 bedroom with the chemical experiments, but
4 they encouraged me a great deal. And I think
5 that is what it takes. We need a little
6 experimentation and support from our parents.
7 The infrastructure that can be provided in our
8 formal educational system is going to be vital
9 as we look ahead.
10 Many people believe in the area of
11 medicine that the physical sciences,
12 mathematics in particular, might not be so
13 important. But, not so far from where we are
14 sitting right now, we are creating enormous
15 amounts of information. We are one of the
16 major recipients of support for human genome
17 sequencing. And this activity alone
18 illustrates well the importance of a strong
19 educational experience in mathematics and
20 physical sciences. Advances in medicine very
21 much depend on a knowledge base that stems
22 from the kind of investment that we need to
23 make in our young people.
24 We at Washington University, of
25 course, are privileged to have some of the
26 strongest high school graduates enrolled, but

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1 I know that we are looking at a very small
2 fraction of America. And when I think of the
3 students in the city schools, I can tell you
4 that we face a large challenge nationally.
5 I hope that you will be able to
6 bring improvement to our system. And I am
7 very grateful that you are doing this
8 important work. Later this afternoon I
9 understand that the Chair of our Department of
10 Education will be commenting in the public
11 session. Dr. William Tate is an expert in
12 mathematics education, and we have been
13 fortunate to have him as a member of our
14 faculty.
15 I know that this evening we will be
16 having dinner at the St. Louis Science Center.
17 This organization plays a vital role in our
18 community in encouraging mathematics and
19 science education, and I hope you have a
20 rewarding experience there. There are many
21 other cultural assets of our community, but I
22 think it is really great that you will be at
23 the Science Center, one of the top
24 institutions of its kind in the United States.
25 So, thank you very much for choosing
26 Washington University. It is a privilege to

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1 have you on our campus, and I look forward to
2 seeing the report and most important, the
3 follow-up from the Secretary of Education.
4 Thank you very much.
5 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you,
6 Chancellor Wrighton.
7 II. ALGEBRA TEACHERS' SURVEY - FINDINGS

8 DR. FAULKNER: Let me begin the
9 session now by opening the presentation on the
10 Algebra teacher's survey. I would like to ask
11 Tom Loveless, who will be doing the
12 presentation, to go to the presenting area.
13 But, let me begin by asking the Panel, when
14 the Panel members ask questions or make
15 comments I would like to remind you to
16 identify yourselves as you turn on the
17 microphones. The transcriber needs to
18 attribute your comments for posterity and they
19 need to know who is speaking.
20 Early in the panel's discussions
21 the members recognized the need for input from
22 Algebra teachers to inform their work. Exxon
23 Mobil provided a generous grant for a
24 professional survey, which was in the field
25 last spring. And we are about to hear the
26 results of that survey.

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1 The chair of the subcommittee on
2 the Algebra teacher's survey was Tom Loveless,
3 a member of the Panel. Other members of that
4 subcommittee included Skip Fennell, and Vern
5 Williams, and that subcommittee is now before
6 us. The other presenter there is Tom Hoffer,
7 who is from the National Opinion Research
8 Center from the University of Chicago, which
9 is the contractor that actually carried out
10 the survey. With that, I will turn the
11 microphone over to Tom Loveless who will be
12 the lead presenter.
13 DR. LOVELESS: Well, thank you
14 Mister Chairman. And as Larry Faulkner just
15 said, very early in our deliberations as a
16 National Math Panel we decided that we did
17 want to get the views of Algebra teachers
18 across the United States. The way our
19 subcommittee conducted its business is that we
20 first drew up an outline of the questions that
21 we wanted to be included in that survey and
22 the outline then went out to bid, essentially.
23 We had several firms that conduct surveys that
24 then put in bids, and we eventually selected
25 NORC, the National Opinion Research Center, to
26 conduct the National Survey of Algebra

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1 Teachers. Tom Hoffer is here to present those
2 findings, along with members of the
3 subcommittee. So, why don’t we start with Tom
4 Hoffer?
5 Just briefly, Tom is Director of
6 the National Opinion Research Center’s (NORC)
7 Joint Center for Education Research. He has a
8 Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of
9 Chicago. He has worked extensively with a
10 number of large federal databases. I will not
11 get into their names, because it will take
12 about an hour to read them. But, he has also
13 co-authored some books, a book with Jim
14 Coleman on High School Achievement, in 1982
15 and also Public and Private High Schools,
16 which was published by Basic Books.
17 So, Tom is going to begin talking
18 about the survey and then the rest of us will
19 join in with different sections.
20 DR. FAULKNER: Before you get
21 started I might mention that I neglected to
22 say that Deborah Ball was a member of the
23 subcommittee.
24 DR. HOFFER: Thank you for the
25 introduction Tom. Now, I will start with just
26 a brief introduction to the survey, give a few

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1 technical details, and then we will go back to
2 the subcommittee to actually go through some
3 of the results that we have here, the
4 highlights, if you will. There is a lot more
5 information that we collected that we will not
6 be able to talk about today, and we look
7 forward to completing a final report and
8 having that available to the Panel and other
9 interested parties in the very near future.
10 The survey was designed to provide
11 a nationally representative sample of Algebra
12 I teachers in public schools. We sought a
13 sample of three hundred and ten schools from
14 lists of all schools that contained eighth
15 grade or higher. We stratified the population
16 of schools so that we would have
17 representative samples of schools by their
18 grade configuration, that is high schools,
19 middle schools and combined middle schools and
20 high schools. We also stratified by the
21 demographics of the school, particularly the
22 percentages of students that are eligible for
23 free and reduced lunch program participation,
24 the percentage of racial and ethnic minorities
25 enrolled in the school, and finally, the
26 school location, urban, suburban, rural.

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1 Of the three hundred and ten
2 schools selected, two hundred and fifty-eight
3 agreed to provide rosters of their Algebra I
4 teachers. So, we had an 83 percent
5 cooperation rate. And of the one thousand
6 twenty-six teachers that were identified on
7 those rosters provided by the schools, we were
8 able to obtain 72 percent completed
9 questionnaires by July 1st.
10 So, it was very successful by
11 survey standards. This is a good response
12 rate, particularly in the short period of time
13 that we had available to collect the data.
14 So, the results we will be discussing today
15 are based on responses from 743 Algebra I
16 teachers in public schools across the country.
17 A quick demographic and background
18 profile of the teachers, before we move on to
19 their survey responses, indicates about 66
20 percent of the teachers were female. The race
21 ethnicity background indicates 85 percent
22 White, 6 percent Hispanic, 3 percent African-
23 American and 3 percent Asian. Now, these
24 numbers compare quite closely with other
25 national surveys. We have somewhat lower
26 representations of African-Americans in this

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1 sample of Algebra I teachers, than seems to be
2 the case from particularly the school and
3 staffing survey that the U.S. Department of
4 Education does. It is a much larger ongoing
5 survey of teachers that publishes results on
6 math teachers, as well as other subject areas.
7 In that survey, they show about 8 percent
8 African-Americans versus our 3 percent. So we
9 are somewhat lower there. I do not have a
10 good explanation of why that is at this point,
11 but that is, I think, the only demographic
12 difference of note.
13 The median age is forty-one years
14 old. About a quarter of the teachers are
15 thirty years old or younger. And about a
16 quarter are fifty-one years or older.
17 In terms of the education
18 background and education experience, about
19 half have a masters or other advance degree.
20 Sixty-eight percent of all teachers had a
21 major or minor in mathematics for their
22 undergraduate degree. I should add about a
23 third of those who had masters or other
24 advanced degrees had a specialization in
25 mathematics for their graduate program. So,
26 there are quite a few, something on the order

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1 of probably about 20 percent I believe that do
2 not have, of all these teachers, a
3 specialization either at the undergraduate or
4 graduate level in mathematics.
5 About 82 percent have a regular
6 state certification, so they were not all
7 certified. The National Board of Professional
8 Teaching Standards has certified 12 percent of
9 these teachers, and 83 percent report that
10 they are highly qualified according to the `No
11 Child Left Behind' criteria.
12 Experience is the last point here.
13 We have about a quarter who are very new, two
14 years or less, and about a quarter who have
15 been teaching Algebra I for fifteen years or
16 more. With that, I will turn it over to Tom
17 Loveless again.
18 DR. LOVELESS: What we are going
19 to do is just present an outline of the
20 findings. The Panelists here, you should
21 introduce yourselves for the purpose of the
22 transcript of this hearing before you speak.
23 The main areas. Area number one
24 deals with student preparation and number two,
25 primary findings. The first finding is that
26 there are skill and knowledge areas of

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1 inadequate preparation, we will get into that,
2 and then we will provide some examples of
3 preparation problems from the viewpoint of
4 teachers.
5 The second main point looked at was
6 teachers’ work-related attitudes, and there
7 were two primary findings. The first deals
8 with professional preparation and development,
9 and the second with the teaching materials and
10 curriculum that are used in classrooms.
11 And then finally we will be looking
12 at findings relating to the use of
13 instructional materials and the main
14 challenges for teachers.
15 The bar graph here illustrates how
16 teachers responded to a series of questions
17 about how well students are prepared. This is
18 actually a composite of fifteen different
19 preparation items with poor being on the left
20 hand side of the scale and excellent being on
21 the right. You can see that for the most
22 part, teachers indicate that their students
23 are not very well prepared. You see a large
24 percentage there responding in the fair down
25 to poor category in terms of their students'
26 preparation.
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1 In terms of areas where preparation
2 is less adequate, there is almost an ability-
3 grouping phenomenon in terms of the most
4 proficient students in mathematics in the
5 United States taking Algebra in eighth grade.
6 So, the eighth grade teachers felt that their
7 students were better prepared than teachers in
8 later grades. And so we want to note that
9 difference.
10 The second finding that should be
11 noted is that there were small differences,
12 they were statistically significant, but they
13 were small by school demographics. Teachers
14 in schools with high minority student
15 concentrations rated the preparation of their
16 students lower than teachers in other schools.
17 DR. FENNELL: Skip Fennell; member
18 of the National Math Panel. What we are
19 looking at here are the student preparation
20 issues as rated by teachers with a rating of
21 poor being a one, moving to a rating of
22 excellent being a four. And you are looking
23 at, if you will, the top areas of concern by
24 the seven hundred plus teachers who responded
25 with solving word problems coming in as the
26 greatest concern. Work with rational numbers

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1 particularly involving operations with
2 fractions and decimals coming in close to
3 that. No surprise to anybody who has taught
4 Algebra, by the way. Basic study skills,
5 which you probably would argue is not
6 particularly an area of mathematics, but study
7 skills and work habits following that and then
8 the ability, perhaps that might be an
9 inability to use math in context as within a
10 real world situation, indicating a concern
11 about actually using the mathematics.
12 Flipping that a bit to areas that I
13 suspect are approaching satisfaction. Higher
14 ratings, top four, understanding of the
15 concept of variables, ability to plot points
16 and graph lines on a four-quadrant coordinate
17 plane, working cooperatively with other
18 students; again not necessarily mathematics,
19 but relative to backgrounds of students. And
20 then finally and rated most high, is work with
21 whole numbers and operations involving whole
22 numbers.
23 MR. WILLIAMS: I am Vern Williams,
24 National Math Panel. The next slide pertains
25 to teacher comments in relation to preparation
26 issues. And as you can see it stipulates that

22
1 students need to be better prepared in basic
2 math skills and not be so dependent on
3 calculators. And also they would like for the
4 first through eighth grade teachers to
5 concentrate more on the foundations of math,
6 so that students know their basic skills to
7 succeed more in Algebra.
8 The second set of comments, again,
9 more focus on basic skills, things such as
10 order of operations, integers, fractions and
11 decimals, and also study skills, and noting
12 that students need to have a work ethic and do
13 homework in order to succeed in Algebra.
14 Sooner or later it does turn into hard work.
15 DR. FENNELL: These are areas of
16 teacher satisfaction, which may surprise
17 teachers. Generally speaking the survey
18 respondents found their Algebra I textbooks to
19 be pretty good and they were rated very
20 favorably. For example "the textbook includes
21 the appropriate topics and content to teach
22 the course" 90 percent agree or strongly agree
23 with that statement. Relative to resources
24 for students who might be struggling in
25 Algebra I, the availability of tutorial or
26 remedial assistance rated fairly high with 74

