Dear TTSD School Board:

You have a decision to make. I understand that this is not an easy decision. I would ask you to consider who bears the risk of the outcome of your decision.

Certainly teachers and the district staff will be affected. They are, and will continue to be, charged with implementing whatever curriculum is selected for the maximum benefit of the students.

Students and their parents will also be affected. The philosophical principles embedded in the design of the curriculum will play a significant role in the delivery of the material via the textbook and the classroom. This will impact both what the student will learn, and how it will be learned.

Clearly the math curriculum will have a profound influence on all parties involved in the education process. The fact that this decision has ramifications for all involved does not mean that all bear the risk of the decision. Who are the real stakeholders in this?

I would submit to you that the parents are the true stakeholders who bear the consequences of your decision. For it is the parents who bear the ultimate responsibility for the education of their children.

Parental responsibility extends beyond the K-12 education. For most children, there will be some form of secondary education. It may be traditional 4 year college; it may be a trade school. Whatever form it takes, it will be the parents who will nurture their kids through the next stage of their lives.

Where will the resources come from to help the poorly prepared student overcome their obstacles? We all know the answer to that question: parents. Parents will bear the burden of a poor education, not the school district.

Students will continue to move through the system; the teachers and administrators remain. When all is said and done, those advocating for CPM, while certainly affected by it, will not bear the consequences of their decision. They are not stakeholders.

They won’t be there to help my child with college math, to write checks for tutors or additional math classes, to watch them compete for technical jobs at Intel. That will be my job. The district has no “skin” in this “game”.

You have heard the District’s representations with respect to this curriculum. And you have heard from and seen numerous parents who will tell you those representations aren’t consistent with the firsthand experience of their child.

The district staff represents that this curriculum adequately prepares students for college level math. Yet they have never been asked by the Board to substantively respond to the documented criticisms directed at reform math curriculums by hundreds of collegiate math professors. They can’t both be right.

Neither parents, nor the college math professors we will send our children to, are in favor of this curriculum. They are the most significant “consumers” of this “product”, and they don’t care for it. Yet, it is the very “product” we insist on producing. Why is this?

You have seen and heard a groundswell of support for a curriculum based on traditional math. As the true stakeholders in this debate, we accept the responsibility for and the consequences of this decision.

A divided teaching staff is weak justification for accepting a proposal in opposition to that proposed by the stakeholders, those with the real “skin” in the game, our kids.

You have an obligation as elected officials to represent your constituency. And your constituency is the parents, not the district staff.

The deciding factor should be the parents. And the parents have spoken. Will you listen?

As I stand before you this evening, I am truly humbled by the daunting budget tasks you face. The impending decisions you must make will be difficult at best. I thank you for your leadership in this area as I believe the Tigard-Tualatin school district has some of the best budget leadership in this state.

During your term, you no doubt have witnessed how communities galvanize easily when it comes to potential changes in athletics and music programs. You can even amass a large crowd for highly controversial topics. It is only on rare occasions that you can incite a large number of parents about an academic subject – especially math. You should be truly amazed by the sustained passion of the 100’s of parents who continue to plead for math education. But this should also sound as an alarm, a warning indicator that something is very wrong.

Many in this community feel the current math curriculum is failing and they are equally certain that the proposed efforts suggested at the last board meeting will continue to fail their children.

We understand that a comprehensive curriculum encompasses many aspects besides simply the textbook. However, the backbone of every curriculum is the textbook the curriculum is based on – it literally dominates the instruction for nearly all of our teachers. A textbook weak in content and coherency cannot be overcome with supplementation and implementation adjustments.

This district has conveyed a commitment to align with the recommendations of the NMAP and thus the need for a balanced program. The district asserts that by choosing CPM they have accomplished just that. Yet a curriculum that is deficient in content, without a coherent progression of topics, that does not promote computational proficiency and that relies primarily on inquiry-based instruction does not follow the recommendations of the NMAP report and is not balanced. Saying CPM is balanced does not make it so. And the illogical recommendation of introducing supplementation is like adding new tires to a car with a blown engine. No matter how good the new tires, the car still won’t run.

Most certainly, the requirement to pass state test benchmarks to graduate heightened the need to evaluate the math curriculum. Obviously, something needed to be done. However, success on state benchmarks requires only a basic math education. We should not accept this as our highest level of achievement, but rather our minimum level. And the curriculum we choose should allow us to continue to challenge all students to excel to their potential. Regrettably, neither the current curriculum nor the recommended district supplements allow for that challenge.

