Trash Cans and Math Policy
Everything doesn't need to be bespoke
San Francisco’s quixotic effort to design its own trash can instead of using one of the myriad of models available in any other city in the world has apparently ground to a halt because of budget issues.
Alas, San Francisco Unified’s quixotic effort to use its own math curriculum and create its own math pathways continues apace. The Superintendent, Matt Wayne, has committed the district to reversing the 10-year-old policy of banning excessive learning. A Secondary Math Policy Focus Group has been convened to “make recommendations on how to equitably implement Algebra 1 in the 8th grade and the implications for the district’s high school math course sequencing”.
The Focus Group has been duly meeting about once per month and is now at the point where it is soliciting feedback about several alternatives, with a view to making a recommendation to the board in February. I have been reviewing their work. Bizarrely, at no point has the focus group asked itself “how do other districts address this problem?” Why learn from others when you can make mistakes by yourself?
The first focus group meeting, on October 17, was an introductory session.
In the second focus group meeting, on November 28, they considered four alternatives:
Double Block for Everyone: all 8th grade students would take two blocks of Math instead of one. The first semester would cover Math 8 and the second semester Algebra 1.
4-into-3 Compression for Everyone: Four courses worth of material, spanning Math 6, Math 7, Math 8, and Algebra 1, are compressed into three courses which are taken by all middle school students.
Algebra 1 as an 8th grade elective: all students continue to take Math 8; students who wish to take Algebra 1 do so instead of one of their electives or as an additional zero period class.
Summer Intensive: offer Algebra 1 as a Summer course between 8th grade and 9th grade.
The first two alternatives were evidently rejected by the focus group participants because they didn’t make it to the agenda of the third meeting. There’s no documentation for why they were rejected but it’s easy to hazard some guesses:
many students are having trouble mastering Math 8 by the end of 8th grade. Why should we expect that they would suddenly be able to master Algebra 1 in the same time frame?
the double block idea would require twice as many 8th grade Math teachers (and a corresponding reduction in the number of teachers of elective courses). Could the district find so many new teachers? Could it easily get rid of the teachers who were no longer needed?
In place of the two rejected alternatives, one new alternative was considered in the third focus group meeting, on January 10:
2-into-1 compression as an option: some students would continue to take Math 8; others would take a new course that would combine material from Math 8 and Algebra 1.
The Summer Intensive alternative was refined to make clear that it was primarily for students in K-8 and small middle schools that didn’t have the size to be able to offer either the Algebra-as-an-elective or the 2-into-1-compression alternatives.
Tomorrow, January 24, they will present some alternatives at a town hall meeting. The plan is then to make recommendations to the board on February 13. I don’t know which alternatives will be presented tomorrow, but each of the alternatives discussed so far has obvious flaws.
If offered during the regular school day, Algebra-as-an-elective would force students to choose between Algebra and something else they might want to study. It would require the district to hire new Math teachers to teach those elective classes and fire (or reassign) the teachers of whatever electives the students taking Algebra would otherwise have taken. If offered in a zero period before the school day, the new Math teachers would not replace the teachers of electives but money would still have to be found to pay for the new Math teachers and there would be additional impacts on custodial staffing and on families for commuting.
Moreover, if Algebra 1 is supposed to build on Math 8 material, won’t it be confusing for students to cover something in Algebra if they haven’t yet learned the foundations in Math 8? Advanced students will probably be fine because everyone who currently takes Algebra as an online course manages to overcome this issue. But this can’t be the ideal approach for the less advanced students who are still ambitious enough to enroll in the class.
The Summer Intensive idea fails to meet the objective of offering Algebra 1 “in the 8th grade”. It also requires extra money.
The 2-into-1-compression option is cheap (no new teachers are needed), doesn’t require students to forego electives, and ensures that the material will be introduced in a logical sequence. But will the course be effective? The existing 2-into-1 compression course that attempts to combine Algebra II and Precalculus has been ineffective1. How many students are capable of learning two full years of material in a single year? Remember that everyone who currently takes Algebra online is spending time on the online course in addition to the time on Math 8 in school. Under this plan, they’d be expected to master the same material with less instructional time.