23
1 percent fair or better, and the quality of
2 tutorial and/or remedial help 80 percent or
3 better.
4 Now we continue with teacher
5 satisfaction with regards to Algebra I
6 curriculum standards and assessments or tests.
7 70 percent rate the content standards, be they
8 state-wise or otherwise, as good or excellent.
9 Eighty percent rate local expectations to be
10 about right.
11 Shifting a bit to professional
12 development. With regards to opportunities for
13 this population of teachers, 74 percent rate
14 professional development as adequate or very
15 helpful to them in their work.
16 DR. HOFFER: Tom Hoffer; NORC. We
17 asked a number of questions about the use of
18 different instructional materials and the
19 first of these had to do with technological
20 tools. For the most part teachers of Algebra
21 I do not make extensive use of these tools
22 that we asked about, specifically graphing
23 calculators and computer based instructional
24 materials. For both of these, the responses
25 group very much toward the rarely and never
26 side, and very few teachers use these as much

24
1 as once a week. Similarly, manipulative
2 materials, physical objects that can be used
3 to illustrate algebraic concepts, were used
4 very rarely by teachers at any of the grade
5 levels. They were used a bit more at the
6 middle school level, but generally not much at
7 all. Only 29 percent used them once a week or
8 more.
9 This one just illustrates the
10 representation of the graphing calculators
11 which we thought going in would be used quite
12 a bit more than we are seeing here. A third
13 of the teachers reported never using graphing
14 calculators and another third less than once a
15 week. So, we are seeing quite minimal use of
16 these for the most part.
17 DR. LOVELESS: Then we asked a
18 series of questions dealing with challenges
19 that teachers may have that are not related to
20 instruction and curriculum. The first one
21 dealt with family participation. Sixty
22 percent of the teachers rated lack of family
23 participation as a moderate or serious problem
24 for their students.
25 The second challenge that teachers
26 identified was mixed ability classes, and 45

25
1 percent of Algebra teachers considered that a
2 moderate or serious problem.
3 And then finally the biggest
4 challenge they identified in this regard was
5 working with unmotivated students.
6 DR. BALL: Deborah Ball, member of
7 the National Math Panel. Additionally, in the
8 challenges that teachers reported facing,
9 overwhelmingly as Tom just said, they reported
10 in teaching Algebra I successfully, that they
11 faced problems working with unmotivated
12 students. You can see that of all the
13 challenges they named, almost two-thirds of
14 the teachers selected working with unmotivated
15 students and very small percentages selected
16 the others that are up here.
17 The second most frequent up there
18 is making mathematics successful and
19 comprehensible. This is pretty interesting
20 because the remainder of the items selected
21 there you can interpret to be about
22 instruction, but the first one which is chosen
23 much more overwhelmingly is about the
24 challenge of working with students that do not
25 want to learn. That is what came through.
26 So, overall in just wrapping up,

26
1 what we found here was that teachers overall
2 rated their students' preparation as
3 inadequate. They thought that the curriculum
4 and instructional guidance that they got was
5 reasonably good, and faced the challenge as I
6 have just said of unmotivated students as
7 their largest impediment in being successful
8 as teachers.
9 So, what we draw from this is that
10 at the levels prior to Algebra I, there is a
11 need to help remedy the kinds of student
12 deficiencies that teachers are identifying.
13 Also, there is a need to figure out what is
14 leading to the lack of motivation among
15 students. It may be useful to ascertain what
16 creates the attitude towards mathematics that
17 teachers are finding students bring with them
18 to ninth grade classes.
19 DR. LOVELESS: And with that we
20 will take questions and discussion.
21 DR. FAULKNER: Questions or
22 comments from the panel. Will you please
23 identify yourselves.
24 DR. WU: Hung-Hsi Wu. I was shocked
25 by the finding that 90 percent of the teachers
26 thought the textbooks were good or excellent.

27
1 Textbooks are not that good and I want it on
2 record.
3 DR. LOVELESS: We were also
4 surprised by that finding.
5 DR. FAULKNER: Other questions or
6 comments?
7 DR. WHITEHURST: Russ Whitehurst.
8 There seems to be an inconsistency in your use
9 of the scales to report out findings.
10 Sometimes it is the two top levels of the
11 scale that agree and strongly agree, which you
12 characterize. Sometimes it is the top three.
13 Sometimes 15 percent disagreeing is viewed in
14 the lowest category. Sometimes essentially
15 the same finding on the other side is viewed
16 as a good thing. So, I think you need to pay
17 some attention to how the four point scales
18 are broken out and how you are characterizing
19 the findings.
20 DR. SIEGLER: Bob Siegler. My
21 question has to do with the data on
22 calculators and software. Teachers might not
23 use these very much either because they did
24 not want to or because they were not
25 available, which are two very different
26 scenarios. Did you breakdown how frequent

28
1 each of those was as the cause of the limited
2 to non-existent use?
3 DR. HOFFER: Tom Hoffer. We did
4 not cross-classify those yet, though I think
5 it is a very good question and needs to be
6 addressed. I think we do have some questions
7 about availability. I am not sure how
8 specifically they map to the use of questions
9 that we reported here. Good question, I will
10 follow up on it.
11 DR. LOVELESS: Also just a note to
12 the panel in terms of the observation that
13 Russ made, which is quite correct. The full
14 report is in the back, you will have all the
15 raw data. Many of the decisions we made here
16 were just for presentation purposes.
18 comments? Bert.
19 DR. FRISTEDT: Bert Fristedt on
20 the National Math Panel. I have noticed that
21 teachers seem to find the most troublesome
22 thing with their students to be either the
23 motivation of the students or their previous
24 knowledge, rather than the things that they
25 themselves are most connected with. It is a
26 natural human instinct to do that. Even

29
1 taking that into account on the preparation
2 issue, the percentages are quite dramatic.
3 DR. FAULKNER: You want to comment
4 on that or not?
5 DR. FENNELL: Sure. I think this
6 is an excellent point, and a point that we
7 discussed at length. In other words, like it
8 or not the students are there, and you are
9 charged to be the teacher of those students
10 and you have greater control over those other
11 things. But we are still struck with the high
12 percentage as you noted.
13 DR. FAULKNER: Okay. Well, let me
14 thank the subcommittee for making their report
15 and thank Tom Hoffer from National Opinion
16 Research Center for the work that was done.
17 III. OPEN SESSION - PUBLIC COMMENT

18 DR. FAULKNER: We are now moving
19 into open session for public comment. The
20 panel has, at all its locations around the
21 country, had some opportunity for public
22 comment on a first come, first served basis
23 and we are continuing that tradition today.
24 We will go down the list of people who have
25 signed up and begin with Richard Schaar.
26 (A) MR. RICHARD SCHAAR

30
1 Executive Advisor, Texas
2 Instruments, Inc.
3 MR. SCHAAR: Chairman Faulkner,
4 distinguished panel members and staff, I want
5 to thank you for allowing me the opportunity
6 to address the National Mathematics Panel.
7 When I appeared before you in Palo Alto, I
8 started in 1986 and reviewed the history of
9 calculators in mathematics education. Today I
10 will jump forward over two decades to review
11 conclusions from research reports on data
12 collected during the 2006/2007 school year on
13 a pre-Algebra and Algebra Program that TI has
14 named Math Forward. The full research
15 reports are in our August 20th comments, which
16 you have. And while they have not yet been
17 peer reviewed they are indicative of what is
18 working effectively in the classrooms today
19 and should be considered as such.
20 The Math Forward Program includes
21 eight equally significant components. And
22 while technology is only one, I would like to
23 describe this component in more detail because
24 of what you are considering at this time. In
25 Math Forward teachers use technology daily to
26 enhance lessons, provide students with

31
1 feedback about learning and reinforce
2 mathematics content. Graphing calculator
3 research that was included in our earlier
4 comments, shows that when students use
5 graphing calculators to visualize mathematic
6 concepts and principles, deeper understanding
7 results.
8 In addition to graphing calculators
9 each Math Forward classroom is equipped with
10 the TI-Navigator Wireless Classroom Network.
11 The network links student's calculators with
12 the teacher's computer, which is loaded with
13 special software to allow two-way
14 communications for instantaneous distribution
15 of activities and formative assessment. The
16 teacher can send questions to the student
17 devices, and the students can return their
18 answers allowing evaluation of student
19 understanding. This research-based technology
20 is uniquely designed to transform the
21 interactions patterns and mathematics dialogue
22 of the classroom.
23 With this as background I would
24 like to give you a sampling of the Math
25 Forward results for the past school year. In
26 Richardson, Texas, where the program began,

32
1 the district assumed management of their Math
2 Forward program and expanded it to five middle
3 schools and pilot classes in ninth grade
4 Algebra. Forty-six percent of the middle
5 school Math Forward students passed the state
6 test, who had not passed it in 2006, as
7 compared to 32 percent in the comparison
8 group. Similarly 57 percent of the Math
9 Forward Algebra students attained proficiency
10 in 2007, while the comparison group had a 34
11 percent pass rate.
12 In addition to Richardson, Texas
13 Instruments began to gain experience with
14 scaling Math Forward in other school districts
15 with the addition of middle school pilot
16 programs in Euclid, Ohio, West Palm Beach,
17 Florida and Dallas, Texas. In both Euclid and
18 West Palm Beach the Math Forward students did
19 better against a proficiency measure than the
20 comparison students. Only in the Dallas pilot
21 program were the results mixed. For a number
22 of reasons the implementations were
23 incomplete. So, while the Math Forward eighth
24 grade students showed greater gains in a pass
25 rate than a comparison group, the seventh
26 grade Math Forward students did not.

33
1 As Texas Instruments enters year
2 three with these results as a basis for
3 action, we will follow four paths with regard
4 to Math Forward. Scalability. The intention
5 is to expand the program both within districts
6 and geographically. Sustainability. The goal
7 is to build internal capacity within each
8 district. Completeness. The objective is to
9 ensure that each program uses the eight
10 synergistic components of the intervention
11 making a coherent and complete whole, which
12 maximizes student outcomes. Learning.
13 Underpinning the entire effort is research;
14 so, Texas Instruments has engaged SRI
15 International, an independent, non-profit
16 research institute, to perform independent
17 evaluations of all sites. What is the
18 conclusion from Math Forward for technology,
19 both graphing calculators and the TI-navigator
20 classroom network? These latest results have
21 reinforced the two principles that have been
22 governing our development path for these two
23 decades. To achieve and sustain student
24 performance improvement we have learned that
25 key elements of the mathematics education
26 system need to be addressed in a coherent

34
1 integrated way. And to be effective at
2 improving student learning and achievement,
3 technology needs to be integrated into a
4 coherent and complete instructional program.
5 When this is done technology becomes an
6 enabler to integrated instruction, curriculum
7 and assessment, thus resulting in increased
8 student achievement.
9 What position would Texas
10 Instruments like the National Mathematics
11 Panel to take with regard to technology?
12 Texas Instruments would like the panel to
13 recognize our systemic intervention hypothesis
14 and support additional research to improve and
15 scale the Math Forward Program. Texas
16 Instruments would like the panel to
17 acknowledge that graphing technology when
18 applied in an appropriate manner by a trained
19 professional teacher can have a positive
20 impact on student achievement, especially when
21 integrated into a coherent and complete
22 instructional program.
23 Thank you. Let me ask, are there
24 any questions that you might have?
25 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you Mr.
26 Schaar. Questions? Valerie.

35
1 DR. REYNA: Hello, I am Valerie
2 Reyna of the Math Panel. A question. First
3 of all, I acknowledge that you are going to be
4 conducting additional research, but I noticed
5 that you have regression, discontinuity
6 analysis. Are you using randomized
7 assignment? And if not, why not? And then a
8 follow-up question would have to do with peer
9 review. Do you intend to have the products
10 of this research subjected to peer review and
11 publication?
12 MR. SCHAAR: Yes, is the answer.
13 And in fact, the work, -- not from this year,
14 which literally we received two weeks ago, we
15 have not had a chance to even start that
16 process. But out of the work from the first
17 year that has been presented at least, to the
18 American Educational Research Association, I
19 believe, but we will certainly start that
20 process. The issue with us is we are moving
21 rapidly and want to continue to use what we
22 know very rapidly. And the answer for your
23 first question is yes we are.
24 DR. FAULKNER: Go ahead.
25 DR. REYNA: Just a clarification.
26 Was the yes about the regression,

36
1 discontinuity versus randomized assignment?
2 So, are you using randomized assignment as
3 control group randomly assigned experiments or
4 are you using just comparisons with
5 statistical controls?
6 MR. SCHAAR: We are using the
7 regression analysis and I believe on the
8 comparison; but let me get back to you on
9 that. I am not the researcher and so
10 therefore we have someone behind me whom I
11 think is taking notes very copiously from this
12 and I will get that answer back to you.
13 DR. REYNA: Just to clarify, one
14 reason I am asking you this question has to do
15 with what the impediments to randomized
16 experiments are in the field. I would be
17 interested in knowing what those might be.
18 DR. SCHAAR: Let us get back to
19 you with that and we can go through some of
20 the issues that we faced in all four of the
21 districts, because each of the districts wants
22 to have some input into the process and that
23 is one of the reasons we are going to use SRI
24 International next year and do it much more
25 independently or as independently as we can,
26 recognizing the issues within the districts.

