Mathematics Program Review
General purpose
The guiding purpose of the Mathematics Program Review (MPR) is to identifycurrent school practicesthat affect student achievement in the areas of curriculum, instruction/intervention, and assessment.The analysis of the MPR may then be used by schools and districts in future problem solving and school improvement planning as a detailed additional data set to help generate actions that can address some of the root causes of low mathematics achievement.
The data collected in the MPR are more extensive than those collected in the Program Evaluation Tool-Math (PET-M) and will represent input from all school educators involved with mathematics teaching and learning.An interview team from the ISD will conduct the MPR in one or two buildings in a district, accompanied by one or two district employees who will subsequently conduct the MPR in the remaining buildings in the district.
The ISD will provide reports from the reviews we conduct, and will be available to assist with reviewing the data and generating reports from other program reviews conducted in each district.
The ISD will also aggregate information from the district MPRs to identify the current state of mathematics programs in the ISD service area andprovide recommendations for ISD initiatives.
Step 1: Review of the school’s problem-solving action plan
School leadership teams have completed an action plan at their most recent data review day. Using a problem solving process, teams record achievement scores and determine celebrations, identify problem statements, form hypotheses and develop goals. The school leadership team has also completed a data collection tool, the PET-M that identifies processes used in the teaching of mathematics. The interview team will review these documents as a starting point for additional data gathering in the school.
Step 2: Interview with administrators (approximately 30 minutes)
An interview with the principal and any other building administrators will occur as the first data-gathering process of the mathematics program review. The purposes are:
1)Determine what the administrators believe are the causes for low mathematics achievement, both within the school and from larger district policies and procedures;
2)Obtain a historical view of mathematics achievement efforts within the school, as well as the beliefs of administrators regarding the leverage points and roadblocks for making changes in the mathematics program;
3)Obtain background information about the experience level of the faculty.
A compilation of the interview will be returned to the administrators and otherwise kept confidential. Information from the interview will be combined with information from the teachers’ group discussion without identifying the origin of any comments. The ISD will blend information from the interviews and group discussions across schools to generate ISD-wide action plans, without identifying the origin of any comments or data sets.
Step 3: Survey (approximately 10 minutes)
Teachers will be asked to complete a short online survey of their use of research-based teaching practices, the amount of time they devote to mathematics instruction, and their use of the Common Core Standards. The results will be aggregated anonymously at the grade level and school level.
The research-based teaching practices come from presentations by our national consultants (Kevin Feldman, Amanda VanDerHeyden) and the IES Practice Guide Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Response to Intervention (RtI) for Elementary and Middle Schools.
The survey could also be administered during the group discussion period and then scanned using Illuminate Ed, maintaining confidentiality.
Step 4: Group discussion (approximately 1 hour)
An after school discussion will be held with all teachers who teach mathematics. The discussion will address areas included in the PET-M, but go into more depth and detail. Discussion topics include:
- curriculum goals
- assessments
- instructional materials
- instructional time
- intervention support
- school leadership
- professional development
- classroom practices
There is intentional overlap between the survey, administrator interview and group discussion.
Report
Data from the interview, group discussion and survey will be compiled into a report that will highlight consensus items across the three data sources and average the survey data. The report can be emailed to the principal or presented to the school leadership team.
Timeline
IISD staff will be able to conduct the Mathematics Program Reviewin two schools in each of the nine larger districts (in one elementary and one secondary) and in one school in the three smaller districts (Leslie, Dansville and Webberville), between January, 2014 and May, 2014. We need to schedule one building MPR each week during this time frame in order to complete one or two schools in every district. This scheduling needs to be finalized by the first week in January:
Dec. 3 – Dec. 20Curriculum directors submit names of building(s) for review, including principal’s name and contact number, and requested review date(s), to IISD (Theron Blakeslee)
Jan. 6 – Jan. 10Schedule of reviews finalized and published
Jan. 13 – May 16Reviews conducted. Reports will be generated within five days after the process is completed in each school.
May 7 and 20-22Spring data review days
June 1 – June 15IISD aggregates district data and publishes report
2013-14 and 2014-15 School years: Local districts may continue doing their own mathematics program reviews in additional buildings as needed. IISD will incorporate additional local district data into the larger data set during the 2014-15 school year.