Mathematics Midcycle Program Review (30 minutes)

Transcript (~27 min @ 21:50)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 21:49 Jessica Dugan: mid-cycle program review ms dugan good evening we have two items on the educational programs and personal agenda this evening and we will start off with mathematic mathematics mid-cycle program review and I invite the superintendent to introduce our guests

▶ 22:04 Speaker 1: and the topic thank you so as you know five years ago we instituted a cycle of program reviews in which we work our way through all of our content areas so far we've completed social studies history ELA this we're entering year two a math and we have begun science this is year one of science an important change from

▶ 22:29 Speaker 1: the previous two program reviews is at that time we had seven department chairs and we had a single department chair overseeing each of those reviews since then as you all know due to budgetary constraints we are down to four department chairs and before you have Miss Greenwood who is brand new to the position and in her first go up go as a director is not only taking over the math review but starting the science review so she has a lot on her plate as a brand new director but we have every faith in her she's been a teacher with us for many years some of you had children who had her and are particularly fond of her I know so we're looking forward to this process with her again year two of program reviews is the year in which the real work gets done the first year we work on our questions we work on look reviewing our materials putting out our surveys it's the second year that we begin that real analysis the results of the surveys the visiting teams from other schools and we develop the action plan for any changes that they will bring forward to you so with that I give you dr. Adams and miss green with the director of stem so as the

▶ 23:57 Speaker 2: superintendent spoke our purpose of the two-year program review process is to look at the curriculum the assessment and instruction of our mathematics programming pre-k through 12 we started last year beginning the work with reviewing this past year we looked at starting by looking at our curriculum and all of our materials and then developing beginning by developing our

▶ 24:26 Speaker 4: essential questions so the essential questions that we have are centered around alignment where we were looking at vertical and horizontal alignment of the math curriculum how the standards for mathematical practice are being addressed and assessed looking at best practices core instructional and core instructional practices inclusive practices from the state and whether we're meeting the varied needs of all learners so we began the process this

▶ 24:55 Speaker 2: past year by looking at curriculum and assessment every grade span pre-k through 12 presented gave an overview tried to help us answer these essential questions by grade span we also last year did a ELA combined ELA and math site visit of the Franklin we invited about 30 educators to come and at the same since we have them there on site we had them look at our ELA which was in the process of being completed and they also gave us feedback on the math as well why that

▶ 25:33 Speaker 2: while they were there we also started to develop surveys trying to seek information from parents students and teachers we ran out of time deciding not to administer a survey at the end of the year because of the busyness of the end of the year so we'll revisit it this fall and administer it this fall thinking that we're likely to get more participation this fall than they we would have in May and June just because of the busyness this coming year we'll complete those surveys start some focus groups of students at different levels and teachers and do a site visit where we invite educators from across the area to come spend the day with us and visit our classrooms and give us feedback on these questions as they visit classrooms they visit our classrooms K through 12 they'll talk to students that day and they'll also talk to teachers that day and given all that feedback they'll report back to us sort of their sense of how they feel we are doing towards these essential questions on that day we'll end the process by sort of then trying to triangulate the data looking at our review of curriculum and assessment our review of the data a a review of the surveys, a review of the focus groups, the site visit, and then start to identify themes that we see coming across from the data and start to summarize those themes and then develop an action plan to begin to address things, themes that we know we need to address that have resulted from the math program review. As you can see there, at this point, we're just giving an update. We don't have any data to report yet. in that process of triangulating and and collecting and really organizing our information so there aren't any budget implications or any anything else to report we'd like to thank the teachers and administrators who give of their time in addition to meeting there's a lot of collection and organizing and this year a lot of writing and sort of consolidating and summarizing information so none of this is possible without the teachers in sight and the administrators and educators who sort of join us in this process and journey so we're very grateful to those members as well as other teachers who aren't necessarily part of the team but invite us in and give us information and feedback as well so we're open to any questions from the community Mr. O'Connell