37
1 DR. FAULKNER: Bob Siegler.
2 DR. SIEGLER: Yes, your report had
3 interesting resonance with the previous report
4 regarding the very limited use of calculators
5 and graphing calculators in particular, in the
6 survey that NORC conducted. My question is
7 when a district participated does that mean
8 that all Algebra teachers in the district were
9 participating or could they opt out? And if
10 so, did you monitor the use of the calculators
11 by the teachers and was the amount of use
12 related to the gains that were evident in the
13 district and grades that saw gains?
14 DR. SCHAAR: Well, it goes back to
15 one of the first comments that I made, it is
16 an eight-component program. And so the
17 teachers could not opt out of any of the
18 pieces of the program if they were selected to
19 be part of the program. And certainly we
20 monitored, and they monitored themselves with
21 regard to the use of the technology. The
22 numbers were kind of surprising for me. I
23 thought the number would potentially be
24 higher. I thought your question of is it an
25 availability question or a non-use question,
26 but certainly the use of the total technology

38
1 package which was graphing and the navigator
2 system was basically used almost everyday.
3 And we did specific training on that use early
4 in the school year. And the teachers could
5 push to the students a list of questions for
6 the material that they had discussed the day
7 before, get those answers back and then now
8 start to either go on or re-teach. And so
9 there was a much more intensive use than what
10 I saw in those numbers.
11 DR. SIEGLER: Just to follow up a
12 bit. Did the teachers who used the
13 calculators more, did their classes show
14 greater gains?
15 MR. SCHAAR: I do not know if we
16 could separate that out. We can say that
17 people who used the total system, their
18 students did better than the people who used
19 only parts of the system? So, for example,
20 in West Palm Beach, Florida one of our pieces
21 is you double block the students in math. In
22 that particular district any student who had
23 not made proficiency the previous year ended
24 up getting double blocked, yet our students
25 did better, because it was part of this
26 integrated system.
39
1 In other districts we actually
2 trained teachers who taught both Math Forward
3 classrooms and ‘non-Math Forward’ classrooms
4 and they had both access to technology and
5 access to a lot of the teacher professional
6 development that we had as part of the
7 program. Still, the people using the total
8 program did better than the ones who were
9 using it partially.
10 DR. FAULKNER: Other questions?
12 DR. FAULKNER: I have one myself.
13 You have used the phrase integrated system and
14 things to that effect and indicated that the
15 positive results that you could consistently
16 demonstrate involved use of calculators in an
17 integrated system. Could you be a little more
18 explicit about what you mean by integrated
19 system?
20 MR. SCHAAR: Certainly. It was
21 not just the technology. I am a
22 mathematician. I taught, for example, in
23 Richardson, teacher content knowledge. We had
24 people who taught them classroom management
25 skills. We had people who came in and did
26 other kinds of work on pedagogical knowledge.

40
1 We used some of the University of Michigan
2 tools to evaluate the teacher's specialized
3 content knowledge, and we put a whole program
4 together which also included materials. So,
5 when I talk about an integrated program you
6 will see within the materials that I gave you
7 the eight components of that whole structure.
8 Technology was one of them, but an integral
9 part of that, because it allowed, --
10 DR. FAULKNER: But even the
11 technology has multiple elements, does it not?
12 MR. SCHAAR: Yes.
13 DR. FAULKNER: There are the
14 individual calculators and then there is the
15 networking system?
16 MR. SCHAAR: That is exactly right.
17 And so that was integrated also. The teacher
18 could use it for formative assessment. The
19 student could use it for drill and practice.
20 Back and forth there was an integration which
21 allowed the teacher to see what was going on.
22 DR. FAULKNER: There is or is not
23 a particular curriculum that is a part of the
24 integrated system?
25 MR. SCHAAR: Well, we took the
26 school's basic curriculum and augmented it.

41
1 Each of the proficiency measures is against
2 the individual state's test; it is against the
3 Texas test, the Ohio test, and the Florida
4 test. That says you have to modify the
5 curriculum. But what we did was take the
6 school's curriculum as it existed and
7 augmented it and then wrapped around it the
8 integrated system. Does that get to what you
9 are saying?
10 DR. FAULKNER: From what I have
11 heard you say, -- and just let me ask you to
12 say yes or no about this?
13 MR. SCHAAR: Okay.
14 DR. FAULKNER: What I heard you
15 say is that you can take the curricular
16 approach with some variability from district
17 to district or school to school, and you can
18 overlay calculator use by students in the
19 networking technology, plus teacher training
20 elements and curricular augmentation, to
21 produce your overall result?
22 MR. SCHAAR: Yes, is the answer to
23 that question.
24 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you.
25 Anything else? Vern.
26 MR. WILLIAMS: Vern with the

42
1 National Math Panel. Are you planning on
2 doing any research to find out if the
3 technology alone has a positive effect without
4 the other parts of the eight-point program?
5 MR. SCHAAR: We do not know yet.
6 We have been discussing that. The issue is
7 separability. How do we take it apart and now
8 get frankly, enough size in the pilot to be
9 able to look at whatever of the eight
10 components that we want to take a look at? So
11 we are thinking about it. We have not decided
12 on it yet. That would be something that we
13 would be more than happy to take some input on
14 and frankly some suggestions of the best way
15 to attack that. We are certainly thinking
16 about it but we do not have a plan yet.
17 DR. FAULKNER: Russ.
19 Richard, this is perhaps an excessively lanky
20 point, but as I am looking through your report
21 it looks like you have maybe twelve classrooms
22 involved in this study. You mentioned six
23 intervention classrooms, but the number of
24 comparison classrooms is not stated on your
25 analysis.
26 MR. SCHAAR: Russ, we had more

43
1 than twelve classrooms, because for example,
2 in the schools in Richardson, that is schools,
3 right?
4 DR. WHITEHURST: Right.
5 MR. SCHAAR: In Richardson we are
6 starting to get to the size where we can do
7 some better analysis.
8 DR. WHITEHURST: Well, it says on
9 page 2 of the year-end report in all, 194
10 students were enrolled in the Math Forward
11 classes taught by the six teachers at the
12 junior high schools. So, I am taking it then
13 there are six teachers, there are six
14 classrooms in the Math Forward classes and
15 some number in the control classes. My point
16 is just that your analysis seems to have taken
17 the number of students as the unit of
18 analysis, where as in fact, it is the
19 classrooms which are the appropriate unit of
20 analysis. So, instead of having four hundred
21 plus participants you have twelve or so
22 participants and your significance levels will
23 be a lot less.
24 MR. SCHAAR: Okay.
25 DR. FAULKNER: Anything else?
26 Dan.
44
1 DR. BERCH: Yes. Dan Berch;
2 National Math Panel. To what extent do you
3 assess or observe the use of technology in
4 general, or calculators specifically, in the
5 comparison classrooms?
6 MR. SCHAAR: We let them do as
7 they had been doing. And in some cases we
8 know technology was being used and in others
9 cases it was not.
10 DR. BERCH: Okay. Are you going
11 to make some room to try to assess that to
12 some extent, that is whether the comparison
13 groups or something.
14 MR. SCHAAR: Yes. We received
15 this research between August the 12th and
16 August the 14th, so we have some work to do.
17 DR. FAULKNER: Any last questions?
18 We are going to have to move on here, but is
19 there any other question?
21 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you Mr.
22 Schaar. Second testifier is Elizabeth Gnall
23 listed here from Ridgewood, New Jersey.
24 (B) ELIZABETH GNALL

25 Parent
26 MS. GNALL: "What the best and
45
1 wisest parent wants for their own child, must
2 be what the community wants for all of its
3 children," so stated John Dewey in The School
4 and Society.
5 I live in the public school
6 district of Ridgewood, New Jersey, but my
7 district has a dirty little secret; Ridgewood
8 Public School District is segregated. On one
9 side of town elementary school children are
10 taught math following the logical sequencing
11 of topics honoring the scholarly body of
12 mathematics. On the other part of town the
13 math is not taught, but instead it is left for
14 the children to discover and to construct.
15 The math meant for grades beyond kindergarten
16 the use of scissors or paper clips and any
17 other object now defined as manipulative, are
18 deemed acceptable and encouraged. Sadly this
19 is the side of town where my children attend
20 school.
21 One of my children was struggling
22 to learn within that environment and as any
23 parent would do I raised my concerns to the
24 school system. But those concerns were met
25 with the comment "Our math is for all the
26 children". Outside of the school I found a

46
1 teacher using a traditional math program who
2 presented to my child math concepts
3 sequentially, logically, and my child
4 practiced, practiced, practiced. Low and
5 behold my child learned math; understood math.
6 My other elementary school aged
7 child has a knack for math, readily grasps the
8 concepts, yet in that same school I found he
9 was bored. Once again, I raised my concerns.
10 But, because I live on that side of Ridgewood,
11 the reformed math side, the TERC math side, my
12 concerns were once again met with "Our math is
13 for all the children". The same traditional
14 teacher using the same traditional program
15 that helped my struggling child to no longer
16 struggle, tutored my mathematically inclined
17 child, advanced his skills and fed his thirst
18 to learn and understand more, celebrating his
19 intellect rather than leaving it behind.
20 From speaking to teachers seemingly
21 handcuffed by curriculum policy and fuzzy
22 standards; to communicating with
23 superintendents blinded by their ideology so
24 as to not hear valid parental concerns; to
25 even confronting elected board of education
26 officials with the preponderance of evidence

47
1 that they refer to as math policy is not
2 educating all of the children; to the easy
3 button reporters who so erroneously cover the
4 math wars as a battle of broke mobilization
5 versus critical thinking; to writing
6 editorials to inform parents unaware, because
7 grades seem fine, but hide what little is
8 really being taught; to writing government
9 officials as mathematical capable citizens are
10 needed to lead our nation in the 21st Century;
11 to creating a web-site and authoring a
12 petition; with having to fly all the way to
13 St. Louis to speak before this panel, all to
14 advocate for a math education for my children,
15 for their voices to be heard.
16 Across this nation parents just
17 like me will ultimately triumph over math wars
18 because it is our children, not the children
19 of the state. And for our children their
20 education is more important and held more
21 dearly than any social, political, economic or
22 ideological gerbil agenda.
23 And in Ridgewood, New Jersey
24 reformed math programs are on the agenda. The
25 parents in Ridgewood have been given more
26 information, to less information, to biased

48
1 information, and it has all been delivered as
2 if it were truly scientifically research-based
3 information. The findings of your panel can
4 hold great significance, but only if what you
5 present is crystal clear information.
6 My husband and I are the best and
7 wisest parents for our children. Give us a
8 choice in math education, and we will choose a
9 math education that is rigorous, focuses on
10 content, is not driven by constructivist
11 pedagogy, emphasizes the learning of
12 mathematical facts, principles and algorithms,
13 uses the proper language and symbolic
14 retention of math and defines mathematical
15 reasoning as those interconnections within
16 mathematics.
17 It is the kind of math that is
18 being taught in other parts of this nation and
19 the world. I believe that math will provide a
20 solid foundation for my children. So, if they
21 desire, if they do want to become a scientist,
22 an architect, or like their father, a Wall
23 Street finance executive, or like their mom,
24 an engineer, they can.
25 Thomas Jefferson would have wept at
26 the thought of the mathematical ruin of the

49
1 United States of America, but I stand before
2 you today in recognition that I will provide
3 for the future of this great nation hope,
4 mathematically capable kids that I have
5 educated. And their success will be in spite
6 of reformed math. Thank you.
7 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you Ms.
8 Gnall. And let me ask if there are questions
9 or comments? Valerie.
10 DR. REYNA: I just want to
11 acknowledge that you said that you traveled
12 all the way from New Jersey to deliver this
13 message.
14 MS. GNALL: Yes, I did.
15 DR. REYNA: We heard you.
16 MS. GNALL: Thank you.
18 comments?
20 DR. FAULKNER: Number three on the
21 list is Steve Noble who had not checked in
22 when this list was put together, is he here?
23 MR. NOBLE: Here. I checked in at
24 the table.
25 DR. FAULKNER: All right.
26 (C) MR. STEVE NOBLE

