Conference Material

Engaging Parents and the Public

I want to hear back from the groups, but I'm afraid that will be the only thing we do with the rest of the afternoon if I start it. So I'm going to go back into a look at working with parents, and then we'll take some time to dialogue together at the end if that's okay with folks. Anybody have a burning issue that came up? Here I go, opening it up, after saying I wasn't going to. A burning issue that came up in your group that you think should be shared?

Q: My sister's name is Diane. She's put me on the spot, right? I said that and I can't cite the record either, but there's research to show that in adult learning, that you can do something and you can go through the rationale and you can--

Parker: A little louder, please.

Q: And then what happens is you walk away from there and you flip right back to what the myth is or the misconception or whatever it is that it was. You can't stay on what you just learned because you have such strong belief systems in your myth or misconception. And so how is it that you help parents through that so that they don't flip back to what they thought?

Parker: I think what you're addressing is the reason why coming in and doing a session once isn't enough. I'm very convinced that a two hour session can do an important job of shifting a paradigm. I've had lots of experiences with that. But I also know that when I fly away, if nothing else happens, you might as well not have brought me into a district. So I really do think the opportunities to come back and look at an idea over time are critically important. And I don't think we know yet how much time it takes.

I do know that in an initial two hour session, some of the districts that were really backing away from making selections of textbooks like the Investigations series because of how they saw their public responding to the session, ended up saying we can go forward with this. So I do think it's relatively easy to shift enough that you can garner some support for moving in the directions that we want to move. But as to the bigger questions, how do we really build the new belief systems, I don't know that we know the answers to that yet.

We've been real good at doing parent experiences where they come in and they do lots of fun activities. But fun activities aren't going to do the paradigm shift. I really think it's a combination of the activities, the looking at purposeful issues, then coming back and reflecting on what the experience is about.

Q: (...inaudible) a little difficulty with (...inaudible) on the myth of whether--

Parker: A little louder if you would, Jack, please.

Q: Whether you can bring them up, the myths, if they haven't been understood already or whether you do bring them up and try to dispel them. And maybe it occurs to some other people to think the myths are correct.

Parker: I haven't, with parents, outlined myth one, myth two, myth three. That transparency was made just for our conversation here. However, the words that I did around those myths with you are the precise things that I've done in communities around the country. And it's hard for me to imagine actually a place where these myths aren't already there. I have yet to be in a community that has adopted new materials that isn't facing the issue of parents saying I don't understand what you're doing with my kids, I don't know how to help them anymore. I think whether they've been recognized or not, it is perhaps naive of us not to assume that there are underlining issues that need to be addressed pretty purposefully. That's my take on it.

Q: I'm with you. Just thought I'd bring it up.

Parker: Okay? Moving along. Oh, golly. I really, really want to address this one. Test scores have dropped. High stakes norm referenced testing is a good way to hold educators accountable and will result in increased student performance. I think there is no more damaging practice going on in our country right now than our high stakes focus on norm referenced standardized testing. And I have a piece that's about a 15 minute piece with parents that I would really love to do with you, that I think builds a compelling argument for why we need to work against these practices. But I don't have time for it. So what I will do is if any of you are so eager to hear that piece that you're willing to be 15 minutes late to the open bar, I'd be willing to stay and discuss that issue after the rest of you leave. So let me just throw that offer out there.

Q: You asked to have your assumptions challenged. There's a new article done for the Goals' Panel on just that myth four by (...inaudible) David Grissmer which in fact, based on their research, they say, yes, in both Texas and North Carolina. Do I need to repeat that?

Parker: Yes, probably. That was my question too.

Q: Okay, there's a new article that was commissioned for the Goals' panel by David Grismer of Rand which studied the test scores, the accountability systems. And apparently North Carolina and Texas have had the largest gains. And it appears, at least based on the Rand analysis, to be directly due to your myth four.

Parker: To norm referenced standardized testing?

Q: Yes, ma'am.

Parker: Okay. So this idea has been challenged. I should have told you in this talk we're in the realm of theory according to Ruth Parker. So you all ought to be skeptical of that one. However, now that you have said that, I am really dying to do the session on this issue. So I'm going to do it for those of you who are willing to stay and listen to it, because there is some other stuff that I have to get to. This is such a parallel to the classroom. Where kids come up with an idea and you want to go with it, but you have to make those decisions all the time.