There has been so much reported about the sliding of US math education standards and performance – and the relative success of our high school graduates compared to other nations. Shouldn’t we be looking to educate our students so that they can move ahead and effectively compete with those from other countries?

Regardless of your stance on any of these points, in the end, the role of public education is to educate. And despite the district’s continued insistence that CPM – or some hybrid of CPM will work for ALL students, many in this community continue to disagree. We’ve heard the concerns of imposing a curriculum that is not broadly supported by teachers. Yet, last spring the district recommended and the board supported the adoption of CPM with less than 50% teacher support. Even if we factor in the need for teacher approval, can we allow it to supersede the need for a quality curriculum?

And what about the need for community buy-in and support? What you must acknowledge is that we are not JUST “parents”. We are engineers, scientists, professors, accountants, educators and much more. We work in fields that utilize mathematics everyday. To imply that we don’t understand what a strong math program looks like is an insult to us and our professions. Many of us are more than qualified to evaluate the effectiveness of math curriculums for our children.

This district must be held accountable for delivering results for ALL students. But by the time we realize the full impact of this curriculum, most of you will have moved on. The students will be left to deal with the impact of your decision for years to come. Our students do not have time for this district to figure out that this curriculum will not work. These kids do not get a second chance.

Thank you.

Members of the board,

In considering option 4, I urge you to take a close look at the parents in this room. I do not know what you see, but what I see are the parents that spend countless hours volunteering in classrooms, on PSOs, and on other committees for the good of the students. In essence, they are MAKING YOUR DISTRICT WHAT IT IS. Not surprisingly they are also probably most in tune with their students and know when something seems awry.

While this debate has parts of the national traditional vs. reform debate in it, it is much simpler than that. It is about THESE BOOKS, THESE PARENTS, and THESE CHILDREN.

In the parent-district math meetings, we have presented just a small sampling of our concerns regarding the mathematical content in THESE BOOKS, most of which have been completely ignored. For example:

• Why is it ok not to teach math principles that are generalizeable such as how to symbolically manipulate and solve inequalities?
• Why is it ok to use manipulatives that are ambiguous and can mislead students into believing math is actually not a precise discipline?
• Why is it ok to confuse and mislead students with mathematically incorrect relationships between continuous and discrete mathematics?

The one response we did receive was “we discussed it in class”. What happens to the child that misses this class? Shouldn’t THESE BOOKS serve as a reference for THIS CHILD? The district continues to also say that the main virtue of this program is that it is “balanced”. I make the observation that an empty two-sided weight scale is also balanced.

I am not in opposition to some of the aspects of reform math in moderation. The most important part, however, is that the topics must always be tied back to sound mathematic principles, something that is very weak in THESE BOOKS.

In my professional opinion as a Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at Portland State, I believe THESE BOOKS lack sufficient mathematical content and coherence to serve as the spine. Had we felt that THESE BOOKS could have been supplemented in some way, we would have resolved this debate months ago.

Consider the following two points:

• What happens when the description of concepts clashes between books? Shouldn’t the spine be the one with the mathematically sound principles in it?
• How do you supplement a spiraling curriculum that visits many, many topics over and over throughout the years?

As an analogy of implementing option 4, you can put a trailer hitch on the back of an economy car and there might be a chance you will survive pulling a large boat. But by in large, it will lead to catastrophe. It would probably be better to buy a truck.

I urge you to look carefully at THESE BOOKS as if you were one of THESE PARENTS. Because until you do, you will not comprehend the anger and frustration that THESE PARENTS have endured. I personally have shown the content of CPM books to the math chair and over half a dozen of my faculty. Not one of them feels this program provides sufficient mathematical preparation for college, particularly, engineering and science.

In closing, I urge you to
• LOOK UP at the top performing math countries
• LOOK UP at the NMAP’s very first curriculum recommendation
• LOOK UP at the top two performing math states (Minnesota and Massachusetts) in this country
• LOOK UP at the top large districts in this state
as they all have one thing in common… a coherent progression of math topics.

Because in the end, do you not want the rest of society to LOOK UP to our graduates?

As I said in February, “These TTSD students will make you proud if you give them the proper foundation. Let that be your legacy.”