▶ 28:11 Speaker 6: Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you to Dr. Adams. And first of all, let me welcome Ms. Greenwood, first time in the lion's den. I know you've been on staff for a while, so thank you for your work. So just a couple of questions, if I may. Looking at the timeline, the six steps, due, if you will, through today, done, complete, great. with regard to the essential questions I'm interested in two and not trying to put you on the spot I recognize that this isn't the final report I recognize where we are in the process but I'm gonna ask the question that I've been asking with regard to any review we have done with curriculum or programming and in particular with regard to question three with its focus on instructional and assessment practices just briefly how does our exploration to date of competency based education inform this speak to this so we're we're still in

▶ 29:20 Speaker 2: our infancy with developing those standards and getting consensus on those standards from staff so it informs like it's a parallel process but we're really looking at what's in place right now and perhaps as the year goes on as that process develops more it will likely influence our action plan and it will inform for certainly parts of our question how we respond to some of these questions can be incorporated into our action plan so when we even look at question number four how we meet varied needs there's an opportunity there to provide opportunities that to make sure that we're giving kids feedback along in their process towards meeting the standards that we develop so I think it's a kind of a there are two separate processes and I think as with this year progresses with the CBE and some of that piloting and some of that work it will better inform perhaps the action plan as we so we're really trying to document what is right now what's currently in place what are the practices and where as we do so what are the particular needs that arise from that great

▶ 30:34 Speaker 6: understood and thank you for that I just let me just just so that there's no

▶ 30:37 Speaker 1: confusion the standards she's speaking to or is when you are developing a competency based system you identify the standards in each content area and then the standards for graduation as opposed to the standards that are already established by the state in the math frameworks they often coincide or build on each other but in her particular reply to you she's she's talking about the standards we will establish as content area standards in a CBE system the state has already told us what they expect the standards to be K through 12

▶ 31:16 Speaker 6: understood you know I asked the question because I think regardless of where we end up with competency-based education I just think there's huge value in the exploration and we've already seen in various instances that come into play so I'd love to see that come into play as we look at our math program with regard to question four and our aim of meeting the varied needs of students I'm hoping you can speak to the matter of instruction curriculum assessment in the context of special education and what I'm particularly interested in is learning whether in to what degree our special education professionals have

▶ 32:07 Speaker 2: been or will be participating in this review so as we're going we looked at and we've come before this committee several times to talk about an achievement gap that does exist for our special education students that is more and more apparent when they get to middle school certainly doesn't start in middle school starts earlier so we were very cognizant of that and that's certainly something that the group is looking at we've looked at data we've looked at access to of our special education students to the math curriculum to the math standards and have discussed that so that's certainly something that we've looked at and have tried to address over the past years and have already started to look we've got some embargo data we've looked at and we

▶ 32:55 Speaker 6: are having those discussions great and I'm sure more to follow on that in my last comment if I may madam chair and I've said this before to you dr. Adams I I want to reiterate the request that I've made before with regard to such reviews and reports to the committee that when it's completed that you give us the good the bad and the ugly and when it comes to math and Melrose in this instance and I again implore you implore you to make every effort to tell what we need to hear and know to support you and your team and ultimately the students of Melrose and not perhaps what you think we might want to hear and I'm not suggesting you do that but it doesn't help any of us to when we come here to just get the rose-colored glasses version of reality at the end of the day and I think at the beginning of the day we're all on the same team and we have the facts uh i think we're much better positioned to get you and your team what you need in terms of resources and support so thank you thank you madam chair discussion questions

▶ 34:26 Speaker 7: from the committee mr selm so first and foremost welcome miss greenwood thank you um i hope to to I hope to work with you as I worked with mr. Morris prior I want to build on what my colleague asked but in a slightly different direction first you mentioned and I agree that a survey in the fall is probably more likely to get or early winter perhaps is more likely to get more feedback from parents especially as they're still in the homework grind with their kids right but then you mentioned focus groups and so I'm curious if you can discuss a little bit about what you envision the makeup of your focus groups to be what populations do you envision being included are you looking for specific identity groups to be there or is this a general whoever applies and we go forward what are we what consists of these focus groups we've done in the