50
1 Director, Accessibility Policy, Design
2 Science, Inc.
3 MR. NOBLE: Thank you Dr.
4 Faulkner; members of the panel. My name is
5 Steve Noble. I am here representing Design
6 Science. I serve as the Director of
7 Accessibility Policy for Design Science. I
8 also serve on the National Board for the
9 Learning Disabilities Association of America;
10 also serve on the U.S. Department of
11 Education's NIMAS Development Committee.
12 NIMAS stands for the National Instruction
13 Materials Accessibility Standard.
14 I am here today talking about
15 students with disabilities of all types and
16 forms and in the accessibility of math
17 instruction in the United States.
18 Design Science, the company I work
19 for, is probably best known for our Math Type
20 setting applications. Maybe some of you on
21 the board have used the Math Type before or
22 the Equation Editor in Microsoft Word for
23 instance. Those are applications our company
24 produces. More recently Design Science has
25 been involved in research and development in
26 the area of making math accessible. We have

51
1 received significant funding from the National
2 Science Foundation in order to create the
3 technology infrastructure, which is necessary
4 to make math materials accessible for students
5 with disabilities who use, assisted
6 technologies. Assisted technologies have been
7 found to be very key factor in allowing
8 individuals with disabilities to be able to
9 access the general curriculum.
10 As you probably know, in the United
11 States we have approximately 7 million
12 students who are served under special
13 education. There are students beyond that who
14 have disabilities that are served under
15 Section 504 Plans and even those students who
16 most likely have disabilities of some type or
17 another, but have not been identified by
18 school systems. So, this is a significant
19 issue.
20 If you have examined the National
21 Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math
22 scores, which I am sure you are very familiar
23 with, you are probably aware that it shows
24 great disparity between a population of
25 students with disabilities and students
26 without disabilities. Actually historically

52
1 the largest disparity that has ever been
2 uncovered in the National Assessment of
3 Educational Progress (NAEP) math scores has
4 been between those two groups.
5 We have certainly done a lot of
6 work in our educational communities at working
7 at access to the general curriculum in
8 literary content, but we still have quite a
9 ways to go when it comes to math materials.
10 One of the issues has to do with the fact that
11 in the creation of universally designed
12 instructional materials, digital content is
13 very much a key factor, while the math
14 instructional content that is produced in our
15 country in the educational field, almost all
16 math content is not accessible to students who
17 use assisted technologies. That is because it
18 is done in graphical inch formats, instead of
19 math that can actually be interpreted by
20 assisted technology.
21 The key technological solution is
22 mathematical mark up language (MathML).
23 Perhaps you have heard of MathML before. It is
24 an open WC-3 standard worldwide web consortium
25 that creates standards like html and xml, and
26 it has also created the MathML standard. It

53
1 is a non-proprietary digital format made to be
2 fully accessible from the beginning for
3 students who happen to have the need of using
4 assisted technology. MathML is a universally
5 designed format. It can be certainly used as
6 the source file for the creation of all kinds
7 of formats for all kinds of students, not just
8 students with disabilities, but also for other
9 students.
10 Some of the key things that I point
11 out that you can do once you have material in
12 MathML can either be used for creation of
13 synthetic speech applications to create spoken
14 math. In digital environments math
15 expressions can be highlighted as they are
16 spoken. It changes the fonts, style and color,
17 et cetera. It can be changed on the fly. The
18 creation of boiler math becomes instantly
19 available. Many other things are certainly
20 possible once the content has been produced in
21 MathML.
22 DR. FAULKNER: In fact, your time
23 just expired. So, please wrap up.
24 MR. NOBLE: Okay. So, the
25 recommendation to the panel is that in your
26 recommendations and your final report that

54
1 whenever there are information dissemination
2 programs that touch on math curriculum, in any
3 way to include the essential details about how
4 to make math a success for those with
5 disabilities, instead of just throwing the
6 information out there. This is really a key
7 factor. We really need this.
8 Also, when it comes to math
9 instructional content and assessments there
10 needs to be requirements in here that MathML
11 can be used to create these formats. That they
12 can be made accessible for students with
13 disabilities. And then further, that research
14 and development in math accessibility be put
15 forward in federal programs.
16 I will just stop there. Obviously,
17 I have just touched the tip of the iceberg,
18 but perhaps there are questions.
19 DR. FAULKNER: Are there questions
20 for Mr. Noble? Bert.
21 DR. FRISTEDT: Bert Fristedt on
22 the National Math Panel. In the recent past
23 in this country we have tended to focus on
24 what students should learn, by certain stages.
25 Suppose we were to focus on what students were
26 to learn but were more forgiving about when

55
1 that should be accomplished? Some say that
2 people learn it by the end of twelfth grade
3 what we think should be learned by the end of
4 tenth say. Would this be of tremendous help
5 to some of the students that you are concerned
6 about or would it not be very relevant?
7 MR. NOBLE: The question does not
8 directly touch, I think on the issue of math
9 accessibility perhaps. Are we talking about
10 the possibility of having perhaps different
11 initiated standards for students who are in
12 certain groups and have certain types of
13 disabilities for instance?
14 DR. FRISTEDT: I am focusing not
15 on more differentiated standards, but
16 differentiated speed in which to accomplish
17 things.
18 DR. NOBLE: Okay. Yes, I think
19 that is sometimes done in individual education
20 programs (IEPs) that are set up for students
21 who have served under the IDEA, the
22 Individuals With Disability Education Act.
23 So, that is often done. I think one issue
24 would be, from our perspective, is that many
25 times students with disabilities have great
26 difficulty actually understanding the

56
1 concepts, especially in higher level math
2 because they find themselves unable to either
3 verbalize the equations that they see on the
4 page or they are simply incapable of seeing
5 those equations. For instance, they may be
6 students that are visually impaired, students
7 that are blind and have to use synthetic
8 speech applications or Braille to get access
9 to those materials, so that would tend to bog
10 down the education process for them. But if
11 they had materials that could be accessible to
12 them in an alternative format that can provide
13 a level of access to them, they could perhaps
14 be able to excel as the same level as their
15 peers.
16 DR. FAULKNER: Russ.
18 Could you describe what the challenges and
19 impediments might be to adopting a math mark
20 up language universally? And a connected
21 cluster, whether that is the technology that
22 underlies math symbolization in Microsoft
23 Word? So, if I can have a word document that
24 is based on your technology, would an
25 assistive technology reader, when it
26 encountered a summation sign be able to

57
1 articulate summation or is it represented
2 graphically?
3 MR. NOBLE: There are different
4 possibilities. Microsoft Word has this
5 Equation Editor within it that our company
6 licenses that will embed a certain type of
7 format that can easily create MathML. MathML
8 is not directly part of Microsoft Word as it
9 is a proprietary format, but you can pull
10 MathML out of that. For instance, if you use
11 Math Type it can actually generate what is
12 called math page technology. It can generate
13 an html document with MathML islands in it at
14 just the click of a button.
15 So, it is actually very easy to
16 produce MathML from a Microsoft Word document,
17 providing you have not simply copied images of
18 math expressions, but you have actually
19 embedded them either with Equation Editor or
20 with Math Type or with other editors that can
21 create MathML at the end of the process.
22 DR. WHITEHURST: And so, the first
23 part of my question was, what are the
24 impediments? I mean it seems so obvious that
25 this would make things easier.
26 MR. NOBLE: Yes, indeed.

58
1 DR. WHITEHURST: So, what stands
2 in the way?
3 MR. NOBLE: The major impediments
4 we find right now as far as a nationwide
5 adoption of this has to do with how things
6 happen in the publishing industry. We work
7 with many publishers of math textbooks that
8 are so well liked by teachers, as we have just
9 heard. And one of the issues is that those
10 math textbooks are created on the one end we
11 find out that probably 95 percent or more,
12 maybe closer to 99 percent of math textbooks
13 start out as a Microsoft Word document with
14 Math Type equations. So, the MathML could
15 easily be pulled out of that.
16 What happens in the publishing
17 industry is that it is pulled into other types
18 of software programs for page layout et
19 cetera, where they get all the fancy color
20 illustrations et cetera, put in place, and at
21 that point the MathML is typically stripped
22 from that because those page layout programs
23 do not use that information. And so it is
24 lost at that point. So, the best way to help
25 that would be to actually get companies like
26 Adobe, which makes some of these page layout

59
1 programs, or Quark, would be another to
2 actually ensure that they are MathML aware.
3 But again, they are a private company and
4 nobody can force them to do that, I guess.
5 But if publishers had an incentive to request
6 or demand that Adobe and other page layout
7 software developers actually were MathML
8 aware, that would go a long way towards
9 helping the problem.
10 DR. FAULKNER: I think we need to
11 move forward. Is there any burning question
12 that has to be addressed here?
14 DR. FAULKNER: Okay. Thank you
15 very much, Mr. Noble. We need to go to the
16 fourth presenter Marguerite Bliss from St.
17 Louis.
18 (D) MS. MARGUERITE BLISS, Parent -

19 Clayton Math Matters
20 MS. BLISS: Good afternoon. And
21 thank you for the opportunity to share my
22 comments with you today and for your time and
23 service on this very important panel. My
24 comments are mostly anecdotal and are based on
25 my own experience as a parent in the Clayton,
26 Missouri School District, just about 5 miles

60
1 down the road from here.
2 I became concerned about my
3 children's math education in our school
4 district about five years ago, when our middle
5 daughter was in seventh grade, and I was
6 intent on getting her moved into the honors
7 math track. I was focused on getting her into
8 the honors track because our district had just
9 recently adopted Core Plus Integrated Math for
10 non-honors students at our high school.
11 Honor students were and still are
12 taught traditional math there. Our oldest
13 daughter received an outstanding math
14 education in the honors program. I knew
15 little about Core Plus curriculum, except that
16 our community was up in arms when it was
17 approved to replace traditional math at our
18 high school. I met with the math coordinator
19 at our middle school to talk with her about
20 the possibility of moving our Everyday Math
21 and Connected Math educated seventh grade girl
22 into the honors track, because after all she
23 was getting straight A’s in math. The
24 coordinator stated that our daughter was not
25 honors material and showed me a standardized
26 computation test she had taken the year

61
1 before. She scored 37 percent on that test. I
2 was shocked. Our daughter had always received
3 top grades in math.
4 Prior to that moment my husband and
5 I had complete faith in our schools, believing
6 our children were getting a fabulous math
7 education. Our oldest daughter sure did. We
8 bought into the teacher's claims that higher
9 order thinking, critical thinking skills and
10 math on the cutting edge, are the hallmarks of
11 Everyday Math and Connected Math. We
12 excused the homework assignments that made no
13 sense to us or to our kids, believing that the
14 schools knew what they were doing. Today, we
15 are the experts. When our kids learned
16 lattice multiplication and did not understand
17 it, we taught them multiplication the way we
18 knew it and still believed the school was
19 doing the right thing. When our kids could not
20 do long division by hand, only with a
21 calculator, I taught them myself thinking they
22 must have missed it in school. When I knew so
23 many families in our district, and there are
24 still many who send their kids to Kumon Math,
25 I thought they were over the top parents who
26 wanted to turn out genius kids. I had so much

62
1 faith in our school until seeing our
2 daughter's score on that computation test from
3 sixth grade. That was an ah-ha moment for me,
4 the beginning of my involvement in math wars.
5 Our middle daughter was placed in
6 Core Plus Integrated Math in high school. To
7 say that we were shocked at what she brought
8 home for homework assignments is an
9 understatement. We could not believe the
10 number of phone calls each night to our home
11 from my daughter's integrated math group
12 members who did not understand the group's
13 assignments. Some of her more notable
14 assignments were to write thank you notes to
15 those in her group for their efforts in the
16 group. Our daughter complained that she was
17 the teacher of the group and that the paid
18 teacher merely walked around the room and
19 answered student's questions. She spent an
20 entire weekend her freshman year creating a
21 beautiful poster, cutting and pasting shapes
22 for hours. Our fourth grader had much more
23 rigorous homework at that time. At open house
24 night at the high school when the math teacher
25 stated that the best thing about integrated
26 math is the extensive amount of group work, I

63
1 simply had enough.
2 I will spare you the many details
3 of the math wars that ensued in our district
4 over the next few months. Parents banned
5 together to petition the district for an
6 alternative to integrated math for our middle
7 track students. Honors students were taught
8 traditional math. We wanted that for our kids
9 as well. By this time our high school junior
10 class was in its third year of integrated math
11 and no parent or student I knew in the
12 curriculum was happy or had a good thing to
13 say about it.
14 But, there was good news. We were
15 successful in getting traditional math offered
16 as an option for our middle track kids. Those
17 students in my daughter's class who wanted to
18 move into traditional math were told they had
19 to take special Algebra tutoring after their
20 first year of integrated math at the family's
21 expense, because our non-honors students had
22 not received much at all in the way of Algebra
23 instruction in our schools. We were shocked
24 once again.
25 Here roughly 70 percent of the
26 freshman at our high school had received very