Learning From Others
At no point did the Focus Group ever ask itself how other school districts address this issue. There are literally hundreds of school districts in California and thousands more across the country. They have all considered this issue at one time or another. The bare minimum the Focus Group should have done is to survey what other districts do and debate the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular approaches. I did my own survey of comparable districts’ Math pathways. They could have done their own. It would have been good homework for them.
If they had, they would have discovered that hardly anyone does Algebra-as-an-elective or 2-into-1-compression. (I couldn’t find any but, as I said, there are hundreds of school districts…) By far the most popular approaches are 3-into-2 compressions that students can opt into instead of the standard pacing. These 3-into-2 compressions can start in 6th grade (e.g. Math 6, Math 7, and Math 8 in two years followed by Algebra 1 in 8th grade) or 7th grade (e.g. Math 7, Math 8, and Algebra 1 in an accelerated two-year sequence). Like the 2-into-1 compression, these are cheap to implement because they don’t require new teachers. They also expand access to advanced material: more students are able to learn three years of material in two years than two years of material in one year.
Instructional Time
I do want to credit the Task Force for one immensely valuable contribution. They point out that the state recommends 300 minutes of Math instruction per week but SFUSD currently schedules only 180-240 minutes per week. Is it any wonder students’ Math performance is lagging?
Whenever I look at SBAC scores for schools in San Francisco, the school that always stands out is Mission Prep, a charter school whose students are almost entirely Latino. Here’s a chart showing the proficiency rate of socioeconomically disadvantaged (SED) Latino students in each San Francisco school that had enough of them to record a score2. Mission Prep far exceeds the district average in both Math and ELA. Because of its size, and its success, it had more disadvantaged Latino students who were proficient in Math, and more who were proficient in ELA, than any SFUSD school.
How do they achieve this miracle? Here’s their academic model:
At Mission Prep, 160 minutes of daily literacy instruction and 90 minutes of daily math instruction comprise the core of the academic day for students in grades K-4. In grades 5-8, students receive 90 minutes of literacy instruction and 90 minutes of math instruction daily.
Is it any surprise that students who spend 450 minutes a week on Math learn more than students who spend 180-240 minutes? Reintroducing Algebra I into middle school is the right thing to do for the students who are already proficient in Math but it will do nothing for the students who are currently struggling. Maybe the lesson is that, if you want students to learn more Math, you should spend more time teaching them Math.
We can infer this because (a) the district has failed to provide any evidence that it provides sufficient preparation for Calculus; and (b) high school Math teachers advise their students that it should be taken only as a last resort.
There are some SFUSD schools with high proficiency rates for Latino students. Examples include Ulloa, Peabody, Lilienthal, McCoppin, Lafayette, Clarendon, Grattan, New Traditions, Milk, and Jefferson. But those schools invariably have tiny numbers of Latino students and those they have tend not to be disadvantaged. None of the ten schools listed above even had ten disadvantaged Latino test takers, the minimum required to record a score for a group, even though disadvantaged Latinos constitute the largest single group in SFUSD.
How math is being taught is a major concern that's not being addressed. For the past decade, SFUSD has been following the lead of Dr. Boaler from Stanford (et. al.), de-tracking, deemphasizing memorizing math facts and skills practice for "problem-solving," and "meaning making," which usually involves putting students of diverse abilities into groups where they ... solve problems and make meaning ... or at least that's what it looks like from an Admin POV. They are "engaged". What's really happening is that many are NOT learning math, at all. We've now seen a decade long slide in math skills (anecdotally) and math scores (from standardized tests). While we may get 8th grade Algebra 1, what does it matter if it's taught so poorly, using methods that have little evidence supporting their efficacy?
San Francisco for the last 10 years has been using an internal pre K to 11th grade math curriculum which hadn't been peer reviewed. There has been a K-8 audit with dismal results. They still need to look at their high school internal Algebra I,II,Geometry and compression classes.
I think it is unfair to put the onus on the math focus committee. In talking to a few members on there, they did look at what others were doing but they also had to balance this with what the Board of Education will accept. Those slides were not generated by the actual committee members themselves but by the facilitators which were presented to the committee at the start of the meetings.