Finally, remember, it is THESE BOOKS, THESE PARENTS, and THESE CHILDREN

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you Chair Chism and members of the Tigard-Tualatin School Board for taking the time to hear from concerned parents, teachers and the community. We do not agree with the hasty change in the math curriculum that the district administration has shoved on our aspiring students.

My name is Dennis Yee and I am here representing the vast opinion of parents in Tigard, Tualatin and the community group Parents for Math Choice. We are here to provide a voice to students, teachers, parents and the community who have felt disenfranchised and believe that the math education in this school district has taken a wrong turn. We want the School Board to do what’s right…overturn CPM …really listen to parents…provide choices…and provide a solid foundation of math learning.

I am a parent of students in the school district. I am also an economist – a field that is steeped in mathematics and statistics. I know what it takes to succeed in occupations and fields of study that demand mathematical rigor and training.

I am here giving voice to neighbors - friends in the community - that feel that CPM does not adequately teach math to our students. I have sat through and been an active voice in the school board sponsored parent-district math committee, and we parents are unconvinced that the school administration has presented any data or information that would persuade the average parent or student that CPM is an adequate course of math instruction.
Drawbacks of CPM:
• It is an “inch-wide and inch-deep” curriculum.
• It lacks teacher support material.
• Its testing material is poorly organized.
• The textbook is inconsistent with homework lessons and its spiral teaching method is confusing – conceptual foundations are not properly founded.
• The CPM curriculum is impossible for differentiating lessons for TAG, IEP and 504 students.
• The CPM approach lacks student accountability with teachers. It relies too excessively on group work and “group think”… e.g., unmotivated students will copy answers off of hotmath.com or demand answers from other kids in the group. This does not help either set of kids how to learn math.)

In hard times like we have now, understanding the challenges that our children will face, it is our responsibility to arm our kids with the best tools at our disposal to meet that future. A weak math foundation – like CPM – won’t help our children compete in a global marketplace that puts a premium on knowledge. Why would anyone want to hamstring our kids and risk their chances for future economic prosperity?

Math is one of the core subjects that schools teach. Don’t use our children as subjects of experiments for a new math curriculum. We’ve heard the district say that this first year of CPM is a trial year and there are many problems. Next year, the district says it will experiment some more to smooth out some of the problem areas. I tell you now that our kids are not lab rats to be toyed with and tested. No amount of fixes can repair a flawed CPM curriculum. No thank you…you can leave your experiments in the laboratory. We demand that our children be taught math to the highest degree that each of them has the aptitude of learning.

Please provide the traditional math basics so that our children can compete in the 21st century for good jobs. Our kids will fall behind and not be able to compete in demanding technical fields if they do not get the rigorous math training now at an early age.

The CPM textbook is UNSUITABLE. It does NOT address our concerns:
• It is incoherent and spirals around topics.
• Its content is inadequate.
• The textbook is not a good resource for math learners. It is also a poor reference book.
• CPM over uses group work and group grading.
• It does not address differentiated learning styles.
• It does not strengthen the bond between teachers and student learning.
• It is unproven and has not been shown to improve performance or adequately prepare students for higher level math.

I have personally visited and observed several different math classes in this district… after watching the CPM curriculum in action…I have first hand seen the inadequacy of the CPM math curriculum. In no way am I impugning the teachers. It is the curriculum that I find unsuitable. Let me underscore – it is not the teachers, but the curriculum that is bad. We have some very good teachers.

The so-called “Math Wars” have been raging for a few years now. We parents have presented compelling data during the “math committee hearing process”. Our evidence is overwhelming and convincing if you do not close yourself to this debate. Our data would compel anyone to think twice before leaping blindly into an untested curriculum like CPM.
• CPM was widely tried in CA during the 1990’s, but abandoned by school districts because performance levels there dropped. CA state colleges also saw more incoming freshman needing to take more remedial math courses.
• Top scoring school districts in Oregon do not use CPM – TuHS didn’t use CPM and scored highly on the OAKS test…PPS saw uneven results in their 6 high schools.
• Top university professors, engineers, and mathematicians across the U.S. do not find the CPM curriculum suitable for educating young math learners.
• CPM does not address different learning styles – including learning disadvantaged, advanced students nor kids who learn best from direct instruction.

Many school districts have tested CPM – these experiments have ended in failure. Schools have reverted back to what worked before or provided a choice in math curriculum.
Parents in our community are angry and they have every right to be when elected bodies choose to ignore us.

