Group T1 Action Plans
|
Team Name |
|
Office of the State (DC) Superintendent of Education - B |
|
Team Leader |
|
Toya Jones - toya.jones@gmail.com |
|
Area & Recs |
|
Teachers and Teacher Education 16, 17, 20 |
The OSSE School Improvement Consultants will visit District of Columbia public and charter schools to provide feedback on restructuring plans, strategy implementation towards student achievement in math. Recommendations include:
1. Professional development for Administrators, Coaches, Principals, Assistance Principals, Curriculum Coordinators, Teacher Leaders and School Content Specialists through identified venues which may include the National Council of Supervisors of Math (NCSM), National Institute for School Leadership (NISL) and the Vermont Math Initiative (VMI).
2. Models for content instruction for teachers and administrators (i.e., VMI).
3. Define Math Specialists specific roles and responsibilities consistent with instructional goals/standards of the school.
The OSSE School Improvement Consultants intend to use the NMP recommendations regarding Teachers and Teacher Education to suggest professional development and resources for mathematics teachers at all levels to improve teacher knowledge, thus producing academic gains for students. The OSSE team will be able to propose professional development for mathematics teachers that are empirically sound and grounded in current research in mathematics education.
|
Team Name |
|
National Council Supervisors of Mathematics |
|
Team Leader |
|
Timothy Kanold - tkanold@d125.org |
|
Area & Recs |
|
Teachers and Teacher Education 16, 17, 13 |
The National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) is an organization of leaders dedicated to the leadership for equity and excellence in mathematics education. NCSM envisions a future in which no resistant patterns of differences in academic access or success exist among students grouped by race, ethnicity, culture, gender, neighborhood, income of parents, or home language. NCSM recognizes the mathematics education leader must ensure teacher actions translate from "All students can learn" to "Each student will achieve". NCSM believes that a single mathematics education leader - at any level of the school organization - can have an incredible impact on the collaborative development and effectiveness of teachers and students. NCSM believes quite a bit is known and understood about the necessary "student achievement gains" actions of highly effective teachers as practitioners both inside and outside of the classroom. The NCSM action plan for teacher pedagogical and content development reaches far beyond teacher preparation programs and into the daily professional development and growth of the mathematics teacher within the context of the workplace (Elmore and others, 2007).
The NCSM NMP action plan is consistent with our mission to provide professional development to mathematics leaders at all levels--including mathematics supervisors, coordinators, department chairs, coaches, curriculum coordinators, principles, assistant principals—so that they can improve their mathematics program, including providing better support for teachers’ continuous individual and collective professional growth. Specifically, we will focus on our unique position as the primary mathematics leadership organization to both communicate selected research results to mathematics leaders and to help researchers benefit from the questions and wisdom of practice.
Specifically,
1. We will connect specified NMP research results to the 12 required indicators of effective school mathematics leadership actions described in the PRIME Leadership Framework (NCSM, 2008). We will incorporate information about specific research-established learning processes results into our PRIME professional development:
· formative assessment (which is one of the twelve PRIME indicators)
· impact of early intervention and the nature of that intervention
· the relationship between students’ beliefs about effort, learning, and achievement; and about how teachers’ actions contribute to students’ beliefs
· teacher mathematics content knowledge.
Mathematics leaders need to be informed about the strength of the research evidence for effective and ineffective programs and practices.
2. Translate key findings into information for mathematics leaders, including developing position papers on:
· preK-2 mathematics learning
· the relationship between students’ beliefs about effort, learning, and achievement; and about how teachers’ actions contribute to students’ beliefs.
· formative assessment (position paper in progress)
· teacher’s mathematical content knowledge
3. Continue to disseminate selected research results through our annual conference and leadership academies.
4. Facilitate connecting researchers and practitioners.
Currently, there are a number of strategies that are proving to be effective in practice, but that do not have a scientific research base, e.g., professional learning communities. NCSM is willing to partner with other organizations to facilitate connections between researchers and practitioners. For example, we could:
· provide free registration for our conference for small number of interested researchers to hear about promising practices
· help coordinate a conference bringing together researchers and practitioners to identify key practices/issues for research.