64
1 little Algebra instruction through three years
2 of Connected Math in the middle school and one
3 year of integrated math in high school.
4 DR. FAULKNER: You are inside your
5 last minute, so please finish.
6 MS. BLISS: Just what had they
7 been learning? Many of these were straight A
8 students. Furthermore, we learned that if
9 they stayed in integrated math they would not
10 begin to focus on Algebra until their junior
11 year.
12 Our school is considered to be one
13 of the best college prep high schools in the
14 St. Louis area. Every one of these kids was
15 heading to college and the thought that they
16 would not be taught Algebra until junior year
17 was astounding.
18 Fortunately, our daughter, a
19 motivated student, agreed to the special
20 Algebra tutoring. Throughout this ordeal we
21 enrolled our younger daughter in Kumon, now
22 viewing it as an absolute necessity instead of
23 an unnecessary burden inflicted on her by an
24 overachieving parent.
25 It is our view that Kumon is
26 responsible for her being in the honors track

65
1 in middle school. Our daughter who completed
2 one year of integrated math is now in her
3 third year of traditional math as a senior in
4 high school. She credits the special Algebra
5 tutoring, along with the traditional math
6 education she has received for three years for
7 her strong score on the math section of the
8 ACT. Her friends who stayed in integrated
9 math complained about their low math scores on
10 the ACT exam. We live in a fairly wealthy
11 community and most can afford special tutoring
12 for these exams. The number of kids who
13 receive that tutoring to beef up math scores
14 is staggering.
15 Our district still promotes
16 integrated math as the recommended curriculum
17 for middle track students. The teaching staff
18 sings its praises, while many graduates now
19 four classes from our high school, complain
20 bitterly about their lack of preparation for
21 college calculus. Our district has seen an
22 alarming increase in the percent of graduates
23 who wind up in remedial math in college.
24 All of this prompted a group of
25 parents to create a web site for parents in
26 our district as a resource to understand the

66
1 conflicting information they hear from parents
2 and students and teachers and administrators.
3 Please visit our web-site
4 claytonmathmatters.com to read feedback from
5 graduates of the Core Plus Integrated Math
6 curriculum. So many stories exist of our high
7 school graduates who cannot major in business
8 or sciences as they desire because they are
9 lacking a solid math education.
10 Finally, Missouri is known as the
11 `Show Me' State. Others and I in our district
12 have asked our math department to `show me'
13 the data that shows that reformed math
14 prepares students better than traditional
15 math. They have never been able to show me
16 any data to convince me that these curricula
17 are producing better math students.
18 DR. FAULKNER: You need to wrap up
19 here.
20 MS. MARGUERITE BLISS: I believe
21 extensive research and effective math
22 instructional practices is needed in order to
23 compete in our world. I believe it is
24 irresponsible to promote curricula as
25 exemplary and promising without thorough
26 research on their effectiveness. Thank you

67
1 very much.
2 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you, Ms.
3 Bliss. Are there questions?
5 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you. Patty
6 Polster from Maryland Heights, Missouri is the
7 fifth testifier.
8 (E) MS. PATTY POLSTER

9 Parent/Special Ed Teacher
10 MS. POLSTER: Good afternoon.
11 Thank you for this opportunity to speak with
12 you today and for your efforts and dedication
13 in providing the best possible recommendations
14 related to mathematics education in our
15 country. I also feel the need to thank
16 Marguerite and Liz for their representation on
17 a parent's point of view as to what is going
18 on in mathematics education. I am a
19 professional educator and I am just beginning
20 a doctorate program in educational leadership.
21 However, I will speak to you today also as a
22 parent and a citizen.
23 I believe that the single most
24 important issue to be addressed in improving
25 the quality of life in our country is public
26 education. I believe that our current

68
1 educational system could achieve significantly
2 greater outcomes for my children and for all
3 children, by spending more time and effort in
4 evaluating instructional practices and
5 curricula, and less time evaluating children
6 and diagnosing learning or behavior problems
7 within them. I am going to ad lib here, and
8 far less time looking for scapegoats for the
9 curriculum, such as motivation or parents.
10 It is my understanding that as
11 members of this panel you are to investigate,
12 among other things, instructional practices,
13 programs and materials, that are effective for
14 improving mathematics learning, as well as a
15 need for research in support of mathematics
16 education. I would like to say that I am
17 thrilled to see those items on your list of
18 things to do and thank you for undertaking the
19 task.
20 In the fourteen years that I have
21 spent in the field of education I have found
22 myself often puzzled and frustrated by the
23 decisions that policy makers and professionals
24 make when it comes to identifying and
25 implementing best practices. So often it
26 seems that throughout the field of education,

69
1 policies and practices are implemented with
2 insufficient evidence of their effectiveness.
3 Currently it seems that rather than seeking
4 well-defined interventions for which strong
5 empirical evidence could be accumulated,
6 educators tend to prefer what I see as
7 nebulous concepts or theories for which no
8 clear measurable definition can be established
9 and/or evaluated. Discussion of such topics
10 then becomes philosophical and therefore
11 personal, rather than objective.
12 The majority of the mathematics
13 education programs that I have seen
14 implemented throughout the St. Louis area seem
15 to be based on theories, constructivist
16 philosophy and opinions of how kids learn
17 mathematics. I have a very hard time making
18 sense of them. I am most familiar with
19 Everyday Math, which is currently used in the
20 district where I live. Given the time
21 constraints, let me just say that I am
22 seriously concerned by how I see my children
23 in first and fourth grade functioning.
24 I am here today to ask that as you
25 formulate your recommendations you consider
26 the outcomes documented by the largest

70
1 educational experiment ever conducted to my
2 knowledge, even if it was several decades ago.
3 Project Follow-Through is still the most
4 meaningful undertaking ever supported by the
5 Department of Education. The results and
6 research were and still are clear. The direct
7 instruction model clearly came out on top in
8 all areas measured. Direct instruction has
9 shown significant positive impact in study
10 after study, yet schools of education and
11 governmental agencies still completely ignore
12 it.
13 The direct instruction mathematics
14 program designed for school implementation is
15 called Connecting Math Concepts and is
16 published by SRA International. It was unique
17 in many ways. For one, it presents topics in
18 strands rather than spiral design. Also all
19 direct instruction programs incorporate three
20 main components.
21 One, a program design that
22 identifies concepts, rules, strategies and big
23 ideas as well as clear communication through
24 carefully constructed instructional program.
25 Two, organization of instruction
26 including scheduling, grouping, and ongoing

71
1 progress monitoring to ensure that each
2 student receives appropriate and sufficient
3 instruction.
4 And three is student/teacher
5 interaction techniques that assure that each
6 student is actively engaged with instruction
7 and masters the objectives of each lesson.
8 In closing, I would like to see a
9 federally funded comparison utilizing a strong
10 research design and taking into consideration
11 the use of tutoring services for those
12 programs, for any of the children involved,
13 that compares the Connecting Math Concepts
14 Program to any or all of the currently
15 utilized constructivist spiral programs. If
16 you are really brave and ambitious you should
17 also recommend to them Project Follow Through,
18 only this time please try to see to it that
19 someone pays attention to the results. Thank
20 you again for your time, efforts and
21 dedication.
23 Polster. Questions?
24 DR. FENNELL: I have actually a
25 question for one of our Panelists. Tom, did
26 you look at Project Follow Through?

72
1 DR. GERSTEN: I probably know more
2 about Follow Through than anyone on the Panel.
3 We did not look at it in part, we only looked
4 at those past 1976, and we did not look at
5 this type of more philosophical evaluations of
6 different approaches to teaching. So, the
7 answer is, it was not in our purview.
8 MS. POLSTER: I think it is
9 incredibly relevant given what is happening in
10 education today.
11 DR. FAULKNER: Any other
12 discussion of that?
14 DR. FAULKNER: Okay. Thank you.
15 DR. LOVELESS: Let me just say one
16 thing. Just to be clear, we did search the
17 literature on direct instruction and other
18 interventions since 1976. So, it is not that
19 we did not look at direct instruction, we did.
20 DR. FAULKNER: The sixth testifier
21 has cancelled, I believe. Naila Qureshi? She
22 is not here. That brings us to seven, which
23 is William F. Tate, IV. Edward Mallinckrodt
24 Distinguished University Professor in Arts and
25 Sciences and Chair, from Washington
26 University.
73
1 (F) DR. WILLIAM F. TATE
2 Professor, Arts & Sciences -
3 Washington University
4 DR. TATE: First let me join
5 Chancellor Wrighton in welcoming you to
6 Washington University here in St. Louis.
7 Today I am testifying on behalf of the
8 American Association of Colleges for Teacher
9 Education (AACTE), which represents eight
10 hundred schools, colleges and departments of
11 education across the nation.
12 We recognize the nation's critical
13 need to increase the quantity and quality of
14 scientific personnel in order to compete in
15 the global economy and to bolster the
16 technical skills of our workforce to enhance
17 creativity and innovation.
18 Our comments are focused on
19 elementary and middle school K-8 mathematics
20 according to the panel's charge, and as
21 requested, we cite our sources of research
22 evidence, most of which I am sure you have
23 before you.
24 My remarks and our remarks today,
25 address item “e” of the Executive Order
26 creating the panel -- the training,

74
1 selection, placement, and professional
2 development of teachers in mathematics in
3 order to enhance students learning of
4 mathematics. The American Association of
5 Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) offers
6 eight policy recommendations to the panel that
7 we believe will significantly improve the
8 quality of mathematics teaching and teacher
9 preparation programs.
10 Recommendation one, the National
11 Mathematics Advisory Panel should request
12 major government support for synthesis and
13 wide dissemination of the best research
14 available on the teaching and learning of
15 mathematics. This should be an ongoing
16 service provided without charge to the public.
17 Recommendation two, the National
18 Mathematics Advisory Panel should all support
19 the research of critical mathematics teacher
20 and teaching issues. This research should
21 include at minimum, a description of the
22 current status of mathematics preparation on
23 the part of K-8 teachers, the essential
24 content for high quality mathematics teacher
25 preparation, the optimum length of course work
26 and critical experiences, any combinations

75
1 thereof and research on the ideal structure,
2 nature and synthesis of courses.
3 The third recommendation to the
4 Panel is we encourage you to encourage
5 consensus-building efforts to develop high-
6 level mathematics standards. I may come back
7 to that.
8 Recommendation four is for the
9 National Mathematics Advisory Panel to support
10 the development of student databases with
11 links to teacher preparation programs. We ask
12 the Panel to recommend the appropriation of
13 funds sufficient for all states to develop and
14 implement longitudinal data systems with the
15 capacity to track the performance of
16 individual students from year to year, link
17 those students with their teachers, determine
18 the impact of those teachers over several
19 years, link those teachers to the preparation
20 programs and ultimately identify the program
21 characteristics associated with the greatest
22 levels of student achievement.
23 Recommendation five, the panel
24 should encourage and support teacher
25 preparation reform at both state and federal
26 levels.
76
1 Recommendation six, the National
2 Math Panel should call for the elimination of
3 out-of-field teaching. With 18 percent of
4 middle school mathematics teachers assigned
5 out-of-field, it is important to take a stand
6 to discourage this practice. The Panel should
7 recommend that all states phase out the
8 practice of out-of-field teaching by setting a
9 disappearing cap on the number of out-of-field
10 placements permitted by each district, each
11 year, until ultimately the cap becomes a ban.
12 Recommendation seven, the National
13 Mathematics Advisory Panel should encourage
14 investments in mathematics teaching,
15 recruitment and retention efforts, given the
16 shortage, the high rates of turnover, and out-
17 of-field teaching, and the lopsided diversity
18 among mathematics teachers. It is necessary
19 to launch a concerted recruitment and
20 retention effort. Research shows that strong
21 induction programs with training mentors make
22 a positive difference in the retention of
23 novice teachers and improving teaching
24 practices in schools. Further, growing
25 interest exists in enabling school districts
26 to offer schoolteachers compensation that is

77
1 more closely aligned with that available in
2 other economic sectors. Nothing less than a
3 federal Marshal Plan is needed to greatly
4 enhance the recruitment and retention of
5 excellent mathematics teachers, particularly
6 for high need schools. Substantial funds
7 should be authorized for a variety of
8 promising programs.
9 And our final recommendation,
10 recommendation eight, is to correct
11 inequitable distribution of high quality
12 teachers. The Panel's report should clearly
13 articulate this educational travesty and
14 insist on enforcing existing reporting
15 requirements and the prohibition of
16 misdistribution practices and the
17 appropriation of funds to carry out the
18 recruiting, retention recommendations noted
19 above.
20 DR. FAULKNER: You are inside
21 your last minute.
22 DR. TATE: And I am done actually.
23 My final remark is on behalf of teacher
24 preparation programs across the nation, I
25 thank the Panel members for your attention and
26 for the good work you are doing to help