I ask you now, are you so certain of yourselves that you know what’s best for every child in the district. Are you going to tell me that you know what is best for my child and for every child of every parent in this board room and in our community that you would commit our children to a life sentence. Because your decision about the direction that math instruction takes today will have everlasting impact on the lives all children. I call upon you to find the wisdom to choose MATH CHOICE or return the district back to TRADITIONAL MATH values. You have [or will] hear the district staff recommend “Option 4”. This is a minority opinion. Option 4 is retaining CPM. This is unacceptable to this community. We, the parents on the parent-district math committee, unanimously and vehemently oppose Option 4.

Of the choices debated by this committee, we parents wholly agree with a traditional math approach – Option 2, or Math Choice – Option 3, or a hybrid approach that uses a traditional-based math textbook as an organizing spine with small elements of CPM added. A hybrid teaching approach using CPM as the organizing spine makes no coherent mathematical sense because of its spiral approach. It teaches a little here and little bit there is confusing and lacks substance and math rigor.

We demand a math curriculum that will teach and provide a solid math foundation for our children. Under the district’s Future Vision Statement:
• The district’s mission statement says it will “Educate every child”, and in its strategy to accomplish this goal says they will collaborate with parents. I have to report that we saw very little collaboration going on during the parent-district math committee…we wanted to discuss curriculum differences with little avail.
• The district’s belief statement says it “addresses the diverse needs of all students”. Please explain to us why MATH CHOICE doesn’t live up to our desire to provide diverse learning needs?
• The district’s goal says it “will make decisions and take actions that maintain public trust”. Again I ask…How is the district administration digging in it heels in favor of CPM create public trust? I just don’t see it.

We will hold the school district and the school board accountable to its VISION, its MISSION statements, and its GOALS AND PERFORMANCE standards. We ask that you help us with accountability. You - the school board – have a legal obligation to independently evaluate and oversee that proper curriculum is provided to our children by our school district. You leave parents no choice if legal action is needed to overturn CPM.

At the beginning of the Parent-District resolution process, one of the agreements we made within the committee was that any data or research needed to be independently verifiable and of research journal quality. In these discussions, the curriculum department provided data to support CPM’s track record that I have since found has been misrepresented and has not been researched and confirmed.

At the meetings, we were not provided this data in hardcopy so I was unable to verify until I received the board book last week. In the yellow book, the district used data provided from CPM for only 4 high schools (not even districts) to show that CPM prepares students for higher-level math. The district continues to provide data that on the surface looks promising, but if one actually does their research and delves deeper, the results do not support the promising results that are being portrayed.

Let’s take a look at one of the high schools (Alhambra in the Martinez School District) used by TTSD to prove CPM’s so-called effectiveness. I made calls to the Martinez School District and I have some critical information to share with you.

Apparently, at the middle school in that district, they are no longer using CPM which they had used for over 10 years. They piloted Glencoe/McGraw-Hill this school year while they were conducting their ongoing math adoption process. In the Board Agenda for March 23, 2009 – the school board approved the use of the Glencoe/McGraw-Hill texts for grades 6-12 at ALL secondary schools for next fall.

When I called the district to ask why they opted not to continue with CPM, I was told the following:
1. CPM provided little help for intervention
2. There were no opportunities for reteaching if students misunderstood concepts
3. It wasn’t meeting the needs of most kids, especially the lower and middle end kids who were showing little to no growth in performance

I was informed that the high school is still offering a traditional option in math which is in direct contradiction with what was presented by the district at the committee meeting. I also find it interesting that one of the teachers at Alhambra High School helped author the CPM textbooks. I am calling into question the completeness of the data that was presented.

Let’s look at another high school – Glendale in CA. First, Glendale High School is a Title 1 school which does not share the same demographics as TTSD’s high schools. I ask the board, should TTSD be making math curriculum decisions that will affect thousands of students from a school that is not comparable to TTSD? Even so, the school offers 2 tracks in all math classes in Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra 2. The success rate on the AP Calculus test has to factor in students that have a traditional foundation with those who came in on the CPM track. Without that breakdown, the data is being misrepresented.

I just want to add that I randomly called one middle school in the district and found out they are using McDougall-Littell math texts and do NOT have CPM. Also, I have looked at the course catalog from the Glendale Unified School District and they offer AP Calculus classes that do NOT use CPM and Honors math classes that also do NOT use CPM. So it appears that Glendale may be the only school in that district that exclusively offers CPM at the AP level. Other schools in the Glendale district which offer advanced courses without CPM should also be examined.

If these 4 high schools are the strongest data CPM can produce to prove the effectiveness of its curriculum, it is far from compelling. It is certainly not compelling enough for TTSD to risk the next 6 years of our children’s math education.

In conclusion, I want to urge you, the board, to think carefully about data TTSD has provided touting CPM as an effective curriculum. Tonight, I have pointed out areas where TTSD has misrepresented data that cannot be overlooked. It is time to hold this district’s curriculum department accountable for the education of our children. I urge this board to ask the hard questions and to make a well-informed decision in the next few weeks.

Excerpts below:

College Preparatory Mathematics: Geometry Connections

This book is, in a word, unsuitable. To be sure, it presents a wealth of nice inquiry activities that might help students to develop an intuitive understanding of geometric relationships. But the problems with the book so outweigh its positive aspects that adopting it would lead to disaster.

Here are the main problems that I noticed with the book:

• The organization of chapters is obscure. Many of the chapters have titles that suggest two or more completely different ideas thrown together (“Justification and Similarity,” “Proofs and Quadrilaterals”), and the chapters themselves did not give me any confidence that the authors had succeeded in integrating their disparate subjects into a coherent narrative.

• There are virtually no mathematically coherent definitions. One absolute requirement for deductive reasoning is precise definitions: You cannot argue carefully about a concept if you don’t know exactly what it is. The descriptions that pass for “definitions” in this book are laughably vague, and many key concepts (such as angle) seem never to be defined at all.

• Many (perhaps most?) important geometric facts are never stated precisely. Instead, it is left to the students to glean a generality from their inquiry activities and then state it themselves. I don’t dispute the usefulness of having students come up with their own versions of general statements based on guided experience; but it’s a rare student who is able to synthesize experience into a correct and precise statement of mathematical truth.

• There are almost no proofs in this book. For a while, the book guides students through what it calls “justifications” (which I think are supposed to be reasonably convincing arguments without quite having the logical force of proof), but it never says exactly what a “justification” is or how students can distinguish a good one from a bad one. Then in Chapter 7, the book introduces the notion of “proof,” but never says exactly what a proof is or how it is supposed to be different from a “justification.” Most damningly, I could not find a single proof presented clearly and completely in the book; instead, students are supposed to construct their own. How can they possibly know how to construct a good proof if they’ve never seen one?

• There are no postulates or axioms anywhere in the book, as far as I can tell. (There is no entry for either term in the index; and while there are glossary entries for both “axiom” and “proof,” they don’t have page references associated with them, unlike most of the other glossary terms.) This makes a mockery of the whole idea of proof, because a deductive proof has to be based on previously established results. If you try to prove anything without starting with some postulates, your argument will be either circular or too vague to be meaningful.

If this book is adopted, I shudder for the intellectual fate of a generation of Seattle high-school students.

College Preparatory Mathematics: Algebra Connections and Algebra 2

Like the geometry book from the same publisher, these books are completely unsuitable for a high-school algebra course. There are lots of nice hands-on activities here (algebra tiles, webs, generic rectangles, etc.), but very little in the way of clearly stated general principles. Many definitions of mathematical terms are utterly useless. For example, here are the definitions of relations and functions, two of the central concepts of algebra: “Each equation that relates inputs to outputs is called a relation; when a relation is functioning consistently and predictably, we call that relation a function.” Again, both definitions are circular, and the key terms used in them are not clearly explained (except by example). Exactly what does it mean for a relation to “function consistently and predictably”?

We hope we can count on all of you to be present at the April 23rd School Board meeting. The meeting starts at 6:30pm. All board meetings are held at the District Office.
(SEE DIRECTIONS TO DISTRICT OFFICE)

We encourage those of you who are willing, to speak during the Public Comment section. Even if the district brings forth an option that we would agree with, it is still the boards responsibility to approve and release budget if necessary to implement the solution.

Ideas on public comment:

1) Speak to your dissatisfaction with CPM and the impact on your child and your household – Have you had to supplement? Is your child feeling incapable, bored, frustrated, let down?

2) Note your concern that this curriculum is not good for the district or community as a whole – a large number of parents and students are not being served, etc.