Some more myths. Things were better in the past. The publication of the NCTM standards is largely responsible for the dismal state of mathematics education in the US today. These standards are dumbing down the curriculum. When I was facing some teachers and some administrators, especially, who seemed to have that belief system, I just happened to have put a folder in my briefcase. And I have no idea why it was there but I needed it at the time. And I've since started using it.

What I'm going to be looking at is just a couple of items from the 1977-78 NAEP. So we're talking about what? 21, 22 years ago now. Surely things were in a better state of affairs then, don't you think? Well, one of the items on the 1977-78 NAEP was kids were asked to estimate the answer to 3.04 times 5.3. A number a little bigger than three times a number a little bigger than five. And this was a test given to 13 and 17 year olds throughout the country. So with 13 year olds, we're looking at mostly 8th graders, some 7th graders. Would that be true? And with 17 year olds, we're looking mostly at seniors or juniors. Kids that are still in school.

This was a multiple choice test and the choices were 1.6, 16, 160, 1600, and I don't know. Is there more than one reasonable answer on the test? So how do you think our 8th graders did? A little bigger than three times a little bigger than five? Not only that, but if you look at those numbers, that's about what you'd expect if you were in a five sided room and you blindfolded somebody and put an answer on each wall and spun them around and said throw a dart. Pretty much a random distribution of numbers there. What about our 17 year olds?

Several: Worse.

Parker: Oh, now you're skeptical. They didn't do worse. They did better. Oh, now some of us are saying, oh, they went up. Well, less than 40% of our seniors multiplying three times five. I don't think we ought to be too pleased with the results. And just one other. Another item from the 77-78 NAEP. Again, 13 and 17 year olds were asked to estimate the answer to 12/13 plus 7/8. So just about one plus one. This was also multiple choice. And our choices were one, two, 19, and 21. How do you think they did? So, again, if you look at our 17 year olds.

Oh, you're wondering what this was. This was an item from the CAP test, the California Assessment Program. And this was given to 8th grade students. This was a real item. I promise. 8th graders were asked what is 100% of 32. Now what percent of your 8th graders would you hope would get that one right? Approximately 50% of the 8th grade students in California got that. Well, I think what we're seeing here is the result of a dead end curriculum that asks children to memorize procedures rather than understand relationships.

And I think what we're seeing is kids who then come to the test and say, "Oh, my gosh, percent. I can't remember how to find it. I can't solve the problem." They abandon their reasoning. And in fact unfortunately, all too often in mathematics, they have learned at an early age to abandon their reasoning process and just learn to take on procedures that oftentimes make little to no sense to them. Now what struck me is that these were the kinds of test results that many of us sitting in this room used 20 some years ago to convince ourselves that things had to be better. And I'm struck by the fact that perhaps one of the things we need to do is get out these very tools that we used to convince ourselves and use them to help convince our public.

Now the other thing that I do in my parent talk is an experience that I purposefully put in there to get parents to confront the issue of their own inability to do mathematics through a problem called the turkey problem. But I'm doubtful whether there are people left in the world who haven't done the turkey problem. Is there anybody here who doesn't know what I'm talking about right now from the turkey problem? Can I do it or not? Yes? Okay. Maybe they can just bring the bar to us if we just kept going this evening.

This is a little embarrassing to share with you because it's a problem that actually happened to me a few years back. And it starts with I was on a diet and I could eat a quarter pound of chicken breast or turkey breast or white fish and fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. I was invited to dinner and the person cooked lasagna and salad. And I was being good in those days, so I ate the salad, I didn't eat the lasagna. It was a business meeting. We met till about nine o'clock at night. I had to take Kathy Richardson home before going home. So I had about a 45 minute drive.

We got in the car at about nine and I said, "Kathy, I'm hungry. I'm going to go to Safeway and get a quarter pound of turkey breast." So I went to Safeway and I went to the deli and ordered a quarter pound of turkey breast. She took a new turkey breast out of the deli and sliced it in half. So consider these uniform slices for our purposes. They were pretty close to uniform. She sliced three slices of turkey breast and she said it's a third of a pound. I said, "That's okay, I'll take it anyway." So I took the turkey breast, got in the car, put it on the dash, opened it up. I wasn't even going to wait to get home to take a bite. This is an embarrassing story.