78
1 improve mathematics teaching and learning.
2 Thank you.
3 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you. You
4 actually said you were going to come back to
5 one point?
6 DR. TATE: Well, the national
7 movement for creating consensus around
8 standards. We note in our research that there
9 are various groups attempting to do that. It
10 is clear to us that some consensus among these
11 groups is vitally important, and I just wanted
12 to emphasize that consensus around standards.
13 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you,
14 Professor Tate. Questions? Valerie.
15 DR. REYNA: Valerie Reyna; Math
16 Panel. Professor Tate, you mention in your
17 first item the dissemination of materials.
18 Universities such as this one have a number of
19 research journals that are available in on-
20 line form, supposedly accessible. What is
21 different about what is currently available,
22 say through the Web of Science and other kinds
23 than what you have in mind?
24 DR. TATE: Well, not only are
25 journals online, we have syntheses in
26 handbooks which are ad nauseam to date. The

79
1 fact is though, the disconnect between those
2 syntheses and the public is quite high. What
3 we are arguing and I think an important part
4 of the recommendation, is the distribution of
5 such syntheses that have been peer reviewed
6 and that are disseminated freely. I think
7 that is a big difference.
8 DR. FAULKNER: Deborah.
9 DR. BALL: Your role, not only as
10 the Chair of the important Department of
11 Education, but as President of the American
12 Educational Research Association leads me to
13 ask you a question given this very
14 comprehensive report that you are presenting
15 to us. You correctly identified that more
16 knowledge is needed about teacher education,
17 professional development, induction and so on.
18 That will be part of what we will be
19 reporting. What do you see as the impediments
20 or maybe more positively said, what would it
21 take to produce a kind of knowledge base about
22 teacher education, retention, all those things
23 that would have to do with building a
24 qualified teacher core and then distributing
25 them, but just to have that sort of knowledge?
26 What do you think it would take? What do you

80
1 think are some of the impediments? Or what do
2 you think it would take? How would we do more
3 than just say more research is needed?
4 DR. TATE: You always ask the hard
5 questions. I think to be really honest about
6 this. We are sitting in the Medical School of
7 Washington University right now, and there is
8 a major difference in how knowledge is
9 distributed in medical science versus what we
10 do in education. By the way, now I have to
11 take my hat off of the American Association of
12 Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). On
13 the record she asked me to go the American
14 Educational Research Association (AERA), so I
15 am not representing them any longer, it is my
16 personal opinion.
17 We do not have a system in place to
18 actually disseminate at a high level, even
19 within colleges of education, what I would
20 consider to be peer-reviewed work that is of
21 the highest quality that is synthetic. That
22 does not happen per se. Some people have
23 testified earlier about programs that are
24 being implemented. And part of the dilemma is
25 the public and/or people who actually do
26 teacher education; and that varies from

81
1 institution to institution, do not necessarily
2 have things that are being, if you will, have
3 the government stamp of approval for peer
4 review that are synthetic in their hands. I
5 cannot think of any right now. I do not think
6 there is any. In fact the closest we have are
7 NRC Boards, which are excellent, but that is
8 the closest we have. We are really at an
9 alpha level. There really is no
10 dissemination. Recently the American
11 Educational Research Association (AERA) has
12 taken on writing policy briefs that synthesize
13 research for policy makers, but there is not
14 anything per se for public, for teacher
15 educators and the like. It does not exist.
16 DR. FAULKNER: Russell.
17 DR. GERSTEN: For this question
18 you could answer for either organization or as
19 simply yourself. One of the groups here has
20 made a decision to only include the most
21 rigorous research and to synthesize that. Is
22 that in line with some of your thinking?
23 DR. TATE: Well, you might have to
24 help me on how you are defining rigorous.
25 DR. GERSTEN: In terms of via the
26 experiments.
82
1 DR. TATE: Yes. Certainly I think
2 that those should be included and are vitally
3 important. I will put my American Educational
4 Research Association (AERA) hat on for a
5 moment. Most certainly I am appreciative of
6 the framing that is taking place to make those
7 kinds of studies happen more often to date and
8 that encourages us. But I will also say that
9 it is quite unfortunate that we know,
10 defaulted, there is going to be a limited
11 amount of research that is being done that
12 way, given the way the funding streams have
13 flowed in the past. So, by default you will
14 come up with certain kinds of recommendations,
15 just because there has not been an abundance
16 of that type of work. So, that is what I
17 would be a bit worried about.
18 But then again, I will say that
19 there is other research that may not have been
20 done that way that might be quite good and
21 leads you in a way of triangulation if you
22 will, if you do not mind me using that
23 language here. But I think we do need to
24 triangulate and look at various forces to make
25 sense of what directions are most appropriate.
26 But can I say I am very pleased at

83
1 how this group has taken seriously looking at
2 instruction materials and the design of the
3 research associated with them, and I would
4 encourage you to continue to do it in that
5 way. Carefully done research programs are
6 vitally important. And let us be honest.
7 There has not been a lot of funding for the
8 kind of research that has been traditionally
9 talked about by groups like this. It just
10 does not exist. It has not happened.
12 Russell.
13 DR. GERSTEN: Thank you for your
14 perspective. This is just a comment actually
15 for the prior speaker about the Follow Through
16 evaluation direct instruction. I just was
17 going through in my mind and actually it does
18 fit within the thirty-year limit. So, we will
19 talk to our data analysts about that in terms
20 of the search, because it is a government
21 report from '76 and '77. So, we will visit
22 that issue.
24 Thank you Professor Tate. Next testifier is
25 J. Martin Rochester, Curator's Distinguished
26 Teaching Professor of Political Science at the

84
1 University of Missouri St. Louis.
2 (G) DR. MARTIN ROCHESTER

3 Professor, Political Science
4 University of Missouri-St. Louis
5 DR. ROCHESTER: Thank you for the
6 opportunity to comment on the work of the
7 National Math Panel and the issues at stake in
8 this project.
9 I am a Professor at the University
10 of Missouri St. Louis. I should note that I
11 am a political scientist not a mathematician.
12 But nonetheless I am someone who spent over
13 thirty years as a professional educator and
14 also as a parent observing one failure after
15 another in K-12 education.
16 As every so-called progressive
17 fashion presented as a magic bullet has only
18 added to our shooting ourselves in the feet.
19 I have written about this in a book
20 entitled Class Warfare, as well as in
21 Education Week, Phi Delta Kappa and in other
22 publications.
23 Fuzzy math, or integrated math, or
24 whatever you want to call Everyday Math, Core
25 Plus, and the other reformed math curricula
26 now dominant in K-12, has been driven by the

85
1 same constructivist paradigm and the same
2 dumbing down populist impulses that gave us
3 the now discredited whole language pedagogy in
4 English. That is in place of the old maxim
5 ‘no pain, no gain’ we now have the new maxim
6 in K to 12 ‘if it ain't fun, it can't be
7 done.’
8 Under the guise of critical
9 thinking and problem solving, which are
10 ubiquitous buzzwords in every discipline in
11 today's schools, fuzzy math is trying to make
12 math more interesting; that is enjoyable and
13 entertaining and accessible to the masses, to
14 the bottom, to the lowest common denominator.
15 The new math de-emphasizes and devalues direct
16 instruction, drill and practice, basic
17 computation skills and getting it right,
18 getting precise correct answers. Forget
19 rigor. The key concern here is to alleviate
20 boredom and drudgery from math folks and those
21 who suffer from math anxiety. Never mind we
22 are inflicting this stuff on math folks and
23 math-philes alike, doing a disservice to both.
24 And never mind Isaac Newton's admonition that
25 ‘there is no royal road to geometry’ meaning
26 there no easy path, although some reformers

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1 seem to have found it.
2 Most of the math professors I have
3 spoken to at my university are appalled at the
4 lack of basic computation skills student now
5 bring to campus from K-12. Not surprisingly,
6 parents have to enroll their kids increasingly
7 in Kumon math tutoring courses to compensate
8 for the failure of our schools to provide a
9 solid foundation.
10 In my own school district of
11 Clayton, which you have already heard another
12 parent speak of, one of the richest and best
13 in the entire State of Missouri and perhaps
14 the country, dozens of parents including the
15 president of the school board, a Harvard MBA,
16 have resorted to Kumon math for their kids
17 every since fuzzy math was introduced into the
18 district.
19 As a college professor I can tell
20 you that our K-12 education system in America
21 is becoming dysfunctional, as we are turning
22 the pre-collegiate and collegiate levels
23 upside down. K-12 teachers pretentiously
24 aspire to teach critical thinking in
25 kindergarten even though Johnny cannot even
26 find the potty. While we in higher ed are left

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1 to clean up the mess, having to do more and
2 more remediation. In English it means having
3 to teach grammar and where to put the comma.
4 In history having to teach basic historical
5 facts, such as who Lenin was, that is Vladimir
6 and not John. And yes in math having to teach
7 two plus two.
8 Those are emperor's clothes quality
9 to the claims made by the math reformers. I
10 respectfully urge you to examine these claims
11 more carefully, since they are cut out of the
12 same cloth as all the other failed K-12
13 reforms of the recent past. Thank you.
14 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you Professor
15 Rochester. Questions?
17 DR. FAULKNER: No questions, thank
18 you. We now go to Jennie Winters who is with
19 the Lake County Illinois Regional Office of
20 Education.
21 (H) JENNIE WINTERS

22 Math & Science Coordinator
23 Lake County Office of Education
24 MS. WINTERS: Good afternoon.
25 Thank you so much for allowing me to speak
26 today. I am the math and science coordinator

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1 for the Regional Office of Education in Lake
2 County Illinois. My responsibilities include
3 facilitating professional learning and
4 curriculum development for forty-five school
5 districts, which encompasses two hundred
6 sixty-five schools and approximately eleven
7 thousand teachers. During my interactions
8 with these personnel, I have been able to
9 observe much and would like to share the
10 insights I have developed while being in the
11 trenches.
12 Mathematics achievement is not
13 about the program. Granted some programs have
14 best practices embedded within the lesson
15 design; however, I believe that a
16 knowledgeable teacher can do great teaching
17 with whatever resources are available. The
18 key is the level of mathematical understanding
19 the teacher possesses. Mathematics is a
20 language used for communication in all walks
21 of life. Unfortunately many educators do not
22 speak the language, therefore becoming
23 mathematically literate should be a priority
24 for all educators to ensure the mathematical
25 literacy of the youth of our nation.
26 Elementary teachers are expected to

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1 lay the foundation of mathematical
2 understanding so that content specialists at
3 the middle and high school can build upon that
4 foundation. However, elementary teachers are
5 also expected to lay the foundation in
6 reading, writing, science, social science,
7 health, et cetera. It is very difficult for
8 elementary teachers to be experts in every
9 content area. Therefore it is essential that
10 they have access to support personnel, who are
11 fluent in the language of mathematics.
12 I am pleased to see the math
13 specialist or math coach position emerging in
14 some of our school districts and I would
15 strongly encourage this Panel to support the
16 implementation of more specialists and
17 coaches.
18 Teachers also need to be
19 comfortable in the use of differentiation to
20 meet the variety of students that they
21 encounter in their classes. In my
22 observation, elementary teachers may not be
23 content experts, but they tend to connect with
24 their students, however one cannot effectively
25 differentiate content without a deep
26 understanding of that content. On the other

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1 hand, secondary teachers see many more
2 students for much less time, therefore they
3 may be experts of content but it is difficult
4 for them to make individual connections with
5 each student. A teacher cannot effectively
6 differentiate for students without knowledge
7 of student's interests, learning styles and
8 abilities.
9 Elementary teachers need ongoing
10 professional learning opportunities to develop
11 a deeper understanding of the mathematical
12 language they are teaching. If we examine the
13 mathematics instruction in other countries, we
14 can learn from their successes. Let us not go
15 out and copy their instructional programs.
16 Once again, it is not the program. It is the
17 fact that the instructors were taught using
18 the terminology and techniques to develop a
19 deep level of understanding of mathematics.
20 Secondary teachers should be given
21 multiple professional learning opportunities
22 to develop a repertoire of pre-assessment,
23 instructional and differentiation strategies
24 to meet the needs of their student population.
25 They need to develop a deeper understanding of
26 process standards so that they can delve