All who are interested in speaking will need to complete a “Public Comment Card” when they arrive at the meeting. Comments are limited to 3 minutes. Make sure when you sign in, you list “PFMC” as the reason you are there.

I am currently an IB Calculus student who has been educated in a traditional math curriculum. My intent is to continue my education in either mathematics or a science field.

Regarding the CPM program in its entirety, I believe the program is detrimental to the student and deficient in many aspects necessary for fostering mathematical maturity among students.

Perhaps one of the CPM program’s greatest deficiencies lies in the predominantly group and student focused learning. While group activities intended to foster induction and team collaboration may – at least from an ideological standpoint – seem ideal, pragmatically, this approach has many shortcomings. The group activities designed by CPM inherently rely on the assumption that every student will participate within his group and, moreover, demonstrate an interest in the material. However, in an actual classroom environment this approach is less than satisfactory. As individuals refuse to work in teams or present a general disinterest in the subject, mandatory group work can no longer be an effective strategy, with the team strategy ultimately proving a hindrance.

Furthermore, from my experiences, a majority of students – even among the advanced ones – seem to be interested in the answer alone, not the processes involved. While CPM may then seem ideal in order to inspire students to take interest in the process, the inverse is actually true: CPM’s approach does not promote an understanding of the mathematical processes involved. The program examines various applications of a given notion through inquiry based learning and story type problems – problems psychologically shown to be ineffective at generating a general understanding of the subject material. Thus, the problems presented by CPM tend to be oversimplifications of mere story problems, not problems stressing understanding of processes, which can really only be learned through formal proof – some of which is present in past curriculums while a general lack of proof is presented by the CPM program. Hence, CPM ultimately relieves students of any responsibility regarding process, contrary to many central aspects of CPM methodology.

Moreover, the focus on student centered instruction assumes the students properly understand the concepts of the chapter. Any misunderstandings among one convincing student may ultimately result in a group of students misunderstanding the mathematics. Finally, regardless of a student’s understanding, a teacher should ultimately remain the best pedagogue among the class; therefore, CPM either deprives students of superior and valued instruction, or assuming teacher instruction, renders student explanation and instruction superfluous, again contrary to central aspects of the CPM methodology.

Second, the CPM program also presents a general lack of content among its texts. While CPM’s extensive use of manipulative objects and appeal to intuition may appear beneficial to those students struggling with elementary algebra concepts, the approach fails to foster any mathematical understanding, confining a student’s understanding to intuitive physical problems and prohibiting development of abstract thought. The approach is similar to teaching a child that 2 apples plus 2 apples = 4 apples and similarly that 2 oranges plus 2 oranges = 4 oranges, yet discouraging children to make the abstraction that 2n + 2n = 4n.

The CPM program also overlooks the significance of fundamental properties such as the additive and multiplicative inverse properties – properties that students emerging from a curriculum stressing these aspects struggle with and properties that ultimately redefine two ineffective, non-commutative operations. Additionally, the few formal concepts the texts do introduce – such as the concept of a function – are only introduced well after a student should have understood the properties of such concepts. For example, the concept of a function –one of the most fundamental concepts of mathematics – is only given a brief one page note at the end of the algebra text.

The CPM texts also present a general lack of explanation making it difficult if not impossible for interested students to augment their own mathematical understanding – something I have personally done. Perhaps most educationally detrimental to students is the programs extensive use of a guess and check methodology. Guess and check problems reduce the need for a student to practice systematic techniques necessary for difficult problem solving. Moreover, regarding more difficult problems, especially those utilizing non-elementary functions, the guess and check methodology can at most provide an approximation. Even using traditional texts, problems arise where no elementary solution can be obtained and approximations become necessary; however, these texts, unlike CPM, teach systematic techniques useful for acquiring approximations whereas CPM endorses a blind guess and check methodology.

Having personally reviewed the CPM Algebra Foundations, Algebra, and Geometry texts, I believe that learning mathematics through this methodology would have, in all likelihood, ended my interest in mathematics. Even assuming the CPM curriculum benefits a select group of students, the methodology is not accommodating for a large body of students and consequently deficient.

Thank You.

