To solve students' math problems, educators go to school

Boosting teacher skills seen as key

By Sharon Kahn Luttrell, Globe Correspondent, 8/17/2003

MILFORD - Meagan Washington took just two math courses when she was studying to become a teacher, one in basic math and one in teaching methods. Now a fourth-grade teacher in Westborough, she sometimes feels overwhelmed trying to prepare 9- and 10-year-olds for state tests on everything from fractions and decimals to multiplication algorithms.

``Fourth grade is a rigorous year with that [testing] cloud hanging over us in the spring,'' said Washington, who teaches at Mill Pond Elementary School. ``My background in math is not the strongest, and I'm pretty aware of that.''

With pressure mounting to raise math scores across the state, Washington went back to the books this month to learn more math herself. For the first two weeks of August, she and 27 other elementary school teachers from Watertown to Worcester immersed themselves in college-level algebra and number theory as part of a pilot program to deepen their understanding of math in hopes of boosting their confidence and effectiveness in the classroom.

The Massachusetts Mathematics Institute for Elementary School Teachers - run by Mass Insight Education, a Boston nonprofit organization - is modeled after a Vermont program that expects to train 300 teachers by 2005. Student math scores have already improved in districts where teachers have completed the coursework, said Kenneth I. Gross, founder and director of the Vermont Mathematics Initiative, who helped lead the Massachusetts classes.

The idea behind the program is to target teachers who work with the state's youngest children to help boost achievement before students get frustrated and give up as they get older.

``Elementary school is where you really have to concentrate some effort. Putting an effort in at middle and high school won't help if the kids are already turned off to math,'' said Thomas E. Fortmann, senior math consultant at Mass Insight Education and an institute instructor.

The Massachusetts program, which awards participants three graduate credits, attracted 135 applicants, winnowed down with the help of district administrators. The data-storage company EMC picked up the $70,000 tab, including $100 daily stipends for the elementary school teachers.

Organizers hope the program will grow into a statewide initiative similar to Vermont's, which was launched in 1998 when education officials there realized that math scores were not improving because elementary school teachers lacked a solid math education themselves. Graduates of the Vermont program earn a master's degree in mathematics, and will serve as math coaches to fellow teachers.

Andrew Calkins, executive director of Mass Insight Education, estimates that expanding the program would cost about $20 million in the first year, $12 million in state funds and $8 million from districts. That would serve 10,000 elementary and middle school teachers, plus every college graduate seeking math or elementary teacher certification in Massachusetts.

But with no state money available this year, due to budget cuts, the organization will pursue public and private grant money and expand gradually, Calkins said.

Since 1998, scores on the math portion of the state's Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests have remained flat, while reading and writing scores have climbed, according to a Mass Insight Education report, Raising Math Achievement in Massachusetts. Most of the 21,000 elementary school teachers in the state are ``seriously deficient'' in math, the report states, based on interviews with local school administrators and state and national math specialists.

The report also recommends that colleges and universities boost their math requirements for education majors. Many schools require no more than a single math course for future teachers.

``It's a vicious cycle,'' Fortmann said. ``People don't learn math very well in school, they avoid math in college, and the cycle continues. What we're hoping to do here is break the cycle.''

While most professional development courses focus on teaching strategies, the math institute teaches the subject itself.

Eight hours a day for 10 days, teachers like Lori Caldicott grappled with algebraic equations and inverse processes in classes at EMC's Corporate Training Center in Milford.

On the institute's first day, teachers untangled a word problem using arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. They learned that they could arrive at the same solution in three different ways: by plotting the equation on a graph, writing it out as an algebraic formula, or working it through on a mathematical table.

At night, Caldicott returned home with up to three hours of homework.

``It's a lot of work, but I think that picking up concepts at a deeper level will make me more confident in how I deal with children,'' said Caldicott, a fifth-grade teacher at Northborough's Lincoln Street School. ``It answers the question, `Why are we doing this?'''

Thinking back on her own childhood math lessons, Caldicott, 40, now feels she was cheated.

``We just learned formulas, but we were never told why,'' she said. ``I never learned the concepts. I just memorized rules.''

Caldicott says the first two weeks of August were grueling, but she looks forward to returning for six more days of instruction this fall. She said she already feels that the coursework has made a difference. Her fifth-graders are likely to find their teacher not only more comfortable with math, but more sympathetic to their struggles, she said.

``We all have much more empathy now for our students and how some just don't seem to get what we think is so obvious,'' Caldicott said. ``Now, being on the other side of the coin, we feel for them, because we felt like that a lot this week.''