On Monday, I attended the last hearing for the Health Standards and Math Standards. The Board of Education passed both unanimously. I was actually disappointed on both counts, as the opponents of the Health Standards had some great arguments on the need to add information about caregiving as well as human trafficking to the health standards. Obviously, I was disappointed with their vote in favor of the new math standards. Especially since Crystal McMachen testified about an issue with vertical alignment in 6th through 8th grade. Some of the board members were concerned about what she pointed out. They expect the SD Department of Education to go through and fix the issue. I hope the Board of Education follows up on it.
One thing that I haven't brought up about my dislike of the new standards is the lack of emphasis on data analysis and probability. The timing of this recent article from TIME magazine seems appropriate. In fact, if you read the article, it indicates that we should focus more on data and financial literacy and statistical reasoning. It says we shouldn't focus on rote math--but our new standards seem to do more of that. In fact, the article states:
Our schools could teach the math that matters, that shapes what we watch, read, and believe. Math underlies consequential financial and healthcare decisions that all Americans make. Math can help civil society flourish, or our ignorance about math could tear us apart. The right math can engage, empower, and elevate students. We could equip our populace with the math skills to navigate life-defining challenges.
I will say this--I think that our current standards could be improved, and I have some ideas on how to go about doing that. However, I would not have done what the Dept of Education did. I would have started with what we have and worked from there--that isn't what happened. They completely rewrote everything and then asked the review committee to make revisions. Teachers should have been involved in the writing process, rather than just revising what they were given.
We are not the only state that is rewriting its math standards. North Carolina recently redid theirs. Their proposed standards are also being met with criticism because they are actually emphasizing more data science and placing less emphasis on geometry. I will give North Carolina credit for creating some progression documents throughout the process. Our Dept of Education still needs to make a crosswalk with the old standards, and then they will need to create the unpacked standards. This will be a lot of work so I hope that they are ready for that.
The SD Dept of Education keeps bringing up a $3.7 million grant to help with the transition to the new standards. However, this grant that the Dept of Education received is an SPDG grant, which is funded by the U.S. Dept of Education, and is to "assist State educational agencies (SEAs) in reforming and improving their systems for personnel preparation and professional development in early intervention, educational, and transition services to improve results for children with disabilities." In fact, the SD Dept of Education has already funded 8 schools in SD with this grant money. Each school will receive about $125,000, so that is $1 million of the $3.7 million. I also found a contract to Measurement Incorporated in Albany, New York, who will provide the evaluation of the grant. The contract allocates over $206,000 to evaluation of the project. It will be interesting to see what the Dept of Education does with the remaining $2.5 million over 5 years.
All in all, I am disappointed that there was unanimous approval by the Board of Education, but I did everything that I could possibly do. I worked hard to provide accurate data and information to the Board. And I would do it again because it was the right thing to do. If our math scores go down when they were holding steady, I think it will be because now there is a misalignment with our state assessment, the Smarter Balanced Assessment for grades 3 through 8, and the Math ACT for 11th graders.
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