Attended by:
Members: Carol Feng, Robin Gensler, Kathy Scherer, Joan Sakaguchi, Wu-chi Feng, Mark Veteto, Lisa Purdy, Dennis Yee, Carla Randall, Kim Lindsey, Deb Tate, Karen Mapes, Liz Ryan, Gary Bennett, Carol Kinch
School Board: Art Rutkin
District staff: Rob Saxton, Susan Stark Haydon
Facilitator: Margot Helphand

I. Committee Charge
To develop recommendations to the district on 6-10th grade math curriculum. The recommendation will be made to the Curriculum Department. The process that will follow the recommendation will be:
• The Curriculum Department will make a recommendation to the cabinet (district leadership) and then the superintendent will make a recommendation to the school board.
• The initial full recommendation of the committee will be presented intact to the school board.

II. Working and Communication Agreements
Committee members agreed to the following agreements:
• Focus on the issues
• Suspend certainty
• Check assumptions
• Speak for yourself
• Focus on solutions
• Respectful communication
• Monitor airtime
• Bring group questions to the group
• If data or research is cited – bring verifiable data (e.g. refereed journal articles)
• Planful communication
- A summary of the meeting content will be sent to all members within a week of the meeting.
- Members will provide clarification and the summary will be posted on the district website.
- Minimize email communication between meetings

III. Review of Parent-District Community Math Meeting input– January 15, 2009

IV. Options
Four options for math curriculum were given to the members who then generated questions and issues to be discussed at the February 25th meeting.
A. Option One – Retain CPM and ameliorate the implementation issues. Create a road map with sample direct instruction documents
B. Option Two – Adopt a “more traditional” curriculum
C. Option Three – Adopt a two track curriculum – A more traditional curriculum and CPM
D. Option Four – Adopt a combination curriculum - A more traditional text used in conjunction with CPM

V. Common Questions
A set of common questions were generated that pertain to all the options.
A. General Questions
1. Will this option prepare students for higher levels of math in high school and higher ed. Prepare students to become engineers and computer scientists?
2. What is the cost?
3. Does this meet new state standards? Are we teaching to standards? Do we need to augment what we are teaching to achieve the results we want?
4. How will this option affect parent involvement?
5. How does this option affect learning styles (auditory, kinesthetic, visual, independent, group, etc.)?
6. What is the track record of the curriculum?
7. How does this options help students develop a conceptual understanding (abstraction) as well as concrete application?
8. How well does this options support age appropriate brain development/brain maturity for math development?
9. When is instruction of content sufficient and when is it too much (reintroductions)?
10. What is the impact on professional development of teachers?
B. Implementation Questions
1. How will we differentiate for TAG, IEPs, 504s, etc?
2. How does this option affect how kids are placed, tracked, or moved through (flexibility)?
3. How would we avoid a “smart” track and a “slow” track?
4. If the issues are addressed what is the guarantee that there will be fidelity/accountability?

VI. Option One – Retain CPM and continue work on implementation issues - Specific questions
• How would we work on the issues identified? These include:
- overemphasis on group work
- lack of rigor
- group assessment
- lack of cohesion
- mathematical content
- overemphasis on manipulatives
• How do we define balance?
• How do we assure that group learning is working?

VII. Option Two – Adopt a “more traditional” curriculum - Specific Questions
• Why did we change to a more reform curriculum?
• How will we support teachers in this change?
• What would be the timeline?
• What would be the selection process? Would we look at the previous selection process?

VIII. Option Three – Two Tracks (CPM and More Traditional) – Specific Questions
• Were there two tracks previously? If so, what did it look like? What worked/ what didn’t?
Implementation Questions
• How would this option affect the master schedule?
• How would this affect class availability?
• Would we lose fluidity between levels?

IX. Option Four – Combination Curriculum – Specific Questions
• What would be the advantages of this option?
• How would you map a path to combine the two curriculums? (One may be the organizer, supplemented by the other)
• Who would map out the path to combine?

X. Shared Results
Members identified results that the preferred option should support.
How well does the option….
• maximize math literacy for each student as their aptitude permits
• prepare students for higher level math in high school and college (SAT, ACT, IB, State testing (historical growth)
• maximize learning for students with a range of learning styles

XI. Meeting Schedule
February 25 Wednesday 4:00 pm – 8:00 pm
March 9 Monday 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
April 1 Wednesday 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

XII. Issue Bin Questions
• Has the district received funds from CPM?
The answer was no – The district paid the price listed on the CPM website and no additional funds were provided to the district by CPM.
• Does the district have ties with OMLI or the West Linn Teachers Development group?

XIII. Next Meeting
- Check-in
- Orientation to state standards
- Analysis of options