▶ 35:37 Speaker 2: past is focus groups of students to just get the student voice different from a survey to sort of get more authentic kind of quantitative kind of data qualitative sorry qualitative kind of data from them we've we've we've kind of targeted specific age groups because of their ability better to communicate what their experiences so we've targeted fifth graders because they're at sort of the end of their elementary career we've then we've targeted eighth graders because they're at the end of that kind of space and then we've kind of sort of targeted juniors and seniors in the past so that's something the focus group will kind of look at is where might be the best places for particular math in math but those have been have tended to be the age fans that we've kind of kids that we've talked to because of their ability to sort of give us the best sort of feedback on their particular experiences and those have been some of the most valuable pieces of data because the kids are pretty honest about what have been positive experiences and for them and what they have wished we would have done more or less of as well so those those kind of conversations have been the best and we've done as many as we can possibly do with the folks in the group and the folks of in the amount of time that we have and the resources that we have so we've done as many as we could because of the importance of that kind of feedback we have not done them of parents we've sort of focused on the survey of parents that's how we have

▶ 37:17 Speaker 7: focused in the past with regards to the students can you talk to the challenge of translating a not the parents the student focus groups can you talk to the challenge of interpreting students like and dislike of an activity versus their ability to grasp a standard and move and tie that into the next standard say yeah

▶ 37:39 Speaker 2: And that gets better as the kids get older. I think it's much more challenging with, say, a younger student to have that match. But it depends on the group of kids. We certainly have always tried to gather a group of students that kind of represent a wide range. We haven't necessarily just targeted students who have done very well in a subject or who have struggled, tried to get a broad range so that the kids could communicate their thinking to us. and so that I think the middle school and high school students are better able to communicate how they've been better able to grasp the content say from specific supports that have been in place either in the school or in their class specific classrooms that teachers have done over the years so they're better able to do that matching for us elementary students not quite yet but they have surprised us again what they have said has been invaluable what kids have contributed because they offer another different perspective and very

▶ 38:41 Speaker 7: valuable one and unfiltered unfiltered I'm sure yeah and and with your leave I would like one more question in light I realize that this is a math review but I also accept that math is now part of stem the entire and so much of stem is math related and math based so does this program review look at all at any interdisciplinary or inter curricular standards discussions courses I'm sorry

▶ 39:27 Speaker 2: don't mean to make you quiver there it's certainly something that's come up because one of our questions is about how how mathematics really supports students to be effective citizens in a stem focused kind of world and in stem careers or just to be a good citizen who can take in information around stem issues that affect our communities our nation in the world so that certainly has come up we still are cut we were still very early to sort of get really specific on where those connections lie and how are how strongly articulated they are I think we've got some ideas that perhaps they're not as in some places they're strongly articulated and other places they're not and could be strengthened so that's certainly something we don't want to see math in isolation it needs to be and there's lots of opportunities to support and integrate with science and technology I had a chemistry professor that said

▶ 40:27 Speaker 7: numbers by themselves are meaningless you need the units to go along with to

▶ 40:34 Speaker 2: provide context absolutely and how does our math curriculum provide context and if it doesn't where are there opportunities to do so thank you and

▶ 40:44 Speaker 2: that's the question I'm struggling with and trying to answer. Further questions? I have

▶ 40:50 Jessica Dugan: a few. It's great to see you. There's no better way to onboard into a new role than to deep dive into curriculum, so lucky you. I know it will be hard work, however, I hope also super valuable for your view of the big picture. I had a very similar question to Mr. Selms about that kind of interdisciplinary potential slightly different lens though I think as these program reviews I find super super valuable because we are looking at the big picture we're looking at a student's experience K to 12 and one of the lenses that I think is really important is around student engagement in the curriculum it translates into a lot of the work we're doing around project-based learning and I think that It's actually critical that these program reviews start to pay attention to interdisciplinary connections because without that, all of those curriculum areas begin to fall flat. This is the way, you know better than I do, the way teaching is going. So I guess I would encourage us to find a way to that exploration sooner than later and not, I know we're midway through this already, but I think it is absolutely critical to engaging students in the classroom in a way that translates for them into the real world. So if we could find our way to that, I think we would avoid missing an opportunity, knowing that these cycles only come around every few years for any given curriculum. Also the value of these, one of the values is, we've noticed it from other program reviews, teachers who are part of the team it gains so much from the experience of looking across grade levels and examining their practice in a really deep and meaningful way and I know there are a lot of people involved who are not on this list but I am a little curious about high school representation on your specific committee it sounds like maybe you were the high school teacher last year is there any way we can it's all elementary other than other than you miss Greenwood elementary and middle school without any high school representation or anyway right we've already reached out to great now the high school math department to try to get at least one or more representatives okay great start attending and and I know it's a volunteer engagement and appreciate the folks who have stepped up for that at the same time I hope you know it's it's So valuable, so I hope that we can get some folks to respond to that.

