Group M Action Plans

Team Name		Words & Numbers
Team Leader & Members		Phyllis H. Hillwig - phillwig@wordsandnumbers.com Heather Gunsallus Kim Sullivan
Area & Recs		Instructional Materials 19, 33, 18

Start a WN blog/wiki resource section to be published and distributed for our clients, partners, vendors, and various constituents in the mathematics publishing and education community. This will include, but is not limited to the topics below:

Highlight findings from the NMP report and the Forum discussions, citing specific examples
Encourage everyone in our educational publishing community to view these findings and support them to incorporate these findings into their development process
Leverage our involvement with EPIC (Educational Publishing Interagency Council) which consists of three educational publishing organizations, (AEP, SIIA, AAP) to include a section or link to a site aimed to reach a broader educational publishing community.

[By January 1, we will have a draft/beta version of the wiki for select members to review. By March 1^st, we will launch the wiki for everyone to access.]

Development Materials

Expand our network of pure mathematicians (Masters/PHD level reviewers) and involve them early and throughout the writing and development process
Continue to make authentic cross-curricular connections relevant to the mathematics being taught. The mathematics should drive the connection. The connection should be interwoven within the instructional material.
Continue to take an active role in the development process infusing the Curriculum Focal Points, NMP report findings

[Immediate and ongoing process]

Community Outreach

Find ways to engage with our local communities (e.g., math camps for local students, teachers, and parents)

[Immediate and ongoing process]

Facilitate a Round-Table-Discussion

Reach out to surrounding state legislators to facilitate a discussion of the NMP findings in conjunction with the Curriculum Focal Points and their state standards

i. Invite key state personnel, publishers, and NCTM representatives

[April]

Team Name		Pearson - A
Team Leader & Members		Cathie Dillender - cathie.dillender@pearson.com Stewart Wood
Area & Recs		Instructional Materials 31, 32, 33

Instructional Materials

Recommendation 31 – U.S. mathematics textbooks are extremely long…: Our action plan here will be to examine the NMAP’s Critical Foundations and Benchmarks and the Focal Points (NCTM, 2006) and consider how we can “streamline” textbooks to ensure that foundational topics are covered in depth and guard against shallow treatment of topics. We will also consider plans to eliminate extraneous art/photographs which contribute to expanding text. Our work regarding this recommendation will be related to our action plan re: Recommendation 32.

Recommendations 31 and 32 – States and districts should strive for greater agreement…: Our action plan here will be to think of ways for states and school districts to also endorse the “less is more” approach of focusing on fewer mathematics topics more deeply and well, rather than the wide variance of topics we now see – and must address – in states and school districts around this country. Our recommended action plan is to have a forum for states, sponsored by the Department of Education, with Governors and State Superintendents. The goals of the meeting would be: 1) Look at the state standards and the possible groupings of states with similar standards to help reduce the size of texts currently needed to accommodate all the various iterations of standards; 2) identify the benefits of such a plan, for example, financial savings, instructional cohesion , and focused professional development.

Recommendation 33 – Publishers must ensure mathematical accuracy…: We will discuss this recommendation to validate our planning for ensuring the accuracy of our materials as well as ways to directly engage mathematicians, cognitive psychologists, and mathematics educators in the planning, writing, and ongoing evaluation of our materials.

Team Name		McGraw Hill
Team Leader & Members		Art Block - arthur_block@mcgraw-hill.com Patti Cowles Larry Snowhite
Area & Recs		Instructional Materials 31, 33

Technology provides opportunity to reduce and correct errors and eliminate weight issues. It also reduces ancillary materials. However, development costs will not necessarily be reduced because content is the primary cost and dynamic instructional materials are expensive to develop and maintain.

Implementation of the recommendations of the Teachers and Teacher Education chapter would significantly contribute to reducing size and increasing coherence of Instructional Materials.

Team Name		Kendall Hunt
Team Leader & Members		Lynn Molony - lmolony@kendallhunt.com Suzanne Chapin
Area & Recs		Instructional Materials 32, 13, 10

Recommendation I: Accuracy of Textbooks

• Publisher will continue to involve mathematicians and mathematics educators in the writing, editing and reviewing of critical mathematics content to ensure accuracy.

• Publisher will strive to develop instructional materials that is focused and is grade-level appropriate.

Recommendation II: Length of Textbooks

• Publisher will strive to remove extraneous materials from texts, some of which includes cartoons, photographs, and art that do not support the mathematics.

• Publisher will strive to avoid too much “cross-curricular” content connections that are not directly connected to mathematics.

Recommendation II: Coherence and Sequencing of Topics

• Publisher will involve teams of mathematicians, mathematics educators and teachers in the writing, editing and reviewing of lessons to ensure coherent development of topics.

• Publisher realizes that lack of coherence in textbook materials is related to the large number of state standards. Publisher supports all work with national and state organizations to rally around common grade-level benchmarks or content such as articulated in the NCTM’s Curriculum Focal Points.

Team Name

Wisconsin Group

Team Leader
& Members

Richard Askey - askey@math.wisc.edu
Pam Plamann
Patsy Wang-Iverson

Area & Recs

Instructional Materials 32, 19, 10

The Wisconsin Group will return to our state and work to initially inform others what we learned at the National Math Panel Forum. We will begin with our contacts at our Department of Public Instruction (members of the Content and Learning Team and the Superintendent of Public Instruction.)

We intend to request that they look at or create teams to review both the Focal Points and the National Math Panel Report to see how closely our current Standards and our Framework for Mathematics align. We will work with groups at the state level to encourage reform of our standards.

Our group will also put information on the Wisconsin Math Leadership Council ListServ and request that districts all over the state take a closer look at their current instructional materials and see how well they align with the Focal Points and National Math Panel findings.

The Wisconsin Mathematics Council has a magazine which appears three times a year and an annual meeting in the spring. We will contact leaders of this group to make similar suggestions to those made above, including articles on the NMAP report in their magazine and speakers at their annual meeting.

Team Name		National Council of Teachers of Mathematics - C
Team Leader & Members		Henry Kepner - hkepner@nctm.org Janie Schielack Ken Krehbiel
Area & Recs		Instructional Materials 32, 31

Action Plan

1. Provide support for administrators and teachers to design and implement focused curricula in mathematics consistent with the National Mathematics Advisory Panel’s recommended Critical Foundations. Over the next year, NCTM will publish a series of grade-band and grade-level books that address the importance of critical paths or trajectories for key mathematical topics, as presented in NCTM’s Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics: A Quest for Coherence.

2. Develop a program or materials to provide guidance for state curriculum committees in their work to address coherence among materials, assessments, and instruction in a focused mathematics curriculum.

3. Communicate to governors the importance of curricular coherence in mathematics, the integration in the development of curriculum and assessment, and the economic benefits of interstate curricular consistency with regard to the production of instructional materials.

Team Name		Brown Publishing Network
Team Leader & Members		Linda Vahey - lvahey@brownpubnet.com Nancy Crisler
Area & Recs		Instructional Materials 32, 33

Brown Publishing Network is interested in helping to implement the NMAP’s findings and recommendations in concert with the Focal Points from NCTM. We will work collaboratively with publishers and other groups as they try to align with these recommendations. Specifically, we can

participate in helping to bring about conversations among publishers, state, officials, and other people of influence as we move forward with the ideas of the collaborative efforts of the organizations represented in this forum.
work collaboratively with other interested parties on issues that are related to publishing of student and teacher materials.
update our cadre of writers and staff on the issues set forth in this forum.