Table of Contents
The Board of Education in San Diego received an initial draft of standards for the core subject areas at the regular Board meeting on October 22, 1996. The draft for mathematics was taken from materials provided by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and the National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE). Specific grade-level or course-level standards were not provided. Under the draft standards, it is difficult or impossible to identify what specific knowledge and skills would be achieved at any particular grade or course level. As a result, the draft standards document is not be able to meet the objectives that standards are intended to achieve. One cannot begin to judge whether or not these standards are otherwise adequate, not to mention world class, without clear and quantifiable objectives at each level.
The Planning, Assessment, Accountability and Development Division of San Diego City Schools has produced a draft abstract of the draft standards. Here are the contents of the summary for Mathematics.
[Draft] Elementary Standards
[Draft] Middle School Standards
[Draft] High School Standards
October 21, 1996
Board of Education
San Diego City Schools
4100 Normal Street
San Diego, CA
Members of the Board:
Although much of your time, and most of the commotion at board meetings, is taken up with issues such as bell times, school boundaries, and the closing of unsafe schools, board performance and district performance are ultimately judged by the knowledge and academic achievement of district students. As such, the most important decisions you make are related to issues that may generate less public display but have greater effects within classrooms. These included adoption of reading programs, math books and curriculum and performance standards.
Members of the board, and many others talk of accountability. Clear, complete, measurable, quantifiable, course- and grade-specific standards of both content and student performance are the first step toward such accountability and serve as a way to ensure equal and academically demanding courses in schools and classrooms across the district. Standards which are not clear, complete, measurable, quantifiable, course- and grade-specific are in conflict with the concept of accountability in our schools.
Tomorrow you will be presented with Draft District Content and Performance Standards. The recognition of the need for such standards is a key step for the district and should be recognized as such. Unfortunately, the Draft Standards that will be presented to you do not meet the needs of the district. As such they should be rejected and subjected to substantial or complete revision.
A further discussion of these points is included on the following sheets.
Thank you for your consideration. Please feel free to call or E-mail with questions or comments.
Sincerely,
Michael McKeown
Considerations regarding Content and Performance Standards for San Diego City Schools
Clear, measurable, quantifiable, grade level or course-specific standards of content and performance are an essential step toward raising the achievement of all students in all schools with all teachers. San Diego City Schools have embarked on the production of local standards. This document deals with the Mathematics Standards, although the weaknesses of the Mathematics Standards suggest that standards in other disciplines are going to be wanting also.
Background on the Nature of Quality Standards
Standards themselves must be held to high standards. The American Federation of Teachers has made specific suggestions as to the nature of "High-Quality Standards." These are available in full from http://aft.org/research/reports/charter/csweb/c.htm
Among the characteristics of good standards:
General points on the process of adopting District Standards
1) The process of approval is ambiguous. One document (circular no. 536 from R. Corriedo) says Oct. 22 is the date for review of the standards for adoption as a "consultation draft" with final adoption in the Spring of 1997. A second document (from B. Pendleton) says in the first sentence that the standards will be adopted on Oct. 22. At a public meeting held Oct. 17, three board members made it clear that adoption of these draft standards is NOT going to happen on Oct. 22.
2) Given the slapdash preparation of the current draft standards, and the failure to meet the criteria described above, these draft standards should not be approved for any official use within the district. Indeed, the board should make it absolutely clear that these are UNAPPROVED DRAFT STANDARDS which are not to be used in making district policy. This includes specifically use in implementation of the Urban Systemic Initiative and development of district-wide student evaluation policies, but should extend to any and all policies within the district.
3) The board must make it clear that the adoption process is not a charade leading to adoption of the existing badly flawed draft. This is critically important given events that have already occurred which lead to the conclusion that the district staff believe these standards are final. These events include the circulation of a version of the Standards that appears to be in final format and the production professionally prepared posters labeled "San Diego City Schools Performance Standards". Thes documents are not marked "DRAFT". Versions of both of these documents were available, and could have been seen by at least three board members, at a public meeting held Oct. 17. Failure to recognize and deal with this item and the previous item decreases the credibility of the standards that are ultimately adopted.
Some of the many flaws evident in the Math Standards
The comments below deal with the Mathematics portion of the Draft Standards, but careful examination of the district-presented San Diego City Schools Performance Standards poster indicates that many of them will be true in other disciplines as well.