I started to take a bite and I stopped and said, "Kathy, how much of this can I eat and stay on my diet?" So what I'd like you to figure out, without talking to anybody around you, please, is, "How much of that three slices of turkey breast could I eat and stay on my diet?" Now I'm going to ask you to work hard not to talk to anybody around you. Because some of my colleagues and some of our public believe that the ideas I'm sharing with you are not the right direction for our country to move. In fact, they think they're precisely the wrong direction. In fact some people would have us believe that it is because of these NSF funded programs that our nation is falling apart. Ironically, before we can even get these programs into classrooms, they're being blamed for the current state of affairs.

Some of my colleagues believe that this is just another swing of the pendulum. We've seen it all before. And if we just wait it out, it will come back to where we're more comfortable. So why go through the struggle that's going to be involved in learning to teach like this? And some of my colleagues and some of our public believe that our children will be better served if we get rid of these mathematics reform efforts and instead give children more of the mathematics that we had. So I want you to be looking inwardly as you're doing this problem and asking the question will our children be better prepared if we give them more of the mathematics that we had? So you know the setting. I have three slices of turkey breast. It weighs a third of pound. I can eat a quarter of a pound. How much of this can I eat. So go ahead and go to work.

I've done the problem probably ten dozen times or more across the country. It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm with high school math teachers, elementary teachers, or business folks. It doesn't make a difference. At this point, when I ask if those still working would be happy if we went on, somewhere between a third and two-thirds of the group always says, yes, just go on. And it looks as if that's the case today. Many of you are still thinking. So I apologize for not giving you time to finish your thinking.

But what I want to do right now is to carefully collect the different answers that we think it might be in the room. So what I hope you'll do is work really hard not to show any indication at all of whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with an answer as it comes up. So don't let yourself nod or shake your head or anything or show any agreement. Let me just collect the different answers. Is anybody willing to take a big risk on this one and raise your hand and share what you think the answer might be? With raised hands? Yes.

Q: Three-fourths.

Parker: Three-fourths of the whole thing or of a slice?

Q: I mean three-fourths of the three slices.

Parker: Three-fourths? Now I'm driving a car, remember. Three-fourths of the three slices. Anybody who has a different idea about what I can eat with your hands raised? Yes.

Q: You didn't give us enough information. If you can only eat whole slices because you're driving the car, you can only eat two of them. But if you can (...inaudible)

Parker: No, you're saying two and drive safely? How much could I eat?

Q: Two whole slices and (...inaudible) If you're able to slice and cut the slices, then, he's right, you can eat three-fourths of the two slices, plus (...inaudible)

Parker: Plus a little more. Anybody have a different idea that you're willing to share with your hands raised about what I can eat? Yes, thank you.

Q: Two and a quarter slices.

Parker: Two and a quarter slices. Anybody have a different idea about what I can eat that you're willing to share, please? Take a risk on this one, if you would. Yes.

Q: Two and 7/12.

Parker: Two and 7/12 slices. Anybody have a different idea about what I can eat? Yes.

Q: Well, it's sort of like the first one, but you can take a quarter off each one.

Parker: I can take a quarter off of each slice. Anybody have a different idea about how much I can eat? So nobody had two and 1/36 slices? Yeah. See, I know it's out there. So if you let me know, we'll get out of here sooner. Two and 1/36 slices? Anybody have a different idea about what I can eat that you're willing to share? Nine-fourths of a slice? Of the slices? Anybody have a different idea about how much I can eat? Nobody had two and 3/4 slices? No? Okay. Well, this is enough. Typically when I'm with parents at this point, we have both columns filled up with what they think I can eat.

Now did you understand my story? Did you understand I had three slices and they weighed a third of a pound and I could eat a quarter of a pound? You understood that. So that wasn't the problem here. Okay. Well, what I'd like you to do, - and now this may seem scary, but trust me, it won't be - I'd like you to get together with just two or three other people around you.

If you're in a group at a big table, please divide into two groups. And let anybody in the group who wants to, - and this is important, nobody has to - let anybody in the group who wants to share with your group either how you're thinking about the problem if you're still thinking about it, and most of us are still thinking, or how you solved the problem if you solved it. So take just a minute and talk to each other about the turkey problem if you would.