▶ 43:40 Jessica Dugan: Thank you, if there's, yes, Ms. Seymour.

▶ 43:41 Speaker 1: So again, this is, the purpose of the program review really is to look for things that we could do better. That's why we engage in this. It's a very self-critical study. Where are we going well, where are we not doing well? Probably one of the best parts of this whole thing, and I think both Dr. Adams and I don't know Miss Greenwood experienced it is when the visiting teams come in from other districts and they're often districts that are comparable to ours or even considered higher performing than ours and they provide great feedback to our staff they say why aren't you doing this did you ever think about doing this this is what I saw you do well but this is how you could extend it so it's more effective so and the action plan that comes out of this is what we value most the action plan says to us what we need to improve if you remember the social studies action plan we finally began to have a sequenced k5 social studies approach we had never had it before you know the ELA it helped boost our writing across the curriculum and our again our writing alignment k12 so So similarly, this will come out of this with strong recommendations on improvements we can make, areas that we need to address, yes, some praise of what we do well, but everybody likes to know that, okay, I'm doing something well, but that's where it's going to be important. My concern is every time we've had a program review, they all do come out with a budget impact and we have not always been able to meet the recommendations of that budget impact I think on the ELA ELA one if memory serves me correctly we were able to buy some of the books I think PTO has helped us with other parts of the books that we needed to do to add our nonfiction and to expand our library to be a more modern modern version of what we've had social studies we've never been able to buy the materials which we were sort of okay with because the state has yet to settle on a social work studies framework and the worst thing you want to do is spend money and then have the state change its mind that happened in 1995 if I remember correctly so the committee has to understand what

▶ 46:14 Speaker 1: the implication is for this the implication for this always has dollars attached either in actual materials or in training so and in this subject

▶ 46:27 Speaker 1: especially we could be looking at that during the season now the problem is this will not come to us until after the budget season so whether we put a placeholder in the budget or not it's too early to say but it's something to

▶ 46:44 Jessica Dugan: keep in the back of your minds can you remind us when the last time we bought math curriculum was I thought it was relatively recently ah yes it was we

▶ 46:49 Speaker 1: bought envision four years ago we just got the update for k2 envision and we bought new math books I'm looking at Laurie we're piloting this year yeah

▶ 47:10 Jessica Dugan: it's part of the textbook bond but the envision was K to 5 yeah yeah we did not buy new for six to eight recently they're very old no no we're piloting something we bought seven

▶ 47:19 Speaker 1: eight prior to me coming so I just started my six year so we brought seven eight prior to me coming

▶ 47:30 Jessica Dugan: it's probably seven or eight years old right yeah so yeah so I think we appreciate that reminder from the superintendent about budget Mr. O'Connell thank you I you know as I said with regard to the

▶ 47:38 Speaker 6: good the bad and the ugly I also don't want that realistic concern about budget impact to cause the program review committee to dial back their work they want to say you know this is gonna cost X amount of dollars we can't say that we can't advocate for that I mean you need to push the envelope and it's quite frankly it's our job to say no so thank you further questions discussion you

▶ 48:16 Jessica Dugan: look forward to the continued exploration of math and how it connects to other things and the report later on this school year thank you very much

▶ 48:27 Speaker 1: thank you thank you ladies not so bad I'm sorry not so bad please come back

▶ 48:37 Jessica Dugan: regularly okay we are moving on the next topic sorry I have to enlarge the next

▶ 48:45 Jessica Dugan: next topic on our agenda is an education scholarship proposal okay so um let's