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1 deeply into the content. Through professional
2 learning opportunities both groups will gain
3 knowledge of a plethora of research based
4 assessment and instructional strategies in
5 their respective areas of need.
6 It is my concern that special
7 interest groups will try to influence this
8 Panel to promote their own agendas or
9 financial benefits. I sincerely hope that
10 this initiative avoids the pitfalls and
11 mistakes Reading First encountered.
12 Student achievement is not about
13 the program, but it is about knowing your
14 population and finding the appropriate
15 resources and strategies to reach that
16 population. It is also about affording
17 teachers the professional learning
18 opportunities they need to become the teachers
19 their students need. Thank you.
21 Winters. Questions or comments? Wu.
22 DR. WU: Hung-Hsi Wu. Would you
23 consider the fact that if you happened to have
24 a good textbook it is easier for a teacher to
25 achieve greater things than with a bad
26 textbook?
92
1 MS. WINTERS: Absolutely. I have
2 been in a lot of classrooms. I do a lot of
3 instructional walk-throughs with principals
4 and what I see and what I hear from the
5 teachers when they come to me, elementary
6 teachers do not even understand it. They like
7 the little kids. They like reading. They do
8 not understand math. And I think my
9 frustration is they do not even have the
10 people to go to explain what it is they are
11 supposed to be teaching the next day. So, it
12 is very hard for us to expect them to lay a
13 good foundation for these kids when they do
14 not even have it themselves.
15 DR. WU: I should add that your
16 point is well taken, the fact that everything,
17 really it is critically on the teacher.
18 Nevertheless I just wanted to make sure that
19 you agree with the fact that if you do have
20 better textbooks things are easier.
21 MS. WINTERS: Absolutely. We have
22 districts that use Everyday Math and have
23 tremendous success. We have districts that
24 use Everyday Math and it is a flop, because of
25 the level of understanding of the program, and
26 the teachers of everything. I think that it

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1 is not necessarily about the program because
2 every district has its own issues. So, you
3 have to find the right program to fit the
4 right situation. And even then you might have
5 a group of students, but that program is not
6 going to work for them. So, it is not
7 necessarily a program. But the teacher needs
8 to know how to read their students. When you
9 were talking about the Algebra group and how
10 they always felt their students were the
11 problem. They do not know their students well
12 enough to be able to differentiate and meet
13 their needs. So it is easier to blame the
14 students because that is all they know.
15 DR. FAULKNER: Tom.
16 DR. LOVELESS: Besides Everyday
17 Math, what are the programs that your district
18 uses?
19 MS. WINTERS: I have forty-five
20 districts that I work with, so they use a wide
21 range. They go from Houghton Mifflin, then
22 there are groups that have Saxon. It is just
23 the full range. And honestly the questions
24 are always the same from elementary. "I do
25 not get what it is that I am teaching, so how
26 can I explain it to students?" And I think

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1 that Connected Math is very large. It is
2 coming into the middle schools. Teachers have
3 to understand the program before they have to
4 go in and teach it.
5 DR. FENNELL: Skip Fennell;
6 National Math Panel. I know that you
7 mentioned your interest in the issue of the
8 elementary math specialist. Are there
9 multiple models that you are seeing among the
10 districts that you work with? Is there a
11 model that seems to be working better for some
12 districts than others? I say that because
13 this Panel is in fact looking at that
14 question.
15 MS. WINTERS: Yes. In our office
16 we actually facilitate a group of coaches that
17 come together four times a year, and the math
18 coach position is increasing every year. So,
19 some districts have the coach where they truly
20 go in and model. They do not have classroom
21 responsibilities per se. They are really
22 there to teach the teachers and be a resource
23 for teachers. There are other districts that
24 have them having classroom responsibilities
25 part of the time and helping the teachers part
26 of the time. Generally those that can be

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1 released from the classroom and spend their
2 time in as many classrooms as possible and
3 really modeling and working with those
4 teachers tend to be more successful. They
5 feel more successful because they have the
6 time to really improve instruction and model
7 in as many people's rooms as possible.
8 DR. FENNELL: And do those folk
9 have significant math content background?
10 MS. WINTERS: For the most part,
11 yes. They have to have an endorsement in math
12 in most of our districts.
13 DR. FAULKNER: Bob Siegler.
14 DR. SIEGLER: Yes. Your point
15 about elementary school teacher's frequent
16 lack of sophisticated mathematical knowledge
17 seems very well grounded. I am wondering
18 whether district in-service programs could not
19 both collect data on what mathematical lessons
20 teachers in a given grade have the most
21 difficulty with and then address those in the
22 in-service programs.
23 MS. WINTERS: We do some of that
24 where I do surveys periodically. Again I am
25 working with forty-five different districts
26 and so everybody kind of does their own thing.

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1 But when we do surveys then that is what I
2 tend to do my workshops on regionally, on the
3 issues with fractions, the issues with how to
4 get students to understand the difference
5 between problems in measurement. If the
6 issues pop up over a range of our districts
7 then I tend to do regional workshops on those.
8 Extended responses on how to get students to
9 explain their thinking is one of the big ones
10 or problem solving.
11 DR. FAULKNER: Deborah then Bert.
12 DR. BALL: Thank you for your
13 comments. They are very helpful and very on
14 point. I was wondering and struck by the fact
15 that you are working in what you said forty-
16 five districts. You are giving us a portrait
17 of many different districts using different
18 programs and people doing their own things.
19 Several meetings ago, we had a number of
20 people speaking with us about the trade offs
21 between the fact that within this country
22 people choose whatever they want either within
23 the classroom level, the school level or the
24 district level. I think your point that
25 teachers are central is very well taken. What
26 difference would it make to a job like yours

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1 if it did not face that range of programs?
2 Even though you are saying it is not the
3 program, what difference would it make to your
4 job if you had a uniform program among the
5 forty-five districts you serve?
6 MS. WINTERS: I think the problem
7 with that would be that the forty-five
8 districts have different populations. So, I
9 do not know if I would want one unified
10 program, because the key is certain programs
11 fit certain populations. One of the things
12 that I have found with working with our
13 districts with Everyday Math, the ones that
14 have the greatest success with it, have a
15 continuous population. Where those that have
16 a lot of move-ins and move-outs, no matter how
17 well trained the staff is, it is a disaster
18 for them because the kids do not have the
19 background knowledge to really have success in
20 the program. So, it really does depend on the
21 situation. Those very mobile districts need
22 something that is a little different than the
23 ones that have the stability of the
24 population.
25 DR. FAULKNER: Bert.
26 DR. FRISTEDT: Bert Fristedt; the

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1 National Math Panel. You mentioned several
2 times that there are many teachers who do not
3 have the math background at the appropriate
4 grade. Then later when you were talking about
5 a particular middle school program, you
6 mentioned that they do not know that program
7 very well. That bothers me. If a person has
8 sufficient math background they should not
9 have to do that much preparation to handle the
10 program. And then at another time when you
11 talked about professional development you
12 listed several things, but I noticed it seemed
13 to me that you were missing math knowledge
14 itself in the various things you listed with
15 professional development. But if it is math
16 knowledge that they are lacking maybe it is
17 the professional development programs that
18 need to change and focus on the math rather
19 than techniques.
20 MS. WINTERS: I think at the
21 elementary level the focus on the math is the
22 biggest issue I am encountering. I think at
23 the middle school level and at the high school
24 level they teach out of the textbook and live
25 out of the textbook and use the same
26 techniques every time. They do not know a

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1 variety of strategies. They do not get at all
2 the process standards that they need to. They
3 do not really facilitate communication. It is
4 very traditional and it does not necessarily
5 give them the knowledge of the students that
6 they need to be able to meet the student's
7 needs.
8 DR. FRISTEDT: This language
9 bothers me. I think I am a pretty good
10 teacher, and I do not know a single process
11 standard, so maybe I am overlooking something.
12 MS. WINTERS: I am thinking well.
13 DR. FRISTEDT: Yes, I realize
14 that. But still it seems I am not liking this
15 emphasis on sort of very specific kinds of
16 technique, that concerns me. Different people
17 handle different things and if the book is
18 sort of written so as to force people into a
19 certain mold, you are going to have failures
20 among the teachers because they will not fit
21 that mold very well. But you can see my
22 opinions are showing.
23 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you, we need
24 to move on. We have several other questions,
25 Liping then Vern.
26 DR. MA: I have a very short

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1 question. Do you think if a teacher teaches
2 Everyday Math or Saxon, which are at two
3 extremes, they need common content knowledge,
4 or do they need to have different kind of
5 knowledge in terms of math?
6 MS. WINTERS: I think they need to
7 have a common content knowledge in math. It
8 does not really matter which program they are
9 using. A lot of the elementary teachers
10 whether it is Saxon that is very
11 straightforward and procedural versus Everyday
12 Math which is much more reasoning and
13 theoretical, the teachers do not really have
14 either. So, I guess my concern with the
15 elementary teachers is most of those people
16 are the ones who will come to me and say "I
17 really was not good at math when I was in
18 school." So, they think that it is okay to be
19 mathematically illiterate, which it is not.
20 DR. MA: So, is there only one
21 kind of math, which if teachers know that they
22 can teach every kind of program well.
23 MS. WINTERS: I think you have to
24 have a strong foundation in mathematical
25 understanding where you understand why math
26 works and you understand the concepts in

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1 geometry. If you understand conceptually about
2 math, you can work within the constraints of
3 pretty much any program. Granted I do think
4 there are better programs than others but that
5 is my personal bias. I cannot tell the
6 districts what to do and I try to show them
7 how to work with what they have. But I think
8 that they are lacking that conceptual
9 understanding of mathematics in the very
10 beginning so they are at a loss of where even
11 to start.
12 DR. FAULKNER: Vern.
13 MR. WILLIAMS: A couple of things.
14 As a teacher I have a pretty good conceptual
15 knowledge of math. That is what I do. But
16 there are certain types of programs that I
17 think I would have trouble teaching. That is
18 the first point. The second question is, you
19 said that in certain districts Everyday Math
20 works better because the students in that
21 district are less mobile and they evidently
22 have a better math background to start with.
23 So, if you take the same consideration for
24 elementary school teachers whom you stated
25 have very poor math backgrounds, would a
26 program such as Saxon be a better match for

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1 that teacher since it seems to be more focused
2 than a program such as Everyday Math?
3 MS. WINTERS: I think it would
4 have to depend on the population that they are
5 serving. I am not trying to match the program
6 to the teacher, I really think you need to
7 match the program to the students, and the
8 teacher needs to have the skills to adapt to
9 that program. Because ultimately we are in
10 this business for the kids we are not in the
11 business for ourselves.
12 MR. WILLIAMS: But you do agree
13 that as students have different learning
14 styles, teachers also have different teaching
15 styles. And some of their teaching styles
16 match to different programs?
17 MS. WINTERS: Yes, I do agree to
18 that. That is why I think it is important for
19 them to find a district with a philosophical
20 match to their style. But ultimately the
21 districts that have adopted Everyday Math that
22 love that constructivist philosophy and they
23 will have a population of students that will
24 still struggle with that, because that is just
25 not a match for those students. So then it is
26 not about the program again you need to find

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1 something else to meet those students.
2 DR. FAULKNER: Sandy. This is the
3 last question we can stand here.
4 DR. STOTSKY: I was struck by your
5 comment on the difficulty that you are saying
6 the middle schools teachers have with the
7 Connected Mathematics Program. Could you help
8 us understand how this program got to be
9 chosen? Did they have a choice of what kind
10 of program in grades 6, 7, and 8 to choose or
11 were they all just given that program to use?
12 How are teachers treated professionally in
13 terms of the choice of program that a school
14 would have for them to use?
15 MS. WINTERS: That is a really
16 good question because again every district is
17 different. This particular district the
18 teachers did not have as much input. Certain
19 schools had more input than others and it is a
20 larger district. So, some of the teachers who
21 joined the committee to choose programs really
22 loved this program and they are having more
23 success than the bulk of the population who
24 did not have as much interest in joining the
25 committee.
26 DR. STOTSKY: Now there were just

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1 a few people who chose for all the rest?
2 MS. WINTERS: Yes. And then when
3 you implement a new program with a new
4 philosophy and you just thrust it upon the
5 rest of your teachers without any professional
6 development, it is not going to fly as well as
7 if you would have decided to support your
8 teachers.
9 DR. STOTSKY: And were they aware
10 that there would be such costs associated with
11 professional development for teachers who did
12 not want or were not prepared for the program?
13 MS. WINTERS: Some districts are
14 more aware of things than ours. Some know.
15 We have some districts that really do their
16 research. I worked with one last week that is
17 going through curriculum adoption and they
18 came in and really intently looked through our
19 materials that we have in several different
20 programs to find the one that would really
21 match their population. And they chose two
22 different programs for their middle school
23 population. I do not know if you want to
24 know what they are. But they wanted to find a
25 variety to meet the different needs. And so
26 that kind of a district is looking to me to