1) The Mathematics Standards are put together in a slapdash manner. Both the Content Standards and the Performance Standards are copied directly from other sources. These two "borrowed" documents are not aligned with each other. The grade level bands in the Content Standards do not align with the Elementary, Middle, High School bands of the Performance Standards, at least as one understands these terms in SDCS. The subtopics in the Content Standards do not align with the subtopics in the Performance Standards.
2) Neither the Draft Content Standards nor the Draft Performance Standards are specific as to standards for individual grades or courses. The Content Standards are based on broad "bands" of grades such as K-4, 5-8, 9-12. The Performance Standards are based on similarly broad, but not exactly defined, bands such as Elementary School, Middle School, High School. Lack of clear grade level or course-specific standards makes it all too likely that neither parents nor teachers will be clear on what material should be covered when, leading to dangerous gaps in student learning.
3) The documents from which the Draft Standards have been borrowed without modification are badly flawed. The NCTM Standards fail on many of the points mentioned above. Indeed, they are often criticized for not being standards at all, and NCTM members freely admit that they are general guidelines rather than specific standards. The NCEE Performance Standards also fail many of the AFT points and are committed to an unbalanced and unwieldy method of evaluation.
4) Neither the Draft Content Standards nor the Draft Performance Standards are specific enough to make it clear what a student should know or when. Should students know their number facts? Should students be able to multiply 2 digit by 3 digit numbers? Should students be able to factor quadratic and higher equations? If so, what type and how difficult? Should they be able to do a two column proof? If so, what type and how difficult? When should they know these things? In what depth? Is a tangram something that is really critical to know about? Worse yet, the summary poster indicates exactly the same standards from elementary school to high school in some content areas. Can this possibly be realistic?
5) Mathematical disciplines contain valuable subject-specific methods of approaching mathematical problems. Mastery of these methods is important for sophisticated mathematical development, for success in other non-mathematics courses, and can be tested specifically without being imbedded in a so called problem solving context. The Performance Standards fail to recognize this and thus are likely to lead to a failure to clearly assay the most important building blocks within each discipline.
6) Both the Draft Content Standards and the Draft Performance Standards fail to recognize multiple levels of increasing competence.
7) A class at one school has to be as good as one at any other school in the district. The only way to ensure that students in different schools are getting the course content that they, their parents and the district expect is to define specific grade-level standards and to test each student each year for mastery of the material covered by that year's standards. This protects students from being unfairly misled as to what they have been taught. The Draft Performance Standards require unwieldy, time consuming and subjective evaluation of student performance. These weaknesses make it virtually impossible to honestly complete individual student evaluations that will be valid throughout the district. The final Performance Standards need to have provisions for rapid, accurate, quantitative, criterion-based testing of mastery of course or grade-specific content. In mathematics a valuable example of the kind of exam that meets these criteria is the Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Program (MDTP) Exams which have been developed by an effort involving teachers as well as CSU and UC faculty.
The Draft Mathematics Content and Performance Standards are a step in the right direction but are so badly flawed as to require substantial modification prior to approval and implementation. As such, they should not be approved in any form and should be labeled to make it clear that they are UNAPPROVED DRAFT STANDARDS which are not to be used in making district policy.
Mathematically Correct recommends that the Board of Education endorse the following statement:
Whereas the Board recognizes the importance of clear, measurable standards for knowledge and skills to be acquired at each grade level, and that such standards will promote educational success for all students in San Diego:
1) The Board recognizes and commends the efforts of the Standards and Assessment Office for beginning work on standards; and
2) The Board recognizes that the Standards and Assessment Office has produced a draft standards document; and
3) The Board requires that further distribution of this document, and it's derivatives, be labeled clearly as an Unapproved Draft; and
4) The Board stipulates that these Draft Standards are not approved for guiding policy decisions that affect students; and
5) The Board fully expects substantive improvement in the development of standards during the 1996-1997 school year.
On Tuesday, October 22, 1996, the matter of the draft standards came before the school board.
The presentation and ensuing debate lasted for hours. However, statements offered by the public and by the members of the School Board were generally consistent with the views expressed by Mathematically Correct -- primarily that the draft was deficient in providing specific, measureable, grade-level standards.
While final action on the standards is not expected until later in the school year, the board voted to accept the draft document as a draft, with the stipulation that: