GUSD math scores fall dramatically once students hit high
school; experts say elementary and middle schools are to blame
Gilroy – It’s a simple concept: Learn the basics and use them as the building blocks as you excel.
But those seemingly obvious steps are exactly what elementary and middle school educators are neglecting when they teach mathematics and that oversight has caused a frightening trend in American society: math illiteracy.
“The problem is children don’t learn in elementary school,” said Hung-Hsi Wu, a University of California, Berkeley, math professor. “Many haven’t learned times tables. Imagine trying to write an essay without knowing your ABCs. How do you teach someone English if he refuses to memorize the alphabet?”
That was one of the issues Wu discussed with the 55 or so teachers, administrators and board members who attended last Saturday’s math summit at the Gilroy Unified School District. The summit is just the beginning of the district’s efforts to reverse a stubborn trend, that student performance in math continues to drop after the fourth grade.
Wu, who conducts summer math institutions, and R. James Milgram, a Stanford University math professor, spent the day discussing ways to improve the way teachers teach math in the elementary and middle school so students master basic skills before entering high school.
The summit also served as a venue to introduce novel concepts such as signing bonuses, stipend and/or increased compensation to attract more math experts to the teaching field.
At the onset of the seminar, Superintendent Edwin Diaz gave a general introduction and showed the group student performance on the California Standards Test in math. Gilroy students are improving steadily but there is a drastic drop when students make the transition from third to fourth grade that continues to fall all the way through high school.
And once students enter high school the decrease is significant.
n In the 2003-2004 school year almost 30 percent of third-graders were ranked proficient and during 2004-2005 school year proficiency increased to 33 percent.
n By fourth grade during the 2003-2004 school year 24 percent were proficient and in 2004-2005 rose to 25 percent but was still lower than third-graders.
n By ninth grade in 2004-2005 proficiency fell to 11 percent and continued to fall until the junior year with only 7 percent proficiency. District wide, in 2003-2004 only 18 percent of students were ranked proficient and in 2004-2005, about 22 percent hit the proficiency level.
GUSD Assistant Superintendent Jacki Horejs, who helped organize the seminar, pointed out that although there is steady growth from year to year, the issue is that CST scores continue to decrease significantly in the upper grades.
“The same trend exists in the state (and nation),” she said. “This is a national trend.”
Horejs said the event was successful and that she was impressed with the turn-out and the attitudes.
“There was a high level of energy and enthusiasm around math,” she said.
In the afternoon, participants broke off into groups and each discussed a specific area of math instruction.
One group addressed the issue of time, particularly looking at the 45-minute periods for middle school students and Gilroy High School’s block schedule. The middle school periods are too short for students to develop a real foundation and because of the block schedule at GHS, students have math every other day, Horejs said.
Participants discussed offering incentives, signing bonuses and extra stipends to attract qualified math professionals to the teaching field. They also talked about staging Saturday and summer academies. Wu said he will hold at least three weekend sessions in Gilroy, Horejs said.
Milgram, who serves as an advisor to NASA and the U.S. Department of Education, said the concern is not that scores are low in math but that so few students are reaching advanced or proficient levels.
“What is desired by everybody is that at least 50 percent of the students should score in those categories,” he said.
Both Milgram and Wu said although scores are the lowest in the upper grades, high school is not the problem. Students aren’t learning the basics because teachers aren’t adding key ingredients to math instruction in elementary and middle school.
Those three basic components – unambiguous statements, no hidden assumptions and defining basic terms – are the building blocks of math. And teachers aren’t defining simple skills such as multiplication, division and fractions.
“And without those definitions nothing makes sense,” Milgram said.
Jenny Belcher, a South Valley Middle School math teacher and one of the educators who attended Saturday’s summit, said she’s really happy that the district has identified the problem and is doing something to remedy it.
Belcher, who has taught for 20 years and was Gilroy Economic Foundation teacher of the year in 2003 and GUSD teacher of the year for Santa Clara County in 2003, echoed Milgram and Wu’s comments that students aren’t learning the basics.
“The further it goes the worse it gets,” she said.
Belcher also said because the majority of elementary school teachers’ strengths lie in the liberal arts and aren’t trained in mathematics, students don’t receive a firm math foundation before middle or high school. At the summit teachers discussed all of those issues.
Although nothing was decided Belcher said she’s excited and is looking forward to the future of math instruction in Gilroy.
