Big investment in math will take years to pay off
Locals school boards introducing new ways to improve students’ skills
Just days before students headed back to school, Ontario educators were reminded that the province’s $60-million renewed math strategy is a long-term investment that has yet to pay off.
Last spring’s Education Quality and Accountability Office provincial math test results were released, showing that for the second straight year, half of all Ontario’s Grade 6 students failed to achieve the provincial standard.
Sixty-two per cent of Grade 3s met the provincial standard compared to 63 a year ago. Fortyfour per cent of students met the standard on the Grade 9 applied math test for the second straight year while 83 per cent, a slip of a percentage point, did so on the academic test. The EQAO results for individual school boards will be made public Sept. 20.
“I think we’re more likely to see the real impact take two or three years,” said Emelda Byrne, a superintendent for the Windsor-Essex Catholic School Board. “But we’re excited to see if there’s been an impact on our students.”
Educators are trying to reverse years of declining or stagnating results in math across the board.
The percentage of students meeting provincial standards has dropped five points to 63 per cent since 2011-12 for Grade 3 students and eight points to 50 per cent for Grade 6 pupils.
At the secondary school level, the percentage of those meeting provincial standards on the Grade 9 test for both applied and academic stream students has stagnated. Academic students are down one per cent over five years at 83 per cent, while applied results are up one per cent over the same period.
Heather Irwin, senior media relations coordinator for the Ministry of Education, admits time and flexibility are going to be required for the renewed math strategy, announced a year ago, to be effective.
“The ministry is analyzing data to inform planning for the next two years of the strategy,” she said.
It is also supporting the strategy with complimentary programs, such as summer learning and grants for robotics resources, parent engagement and post-secondary education classes.
Summer Learning is a threeweek, targeted intervention program for vulnerable students in kindergarten to Grade 5 that is intended to reduce summer learning loss and improve literacy and numeracy skills.
Both the local public and Catholic boards got grants to run expanded versions of the programs and said summer learning has proven extremely beneficial.
The focus of the second year of the new math strategy, especially at the elementary level, will be to continue to build on developing the confidence and comfort level of teachers and administrators with math.
Much of the additional provincial funding and support has been aimed at professional development in math for teachers, creation of math leads at each school, a math lead at the board level and involving school principals more.
Kyle Pearce, a math consultant for the Greater Essex County District School Board, conducts seminars and introducing new concepts aim at doing just that locally and across the province.
“Some teachers are uncomfortable because, though they can do the math, they don’t fully understand the why of math,” Pearce said. “We’re pushing conceptual understanding, so they understand why algorithms work they way they do.”
Pearce added having principals and math leads involved in math and working with their peers in board meetings has proven very beneficial.
“Based on the surveys and positive feedback we’re getting from teachers at workshops, teachers are feeling much more confident teaching math,” Pearce said.
The public board is also offering to partly cover costs for teachers interested in taking a University of Windsor course designed specifically to help improve math instruction. In addition, school boards are introducing new programs and resources to support teachers and students.
One such resource Pearce’s board is introducing is an app called Knowledge Hook. After students complete their work on the app, it red flags students and the areas in which they need support. It also offers different strategies on how to work with students to address those knowledge gaps. Parents are also notified through the app of their child’s progress.
“It makes parents aware of where the child needs help and strategies they can use at home,” Pearce said.
The public board is also running a pilot project using a program called Prime, which involves teachers gathering for collaborative analysis of students’ work.
“It’s intended to help the school’s leadership assess where students are on the continuum of learning from kindergarten to Grade 8 in number sense and in numeration,” said Pearce, who called the 10-yearold program “very complex.”
It identifies the most vulnerable students and ways to help them, he said.
While all Ontario schools will follow the new provincial math strategy, each board will also develop its own programs to meet unique needs.
For instance, the local Catholic school board plans to focus on supporting its junior grades more this year. “Sixty-five per cent of our Grade 3s achieve the provincial standard but the there’s been slippage to 55 per by Grade 6,” Byrne said. “We’re going to really focus on those junior grades to understand why and close that gap.”
The board’s strategy is to assess each of its 33 elementary schools to gauge the level of additional support needed. Fifteen schools will get some extra support, another 15 will get an increased support and three have been targeted for intensive support.
Those schools needing intensive support have fewer than 30 per cent of students achieving the provincial standard. Five teaching positions will be dedicated to working with those three schools.
“We’re going to focus heavily on classroom environment and classroom discussion of the work being done,” Byrne said. “We’re trying to take a balanced approach.”
An example of that has been reintroducing some back-to-basics concepts for seven to 10 minutes of every math class.
“It was practising facts, working with numbers even some rote learning,” Byrne said.
Another program that ran as a local pilot project last year at the secondary level is called 70 is the new 50. The program is aimed at supporting applied math students. Teachers at six of the board’s eight high schools participated last year.
“It’s working on attitude and building the confidence that they can achieve,” Byrne said.
“After every assessment, teachers create another opportunity to work on the difficult questions again. They focus on the group that struggled and they get a second chance at it (testing).
“We found over time the students improved their understanding, confidence and there was one benefit we didn’t anticipate. Those students also had better attendance when they had confidence they could get to 70 per cent rather than settle for 50.”
A further incentive was if they did improve to those levels they didn’t have to write the final exam.