Changes in home, school culture important to math success

High school math teacher John Hannah presented findings of the Vertical Math Team to the Wahkiakum School District Board at its January 19 meeting.

The team, composed of math teachers for each grade, has been meeting to strategize about how to prepare students to pass math tests needed for graduation.

At present, statewide proficiency levels for math hover around 50 percent on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning or WASL, high school Principal Dan Casler said. In comparison, 28 percent of Wahkiakum high school 10th graders met proficiency standards on the math portion of the WASL in 2009/10, while reading proficiency was 85 percent.

The team has identified math skills needed to pass each grade level. “We want to know, how do kids learn math?” Hannah said.

This year the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has developed a new test for the grade levels called EOC, or “End of Course,” which will test specific knowledge.

Now students must either pass the EOC or continue to take math classes through high school in order to graduate, Casler said.

“Teachers are really challenging the kids. Expectations are high,” he said.

The need to focus on helping students pass the tests “has taken some of the fun out of teaching,” said middle school teacher Jeff Pillar, who has taught for the past five years after a career as an engineer with Boeing and Georgia-Pacific.

“You might have had time for a project before,” he said.

Pillar teaches math in middle school and physics in high school every other year.

The team has listed skills students need to be successful in each class. They are using the same vocabulary from year to year and have adopted a new curriculum. Teachers have identified specific problems in the text that will be similar to those on the test. Hannah said he didn’t know how teachers would react to the team’s approach when they started, but teachers have been very open.

Elementary school principal Theresa Libby said she has heard teachers collaborating in the halls, “Long division is killing me. Do you have any tricks?”

In September of 2010, parents of Wahkiakum students received letters explaining changes in math and science testing requirements for graduation. Ninth and tenth graders must pass the EOC to be given this spring.

The administration has been supportive, Pillar said.

“They’ve said, don’t get so caught up in testing that you lose the excitement of teaching,” he said.

Principal Casler, who was a math teacher, said he hopes to see a new culture at home. “Parents tell me, I didn’t get Algebra either. Now students have to get it to graduate. There’s extra help available.”

The new curriculum has varied activities for different kinds of learners, Pillar said. “It’s more than straight academics. It’s still the relationship with the kids.”