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1 come follow up and looking to bring in the
2 publishers to follow up and looking to do
3 continual, continual development. Then you
4 have the other districts that will say we are
5 going to get this, it looks good, here you go.
7 Winters. I think the Panel would continue to
8 ask you questions but I cannot let them.
9 MS. WINTERS: They have my email.
10 DR. FAULKNER: Thank you.
11 Barbara Asteak is the next testifier. You
12 will have to tell me what your pronunciation
13 is.
14 MS. ASTEAK: Asteak.
15 DR. FAULKNER: Asteak, okay. And
16 you are from Suntex International, it says
17 here from Easton, Pennsylvania.
18 (I) MS. BARBARA ASTEAK

19 Suntex International
20 MS. ASTEAK: That is right. I
21 came in from Easton, Pennsylvania, this
22 morning; weather cooperated. Thank you very
23 much.
24 I am Vice President of Suntex
25 International. We are the creator of the
26 Twenty-Four Game, a very popular mathematics

106
1 game, that was developed in 1988. I see the
2 eyeball of recognition among some of you. We
3 have for nearly two decades made math very
4 exciting for children. Albert Einstein once
5 stated "games are the most elevated form of
6 investigation." We could not agree more.
7 The game series expanded into a
8 series of nine different games; starting with
9 one step addition, always the way to Algebra.
10 Five years ago we married the games with the
11 technology of the internet and included this
12 program. It was the first on-line math
13 program, and it was used last year alone by
14 over two hundred thousand students around the
15 United States.
16 This program has proven that it can
17 reach students of all ability levels and all
18 backgrounds. It is very engaging and
19 interesting and the content is quite rigorous.
20 Do not let the word “game” fool you at all.
21 In three years of participation,
22 students who have been enrolled in the program
23 are approaching solving their billionth, that
24 is with a ‘b,’ their billionth math problem on
25 our web site. While the Twenty-Four Game
26 series is the backbone of the First in Math

107
1 program it also includes rigorous modules
2 where children demonstrate mastery of basic
3 facts in whole numbers, fractions, decimals
4 and integers. There is also a vibrant range of
5 bonus modules, where students work
6 additionally on fact practice, word problems,
7 fractions, decimals, integers, pre-Algebra
8 problem solving and finally Algebra. In fact,
9 we have eight skill sets and most adults in
10 this country could not even complete skill set
11 five. But we have thirty, fourth grade
12 students going all the way through the Algebra
13 modules.
14 Students log on to First in Math
15 from school and from home, or wherever they
16 have internet access. They just lately are
17 able to expand the school day by many hours.
18 Parents can watch those children participate,
19 those that are fortunate enough to have the
20 internet at home, and have an opportunity to
21 try some of the math curriculum.
22 The activities on the First in Math
23 site are designed to introduce skills on a
24 gradient, easy to more difficult. This design
25 makes that program a perfect tool for
26 differentiating instruction. First in Math is

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1 self-paced, meeting the needs of all students
2 from intervention to gifted. Philadelphia
3 public schools use the program as their chief
4 mathematics intervention program. Prince
5 George's County, Maryland uses it with all
6 their talented and gifted students. It is
7 aligned to rigorous national and state
8 standards.
9 Wellstone, the nation's top
10 regional educational laboratory, conducted a
11 scientific based study about the program in
12 National City, California, with a sample size
13 of two thousand students. National City is
14 the second poorest school district of its size
15 in the state of California. The study was
16 conclusive. It proved kids involved in the
17 program saw a small but substantial increase
18 in standardized test scores, on CAT-6,
19 California Achievement Test. The study also
20 had an attitudinal component and proved
21 conclusively that students involved in First
22 in Math change attitudes about math to the
23 positive.
24 For educators the site provides
25 real time continuous feedback for teachers,
26 for building principals and for district

109
1 administrators. They can track the progress
2 of their students through the site and
3 determine that students are performing at
4 grade level standards in easy to read
5 printable reports. But perhaps the most
6 distinguishing feature of the First in Math
7 program is the competition element of the
8 program. As kids log on, start solving
9 problems, they get electronic awards stickers
10 that accrue to a personal score but also to
11 their classroom score. And we refer to the
12 classroom as a team and we have provided an
13 exciting mathematics competition. Kids
14 compete to be the top mathematics team in
15 their school building, in their school
16 district, in their state and in the nation.
17 We have provided an outstanding national
18 mathematics competition, and teachers and
19 principals never have to hire a bus, they
20 never have to get a permission slip and do all
21 the other things in having real competition.
22 DR. FAULKNER: You are inside the
23 last minute, so I will ask you to wrap up.
24 MS. ASTEAK: All right. Unique
25 competition has had some very outstanding
26 results. And I will tell you the story of

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1 Parker Annex, a very high poverty school. In
2 Trenton, New Jersey there are fifth grade kids
3 with no access to the internet at home. They
4 formulated a plan to get business leaders
5 behind them. They went to a local Best Buy,
6 Wal-mart, Circuit City et cetera, and asked
7 please can we come after school to do First in
8 Math in your stores. The store managers said
9 yes, as long as you behave and they did and
10 they emerged the number one team out of ten
11 thousand teams in the United States of
12 America. Parker Annex, this is an absolute
13 stand and deliver story. These kids are
14 absolutely amazing, not gifted just regular
15 kids who said we can do it.
16 In short, we take good old-
17 fashioned math, turned it into the medium of
18 the 21st century and we believe First in Math
19 should be part of the national strategy.
20 Thank you for giving me this opportunity.
22 Asteak.
23 MS. ASTEAK: Well, I will respond
24 to anything. It is pronounced As-teak.
25 DR. FAULKNER: As-teak, okay.
26 Thank you for being with us. Questions from

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1 the Panel?
2 MS. ASTEAK: I assume I am the
3 last speaker, everyone's ready for dinner.
4 DR. FAULKNER: You are not last.
5 MS. ASTEAK: Okay, well thank you
6 very, very much.
8 Asteak. We go to the last presenter and that
9 is Michelle Pruitt from Columbia, Missouri.
10 (J) MICHELLE PRUITT

11 Columbia - Parents for Real Math
12 MS. PRUITT: Good evening. I
13 represent a parent group in Columbia,
14 Missouri. Our community is a microcosm of the
15 national math debate, although perhaps a late
16 blooming one. All the players are assembled
17 in our community for yet another season of
18 mathematics on the verge of a nervous
19 breakdown. The Math Education Department at
20 the state university located in Columbia is
21 heavily funded by the National Science
22 Foundation to promote teacher development
23 using particular math curricula. A number of
24 graduate students earn master's degrees by
25 participating in the implementation of these
26 curricula in the public schools.

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1 The local public school implemented
2 these curricula in 2001 in part to gain access
3 to university graduate students for the
4 Columbia public schools classrooms. But who
5 evaluates the effectiveness of these
6 curricula? It goes without saying that the
7 public school administrators like to present
8 student achievement in the best possible
9 light.
10 Student and faculty at Emory's math
11 education department have published numerous
12 papers, not surprisingly supporting the
13 effectiveness of their own efforts; however
14 many of these same publications have been
15 found to lack sound research by the What Works
16 Clearinghouse. At the same time, nationally
17 known standard assessments of student
18 achievement are being ignored. An eight-year
19 record of C+ student scores on the Iowa
20 Algebra aptitude test spanning the period of
21 implementation of Connected Math, seems to
22 indicate a significant drop in Algebra
23 readiness, but it has not been carefully
24 examined by the school district or the leaders
25 to researchers.
26 ACT test scores have dropped and

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1 the median math rates of students attending
2 state universities have escalated since
3 adopting these math curricula. Parents are
4 justifiably concerned. Many parents who work
5 at the University of Missouri in the math,
6 engineering, food science, economic,
7 psychology and other departments have signed a
8 petition opposing the current math curricula
9 used in the public schools. These scientists,
10 engineers, mathematicians, technicians and
11 physicians know intimately the demands of a
12 career requiring the mastery of mathematics,
13 and they are speaking up to say, that the
14 local public schools are failing students who
15 have aspirations to follow a strong career
16 path.
17 Likely this particular script is
18 all too familiar to the Panel. You have been
19 tasked with advising the President and
20 Secretary Spellings on the best use of
21 scientifically based research on the teaching
22 and learning of mathematics.
23 I conclude with an important point,
24 the cliffhanger for the season. How best can
25 evaluations of effectiveness and assessment of
26 student performance be separated from and

114
1 independent of the development and
2 implementation of curricula? The basic tenant
3 of slightly adversarial, peer-reviewed
4 research is lost when researchers are paid by
5 textbook publishers and administrators playing
6 dual roles implementing curricula and
7 assessing their impact.
8 I thank you for the crucial and
9 urgent work you are doing on behalf of our
10 students, our families and our nation. Thank
11 you very much for letting me have this time, I
12 know it is very, very late.
13 DR. FAULKNER: You have more time
14 left.
15 MS. PRUITT: No, that is it.
16 DR. FAULKNER: Are there questions
17 or comments, Wu?
18 DR. WU: Just one short comment.
19 Your point about the need for independent
20 evaluation of curricula or other forms of
21 educational activities is very well taken and
22 we hope that it will be taken more seriously.
23 MS. PRUITT: Thank you very much.
24 DR. FAULKNER: Any other questions
25 or comments?
26 Thank you, Ms. Pruitt.

115
1 Let me thank all of the testifiers.
2 We always find these sessions to be quite
3 informative and today was not an exception.
4 The Panel will be adjourning here in just a
5 moment. I would like to notify the audience
6 that we are reconvening tomorrow morning at
7 8:30. It will not surprise you that most of
8 the work of the Panel is going on in
9 subcommittees and task groups. A very large
10 amount of work has gone on in these bodies,
11 and the subcommittees and task groups will be
12 reporting in the session tomorrow. Quite
13 significantly, most of the task groups will be
14 making their main public presentation on
15 findings and recommendations.
16 The work of the task groups and
17 subcommittees forms a base for the Panel to
18 synthesize in the last several months of this
19 year, a Panel report, which is the report that
20 the President and Secretary sought through the
21 Executive Order. And I just wanted to give
22 you a summary of where we are in this process.
23 But, tomorrow represents a
24 culmination of the work that has gone on in
25 the task groups. I will talk before the
26 testimony tomorrow a little more about the

116
1 structure of the process we are engaged in.
2 But, I just want to indicate to the audience
3 that we reconvene at 8:30 tomorrow. Thank
4 you.
5 (Whereupon, at 5:45 p.m. the
6 meeting was adjourned.)
10
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25

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1

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

NATIONAL MATH PANEL MEETING

The National Math Panel met in open

I. CALL TO ORDER AND WELCOME

Dr. Mark Wrighton, Chancellor ......... 7

II. ALGEBRA TEACHERS' SURVEY - FINDINGS .. 12

III. OPEN SESSION - PUBLIC COMMENT ........ 29

(a) RICHARD SCHAAR ................. 30

(b) ELIZABETH GNALL ................ 45

(c) STEVE NOBLE .................... 50

(d) MARGUERITE BLISS ............... 59

(e) PATTY POLSTER .................. 67

(f) WILLIAM TATE ................... 73

(g) MARTIN ROCHESTER ............... 84

(h) JENNIE WINTERS ................. 88

(i) BARBARA ASTEAK ................ 105

(j) MICHELLE PRUITT ............... 111

3 DR. FAULKNER: (Presiding). Let

4 me welcome everyone to the opening session of

5 the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The

6 panel was created in April of 2006 by

7 Executive Order of the President to review the

8 best scientific evidence and to make

9 recommendations to the President and Secretary

10 of Education on ways to improve mathematics

11 learning, with a particular emphasis on

12 Algebra readiness and Algebra success.

13 We are here at Washington

14 University in St. Louis, and I would like to

15 thank the University for hosting the Eighth

16 National Math Panel Meeting.

17 Since the Panel's first meeting at

18 the National Academies in Washington, D.C.,

19 the panel has sought to hold its meetings at

20 institutions that symbolize educational

21 achievement, particularly in mathematics. It

22 is fitting for the Panel to be meeting at

23 Washington University which is a top recipient

24 of federal, industrial and foundation research

25 support for its programs in medicine, science,

26 engineering and social science. Washington

2 1891, is ranked by U.S. News and World Report

3 as one of the top five in the nation and its

4 students are ranked first in terms of academic

6 Research has always been integral

7 to the school's mission. It pioneered bedside

8 teaching and led in the transformation of

9 empirical knowledge into scientific medicine.

10 And from the school's earliest days there was

11 the understanding that investigation and

12 practice, are one in spirit, method and

14 We, of course, as a National Math

15 Panel, met earlier at Fermi National

16 Accelerator Laboratory and one of the thoughts

17 in asking Washington University if it would

18 host us is the idea of placing, juxtaposing

19 really, a site that is well known in the

20 physical sciences, with another that is well

21 known in the life sciences, here at Washington

23 With that introduction to the

24 University and our thanks to the University, I