More News

Frederick County school officials are looking to create a new program for advanced math students in elementary school next year.

The program will be targeted at students who tend to move through their math lessons faster than their peers and are not being sufficiently challenged in the classroom.

Officials are still working to develop the specifics of the initiative and considering options, said Bonnie Hain, the school system's director for curriculum and professional development. One solution could be creating homogenous classes for advanced math learners, she said.

The goal is to come up with one uniform solution that will be available for advanced math students in all elementary schools by August 2010, Hain said.

"We recognize that we don't have enough for our highly able students in math," she said. "We have kids that we are seeing that are just always getting it. We want to structure something for them."

Ever since Frederick County Public Schools introduced the disputed "Investigations in Numbers, Data and Space" math textbook as the main math resource for elementary schools across the county in 2008, one of the big concerns for parents has been the lack of challenging math programs for advanced learners.

The textbook teaches inquiry-based math — known as TERC math — which emphasizes, discovery-based learning, hands-on methods, and encourages students to use multiple strategies, drawing and even writing to get answers.

Among other concerns, parents who oppose the TERC math methods fear the inquiry-based math children waste time and effort drawing, writing and discovering answers of simple math problems, instead of moving forward to more challenging lessons.

Some school board members echoed those concerns last week when school system staff updated the board on the changes being made to improve the elementary math curriculum.

School staff examined the elementary math program this summer and made improvements such as increasing the number of lessons on standard algorithms, increasing the emphasis on fact learning and providing fact resources for teachers.

As part of the review of the program, staff also discovered that between 2007-08 and 2008-09, the percentage of fourth-grade students scoring advanced on their Maryland School Assessments increased from 38.1 percent to 44.1 percent. This was another reason that led school officials to start looking into plans for an advanced math program.

The new initiative will be different from the Gifted and Talented program, Hain said.

The Gifted and Talented program targets exceptional students who have unique academic needs that cannot be met in a regular school. The program has a whole curriculum, with above grade-level classes in math and language arts and grade-level classes in science and social studies.

By comparison, the new advanced math program will be for students who are top achievers in a regular math classroom and those who could be ready to take Algebra 1 in seventh grade, Hain said.

The goal of the new program would be to ensure that those advanced math learners are being challenged and are taking the necessary steps to get to that target, Hain said.

Frederick County offers enrichment opportunities for advanced math learners, but these depend on individual teachers and are not systematic, accelerated programs pushing students to a higher curriculum level, said Steve Lockard, the school system's associate superintendent for elementary schools.

The other problem is that teachers cannot focus on such activities when they are working in a classroom that has students at different levels of ability, Lockard said.

While school officials are considering splitting students into more homogeneous groups based on their abilities, this has to be done carefully, he said.

"One of the things we don't want to do is put our lowest achievers together in one class," Lockard said.

Lockard said a number of factors pushed school officials to look for a new program for advanced math learners, including recommendations from teachers, curriculum specialists and principals, and comments from parents and the community.

Board member Angie Fish said she was concerned about the time students spent on gaining conceptual knowledge in math and emphasized the need for challenging accelerated math learners.

"We are not challenging our elementary students enough," Fish told staff. "I am not against conceptual knowledge ... I just think it's time to re-examine that.

Board member Katie Groth expressed similar sentiment. Groth said while she has no desire to get rid of the TERC math program, she is hearing of the need to tweak that program so it serves highly able learners better.

"Those are the kids that we need to be training," she said. "Those are the kids that we need to be enriching."

E-mail Margarita Raycheva at mraycheva@gazette.net.