Forum on the Content and Assessment of School Mathematics
October 4-6, 2009, Hyatt Regency Hotel, Reston VA

Overview 

The Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS) will organize and host its second National Forum at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Reston VA on October 4-6.   The focus will be the Content and Assessment of School Mathematics.  This will continue, and expand in a new direction, work begun at the first CBMS forum held last fall on the National Math Panel Report. This forum will focus on two major areas that were not treated at that time, but were purposely delayed until now, namely content and assessment.  The very prominent and fast moving initiative by the National Governors' Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to develop a set of Common Core State Standards makes this an excellent time to convene a second CBMS National Forum on these topics.  Because it is teachers who must implement standards and because of the overwhelming interest in teacher education issues at the first forum, teacher education will be the third focus of the Forum. This forum will have an expanded structure to allow more interaction among participants and will be directed at a similar audience: state departments of education, school districts, math organizations, education organizations, universities, publishers, and government and private funders.  The purpose has changed from that of the first forum.  The previous forum was about formulating action plans based on the recommendations of a finished report.  This forum is about providing input to an ongoing process. It will provide policy makers (ED, NSF, and NGA/CCSSO) and the broad mathematics education community an opportunity to listen and share concerns.  Based on activities and discussions at the forum, CBMS will produce and publish a white paper on key issues, outlining concerns that must be attended to in order to build support and buy-in for any set of Common Core Standards and for new assessments that must be developed. 

Information about the NGA/CCSSO Common Core Standards initiative may be found at www.corestandards.org. The latest draft (September 21 release) of the Common Core Standards in mathematics is now available at www.corestandards.org/Standards/index.htm

Schedule

Breakout Working Sessions

On the registration form, you were asked to list the sessions you wish to participate in. The 18 choices are listed below.  Following this listing is the schedule based on the choices we received.

Content:

  1. Standards for Mathematical Practice in the Common Core
  2. Standards Number, Quantity, and Modeling in the Common Core
  3. Standards for Expressions, Equations and Functions in the Common Core
  4. Standards for Shape and Coordinates in the Common Core
  5. Standards for Probability and Statistics in the Common Core
  6. Meeting Standards with an Integrated Curriculum
  7. NCTM’s Focus on High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making

Assessment:

  8. Improving Large-scale Assessment: Can we Test Deeper Knowledge?
  9. Assessing K-12 Mathematics Programs - curriculum, student achievement, teacher effectiveness
10. Assessing Mathematics Teacher Education Programs - curriculum, student engagement, faculty effectiveness
11. Equity and Assessment
12. Classroom Based Formative Assessment

Teacher Education:

13. Pre-Service Education of Teachers
14. Content Based Professional Development

Alignment:

15. Preparation for STEM Fields
16. Preparation for non-STEM Fields, Quantitative Literacy
17. Placement Testing
18. HS to Work with Higher Ed Door Kept Open

Breakout Session Schedule and Room Assignments

In each of the scheduled breakout session time periods  (A - Monday morning,  B - Monday afternoon, C - Tuesday morning), there are 9 or 10 different breakout sessions scheduled.  In the schedule below, please note that due to low numbers, groups 4 & 5 will meet together and groups 16 & 17 will meet together.  Because of large demand there will be 2 sessions of group 14 meeting during breakout session C; they are denoted by 14.1 and 14.2 on your individual assignments.  Your individual assignment to breakout sessions, based on your request, may be found here (web version) or here (Word version).   To avoid overcrowding, we ask you please to follow the assigned schedule.  If you are one of the few that has an open time slot, that means there was an irresolvable conflict and you should choose among the available sessions in that time period.

Registration

The registration form is here.

Hotel Reservations

As of September 16, the meeting hotel has no rooms remaining for our group.  Please try other hotels in the Dulles Airport region. 

Please make your reservations directly with the hotel, the Hyatt Regency in Reston VA.  The rate is $185 per night plus tax which is currently 9%.  You must register by September 15 to get this rate.  You can register online by going to https://resweb.passkey.com/go/MathSciences or by calling 1-888-421-1442 and saying you are with the CBMS Math Forum Group.  The hotel is located about 6 miles from Dulles Airport (IAD) and there is a complimentary hotel shuttle between the airport and the hotel.  Details about transportation to the hotel are here.

Participant Support

We have received participant support funds from NSF and there is a place on the reservation form for you to request such support if needed.  In this current economy, we know that many institutions have severely restricted travel funds and we would like to be able to direct our limited funds to those who most need them.  So if you have another source of funding, please try that first before requesting support from our funds.

Questions

Please direct questions about the forum to Ron Rosier at rosier@georgetown.edu.

Thanks

CBMS gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Brookhill Foundation and the National Science Foundation which are making this Forum possible.