Resources
Leaders in mathematics education at all levels of the school or district organization---people who are well trained, broadly informed, and perceptive--- are crucial for ensuring attainment of high-quality school mathematics programs. High-quality programs provide access to effective teaching of important mathematics and foster high levels of achievement for every student. High-quality programs are grounded in school-level conditions that enhance daily and ongoing adult professional development and learning, support research-informed best practice, and are guided by leadership that supports the ongoing improvement of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Through the recently released PRIME Leadership Framework (see ncsmonline.org), NCSM describes 12 teacher leadership actions that provide the necessary steps toward leading teachers to become engaged and committed to collaborative actions impact greater gains in student achievement. As a resource, the PRIME Framework provides a research informed vision that leads to solutions for some of the NMP recommendations. PRIME provides an opportunity to determine how various NMP recommendations can support or pressure the next generation of leaders and teachers into actions that matter in the learning of mathematics K-12. PRIME is a coherent framework in which to embed and disseminate selected NMP research results.
Additional dissemination resources include the NCSM Journal, Newsletter, position papers, as well as our annual conference and leadership academies.
NCSM is a willing partner in the exchange and dialogue regarding these critical issues. Our hope is to partner with other mathematics organizations to mobilize an entire workforce of dedicated leaders and teachers around the indicators of PRIME to increase the mathematics achievement of all students.
|
Team Name |
|
The Mid-Continent Comprehensive Center |
|
Team Leader |
|
Courtney Ellis-Lockridge - cellis@ou.edu |
|
Area & Recs |
|
Teachers and Teacher Education 16 |
The Mid-Continent Comprehensive Center provides support to the State Departments of Education in four states; Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri & Oklahoma. We work with these states to support the State Education Agencies (SEAs) in implementing No Child Left Behind. We have been charged to organize, plan, and implement a comprehensive process for building state capacity in the region through study of the research and best practices available nationally. One of our regional goals for this year is to establish a Numeracy Community of Practice. Community of Practices within our organization are designed to bring together leaders to discuss, study, review, and analyze quality information, tools, and resources that can be used to close the achievement gap. This group will meet regularly to discuss issues and challenges related to numeracy within each of their states. Since two of our states will be involved in the process of standards revisions, they have requested support from MC3 in this process and all of the resulting issues such as teacher education, textbook and materials review, and alignment with instruction and assessment. MC3 will convene the first meeting of the Community of Practice in October to discuss immediate needs related to the National Math Panel’s recommendations. We are in the process of conducting a needs assessment to determine topics that will best meet the needs of the group. The preliminary conversations with SEA representatives suggest that one of our first meetings will focus on the first area, Teachers and Teacher Education, as it is an immediate concern for the states.
|
Team Name |
|
National Institute of School Leadership |
|
Team Leader |
|
Rich Cannon - rcannon@ncee.org |
|
Area & Recs |
|
Teachers and Teacher Education 17, 14, 16 |
Modifying Professional Development for Principals
|
Team Name |
|
Vermont Mathematics Initiative |
|
Team Leader |
|
Ken Gross - gross@cems.uvm.edu |
|
Area & Recs |
|
Teachers and Teacher Education 18, 19, 17 |
The Vermont Mathematics Initiative (VMI) is a comprehensive, statewide, three-year, master’s degree granting mathematics professional development program for K-8 teachers at the heart of which is mathematics content knowledge. The VMI is designed to train a cadre of mathematics teacher leaders across the elementary and middle schools of Vermont. Now in its tenth year, the VMI has trained over two hundred educators who represent roughly 45% of the elementary and middle schools in Vermont and 90% of the school districts. Over the past decade, the VMI has made a significant contribution to K-8 mathematics instruction and higher student achievement in Vermont, as well as other cities and states where the VMI model and courses have been introduced.
Although founded a decade prior to the release of the NMP Report, the VMI curriculum and school implementation components are essentially in one-to-one correspondence with the Core Principles of the NMP Report. The VMI, therefore, is an ideal vehicle for implementing many of the recommendations of the NMP. To do so, the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Vermont will establish a Center for K-12 Teacher Professional Development. The mission of the Center, in addition to continuing our work in Vermont, will include making VMI courses, in-school implementation, and mathematics leadership training available to teachers elsewhere in the country, as we are currently doing in Cincinnati (Ohio) and Little Rock (Arkansas), and assist other institutions in developing such programs, as we have done in Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Illinois.
In general, it should be noted that college and university Departments of Mathematics have a major role to play in promoting and supporting professional development programs such as VMI which incorporate the collaboration of mathematicians with master K-12 educators and lead to higher student achievement. We hope the establishment of a Center for K-12 Teacher Professional Development at the University of Vermont will serve as a model for other colleges and universities.