From integrated math to traditional

Photo by jamie forsythe

LESSON REVERSED. (left to right) Lincoln High School math teachers Shelby Cail and Betsy Miller examine their new math books during a training session at Tacoma School District’s Professional Development Center Aug. 28.

Tacoma Public Schools eighth-grade and high school math teachers are being schooled before school starts on their new math curriculum. Tacoma School Board recently approved the adoption of the new curriculum at the eighth through 12th-grade level.

This school year marks the second in a row the district implemented a new math curriculum just prior to the start of school. Near this time last year, then-Superintendent Charlie Milligan recommended to the board the implementation of Saxon Math across all grade levels, and the board approved it.

However, students in the upper grade levels weren't making the strides that the younger students were. School board member Debbie Winskill said the Saxon Math program doesn't have the geometry component needed for high school students to pass the math portion of the Washington Assessment on Student Learning.

"Saxon didn't have a geometry course in their materials," commented Carolyn Trevelen, the district's executive director of curriculum and instruction. "It was clear that what we had purchased last year wasn't going to fill that gap."

The new materials will drive instruction, Trevelen explained, while the other math materials will remain in place to supplement the new curriculum. "No one program answers all the questions," she noted. "What we want is for teachers to have those other resources available for them to meet the needs of kids with different learning styles."

Patrick Paris, the district's math facilitator for grades six through 12, said the implementation of this new math curriculum has "been brewing for a number of years." In Tacoma Public Schools, there has been a dual track math system where students could take either traditional math – the Algebra, Geometry and Algebra 2 strand - or the integrated mathematics program (IMP).

"High school teachers have been wanting for a while to go back to one track so they'd be some consistency between the departments," Paris said. "If you have one program…it allows teachers to collaborate at a much higher level, because everyone's talking about the same set of standards and the same resources."

This year according to students' schedules, Paris said, there is only one high school that maintained the integrity of the IMP program.  "We're going to let the IMP program sunset," Treleven commented.

IMP 3 and 4 will be available for students at Stadium High School, she noted, so students don't have to change midstream.

Once the IMP sunsets, there will be one basic math track for students. However, Paris noted students will have options of what classes to take to fill their math requirements including the standard classes, as well as business math and applied math, through the district's Career and Technical Education program.

The new math program will allow for more collaboration among math teachers, according to Paris. "We know the math materials themselves aren't going to cause magical things to happen," he said. "We know it's the teaching that goes along with a good set of materials.

"The success is going to come from what math teachers do with the book itself," he added.

It was more training for math teachers Aug. 28 as they gathered at the district's Professional Development Center to hear a three-hour presentation by Bernice Levens of Prentice Hall, the publisher of the district's new algebra 1, geometry and algebra 2 books, about how to use the new math books and most specifically all the technology that comes with them. There's so much technology that comes with it the teachers even got a "math technology cheat sheet" from Prentice Hall, which gives teachers tips on how to utilize the various components including Presentation Express that provides teachers a Power Point on every lesson.

The publisher for the precalculus and calculus books is Houghton Mifflin.

Paris said the math committee outlined a set of guiding principals as to what the district needed prior to looking at any materials. At the algebra, geometry and algebra 2 level, five different publishers submitted materials for the district's review, according to Paris. He noted Prentice Hall was selected due to the extra materials that will be able to support organizations that do outside tutoring via web sites as well as the technology resources available for teachers.

Treleven said the math committee's work started in the spring bringing all the high school principal and math teachers together to have a discussion about what was working for them and what wasn't. From there an adoption committee grew, which she explained had representatives from every high school and several middle schools since high school math reaches down to eighth grade.

The committee, according to Treleven, was looking at what programs, tools would best align with the grade level expectations that were "easy for kids to use, easy for families to understand and more in alignment with new language coming out of the legislature."

Approximately 7,000 books have been ordered, according to Treleven, at a cost $530,000, which includes both student and teacher materials. "We'll be pretty close to getting the materials" to teachers, she noted, by the start of school Sept. 5.  

Even if the teachers can't physically hold the textbooks, Paris said they could get information they need for lessons plan through online resources.

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