Jan. 9 BOE Business Meeting Discussion Thread

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s easy to blame the teachers. It’s hard to try to solve the problem of 16 year olds who don’t know 7+4 without a calculator. Yet teachers are trying to teach them quadratic equations and logs. Also, many former LFI students are now diploma bound due to new guidance from MSDE. Many have IQs under 60 yet are still expected to learn these topics. The problem is so much deeper than teaching skills but MCPS refuses to address this time and time again.

A 16 year old who doesn't know 7+4 without a calculator got to that point because the system failed to teach them the basics in elementary school and socially promoted them instead. It's not because they innately have a low IQ. They received horrible or inadequate elementary education, so it's still MCPS's fault.

[Anonymous]

By the time they get to middle school and high school most teachers don’t really know how to teach basic math and readings skills. It’s a different skill set. It’s is unreasonable to expect those teachers to know how to teach that. At best it gets shoehorned in for a few minutes at the beginning of a lesson or perhaps there is a co-teacher. We need to bring back reading classes and remedial math classes to the middle school and high school levels or else we are really just day care for teenagers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the math data part, were they trying to say that instructional coaches are the answer? In the vast majority of math classrooms, the teacher isn’t the problem. I’ve encountered students in MS and HS who can’t add single digit numbers without a calculator. I wonder what the instructional coaches would suggest in order to help them.

I wonder if they have data about the effectiveness of coaches...or other efforts to improve outcomes via some sort of teacher training. This is totally a guess, but, based on workplace training programs to which I've been exposed, I wouldn't be surprised if some teachers would get there on their own, given similar resourcing dedicated to their time with a modest incentive structure, while other teachers wouldn't really benefit without significantly more in-situ support (aides, smaller class sizes, significantly more/more protected planning time, etc.). That said, I don't doubt that some amount of training/coaching/mentoring is beneficial.

The thing would be to recognize that teachers are heterogeneous in their abilities and approaches. There's an amount one might effect to that mix with recruiting, but the labor pool vs. the positions and the nature of teacher turnover is such that they can't expect to have great shifts, except at the margins, towards those more independently able in this regard. Meanwhile, any recruiting change carries risk and administrative/political hurdles.

If there's credence to the above thought about differential training effectiveness, MCPS needs to figure out how to allocate resources to the team it has instead of trying to change the nature of the team. Maybe they've done that analysis, though, and arrived at the conclusion that coaching is the best option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By the time they get to middle school and high school most teachers don’t really know how to teach basic math and readings skills. It’s a different skill set. It’s is unreasonable to expect those teachers to know how to teach that. At best it gets shoehorned in for a few minutes at the beginning of a lesson or perhaps there is a co-teacher. We need to bring back reading classes and remedial math classes to the middle school and high school levels or else we are really just day care for teenagers.

I agree with but would expand on that a little. We need to do two things:

1) Retain more 5th and 8th graders until they are truly ready for middle school and high school

2) Add more remedial resources at the secondary level as you suggested

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the time they get to middle school and high school most teachers don’t really know how to teach basic math and readings skills. It’s a different skill set. It’s is unreasonable to expect those teachers to know how to teach that. At best it gets shoehorned in for a few minutes at the beginning of a lesson or perhaps there is a co-teacher. We need to bring back reading classes and remedial math classes to the middle school and high school levels or else we are really just day care for teenagers.

I agree with but would expand on that a little. We need to do two things:

1) Retain more 5th and 8th graders until they are truly ready for middle school and high school

2) Add more remedial resources at the secondary level as you suggested

They need the extra support in elementary so it doesn’t become an issue later on.

[Anonymous]

Any news on the boundary studies?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the math data part, were they trying to say that instructional coaches are the answer? In the vast majority of math classrooms, the teacher isn’t the problem. I’ve encountered students in MS and HS who can’t add single digit numbers without a calculator. I wonder what the instructional coaches would suggest in order to help them.

This. Calculators should be banned until 10th grade

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the math data part, were they trying to say that instructional coaches are the answer? In the vast majority of math classrooms, the teacher isn’t the problem. I’ve encountered students in MS and HS who can’t add single digit numbers without a calculator. I wonder what the instructional coaches would suggest in order to help them.

This. Calculators should be banned until 10th grade

Kind of hard to make that argument when we're giving them Chromebooks in elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Teacher coaches won’t move the needle. The new way of teaching math sucks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s easy to blame the teachers. It’s hard to try to solve the problem of 16 year olds who don’t know 7+4 without a calculator. Yet teachers are trying to teach them quadratic equations and logs. Also, many former LFI students are now diploma bound due to new guidance from MSDE. Many have IQs under 60 yet are still expected to learn these topics. The problem is so much deeper than teaching skills but MCPS refuses to address this time and time again.

A 16 year old who doesn't know 7+4 without a calculator got to that point because the system failed to teach them the basics in elementary school and socially promoted them instead. It's not because they innately have a low IQ. They received horrible or inadequate elementary education, so it's still MCPS's fault.

This is at the heart of the issue. I saw it myself with both of my kids. Instead of making sure that the kids had the foundational skills to be successful in upper level math classes, they just skirted that issue and moved them along. We spent a lot of money on math tutors and almost all of them said that the kids were missing foundational math skills. And I know this will be considered teacher bashing but the truth is that not everyone should be teaching math and the same for ELA yet most MCPS elementary schools don't departmentalize these subjects so teachers are expected to teach both math and ELA. All it takes is one year of poor math instruction in elementary school to have a domino effect all the way through high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did they talk about the snow days and the calendar at all?

I don't think this will be discussed until late Feb or early March. They need to know how many days they'll be making up. 1 day? 2 days? 8 days? Who knows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did they talk about the snow days and the calendar at all?

I don't think this will be discussed until late Feb or early March. They need to know how many days they'll be making up. 1 day? 2 days? 8 days? Who knows.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any news on the boundary studies?

Nope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did they talk about the snow days and the calendar at all?

I don't think this will be discussed until late Feb or early March. They need to know how many days they'll be making up. 1 day? 2 days? 8 days? Who knows.

The longer they wait, the harder it will be. They should use 1/29 while there is still time.

[Anonymous]

The part about student IDs for added safety and security. What is the plan to enforce this? I work at an MCPS HS and maybe 10% of students wear theirs. There are no consequences and they just say it’s lost or at home.

Also, speaking of consequences, the part about attendance. When will MCPS enforce some kind of attendance policy? I don’t except much progress with attendance until this goes back into effect.