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SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS INVOLVEMENT IN THE NEW K-12 This past year saw a major shift in the Minnesota public schools (K-12) standards, and members of the School had a significant impact in the process of producing and adopting these changes. This is an excellent example of the service to the larger community by our faculty. The process by which these changes were made was very complicated, requiring great deal of interaction with the legislators and the state government. The School faculty members participating in this important endeavor were Professors Bert Fristedt, Larry Gray and Chester Miracle. Professor Gray was, at the time, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and became the Head of the School in September 2003. Professor Fristedt has given us the following account of the process that led to the new standard. In February 2003, the new state of Minnesota Commissioner of Education, Cheri Pierson Yecke, formed an Academic Standards Committee, consisting of approximately 80 people to write new math and language arts state standards for K-12 (that is, Kindergarten through grade 12). The standards that were developed will be important for the children of our state in the years to come. The following paragraphs give some insight into the process of developing these standards. For the math subcommittee of 40, three School of Mathematics faculty where chosen: Bert Fristedt, Lawrence Gray, and Chester Miracle. The Mathematics Department at the Morris campus of the University of Minnesota was represented by Peh Ng. Another important contributor to the work of this subcommittee was Lesa Covington Clarkson, who is on the faculty in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction here on the Twin Cities campus. William Beck and Jerald TerEick of the School of Mathematics were not on the Academic Standards Committee, but made extremely important contributions in an 8-hour session arranged by Fristedt and Miracle with them and some members of the math subcommittee. Beck and TerEick are retired high school mathematics teachers who have for several years been on our staff as teaching specialists. Within the math subcommittee there were further subcommittees: Fristedt served first on the 9-12 subcommittee and later on the 6-8 subcommittee, whereas Gray did the reverse. Miracle and Ng were on the 9-12 subcommittee throughout and Covington Clarkson was on the 6-8 subcommittee. Gray and Covington Clarkson were also on a composition subcommittee of six, chosen by the Commissioner to compose a well-written document integrating the ideas from the K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 math subcommittees. This subcommittee did a superb job, especially considering the severe time-constraint that was imposed by virtue of the Federal `No Child Left Behind' legislation. This document accommodates the mathematics relevant for a mathematics-rich college major while emphasizing the mathematics that all should learn in order to have constructive roles as citizens, as well as skills that are relevant for a wide variety of occupations. With reference to the preceding paragraph, one might ask: What is so novel about that? Is that not what has always been done? With these two questions in mind, the following paragraph gives a bit of relevant background. In the somewhat distant past, the state of Minnesota had very minimal high school mathematics requirements. A long period followed in which there was an attempt to entice all students to take more mathematics and to really learn the mathematics that they took. Roughly speaking this attempt had four strands, not all occurring at the same time and often occurring in reaction to other strands, but also not fully disjoint from each other either: (a) practice in being skillful in mathematical procedures; (b) develop an understanding of mathematics concepts; (c) learn about mathematics in real-world contexts; (d) learn mathematics by a variety of techniques that some might view as non-traditional, such as group discussions or discovery learning. A further complicating feature is that item (b), in particular, is subject to vastly different interpretations. In 2000-2002, Gray, in his then role as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Mathematics, had been contacted by several scores of parents in the state complaining about the mathematics content in the schools. Gray, and occasionally Fristedt, visited many schools and parents groups at the invitation of parents or school administrators, and Fristedt started to make contacts with legislators on this issue. What had happened is that strands (c) and (d) above had become dominant, partly because of the way that the Minnesota 'Profiles of Learning' law had been written. In particular, the emphasis on (d) had pushed calculational skill and the accompanying understanding in arithmetic and algebra to the sidelines. Therefore, when a chance developed to create new state standards, Fristedt and Gray were ready to volunteer in order that doing arithmetic and algebra be restored to its rightful place in K-12 and basic geometry to 9-12. [The K-8 `Profile of Learning' standards in geometry were generally fine and in some cases "better than fine", but the 9-12 geometry standards were vague and unnecessarily weak, especially given the fine K-8 preparation.] Fristedt contacted Ng and Gray contacted Miracle, and both Ng and Miracle responded by also volunteering. Besides the official subcommittee meetings, Fristedt, Miracle and Ng joined the Commissioner at several meetings throughout Minnesota where the Commissioner sought public input on an early draft. At most of these, committee members were quiet listeners and observers, since many non-committee members wished to speak. An exception was the meeting in Onamia where it developed that Miracle was the main contributor. He was able to make two important points about the proposed standards: (i) that they represent a consensus, bringing together a variety of views of K-12 teachers, post-secondary faculty, parents, and business people; (ii) that they are outcome-focused while accommodating a variety of teaching styles. There was no attempt to include calculus standards for those who have accelerated through the K-12 system in mathematics, but an accelerated student would typically take calculus in high school. A non-accelerated student who masters the material in the standards is well-prepared to succeed in post-secondary calculus. Of course, it is not expected that all students would be tested in high school on all of the standards---the standards focusing on the to-calculus path beyond what would be expected of all were primarily the work of Miracle with input from several others on the 9-12 subcommittee, most notably Steven Jones, the chair of mathematics at Mankato West High School. All on the mathematics subcommittee took their tasks very seriously, but besides those described above, the author of this article noticed that several deserve special mention. These include all six members of the composition subcommittee who gave so freely of their time. Besides Gray and Covington Clarkson, there were two who had won Minnesota teacher-of-the-year awards (in different years, of course) ---Ellen Delaney, a high school teacher from North St. Paul and Barbara Stoflet, an elementary school teacher from the Hopkins school district---and Nancy Nutting, the chair of Sci-Math Minnesota and Ellen Hoerle, a chemical engineer from Eden Prairie, who at present is a stay-at-home mother. There are also others whose contributions were very special. John Kappler, a computer scientist from Shoreview, made a wide variety of specific nicely focused contributions to the 9-10-11 standards on which the grade 11 state mathematics test should be based; he did this both in the official committee meeting and in the informal session with Beck and TerEick mentioned above. Dale Akkerman, a physician from Burnsville, made several important contributions in the 6-8 math subcommittee, especially in adding richness to the standards without making the standards for grades 7 and 8 into mini-algebra standards. David Klitzke, a sixth grade teacher from Lester Prairie was a major player in creating the sixth-grade standards, especially in connection with the items related to prime numbers and factoring. The input of Kim Ross, a former mathematics teacher who is now superintendent of the Houston, Minnesota School District, guided the committee to solid but realistic 6-8 standards. Fristedt called on two other non-committee members for what turned out to be valuable input into the 9-10-11 standards: Julie Guelich, the Dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Normandale Community College and long-time member of the Mathematics Department there, and Len Mrachek, who taught for more than a quarter century in Minnesota technical colleges, and as a "retired person" currently teaches mathematics in General College here on the Twin Cities campus. Once the standards were written, there were hearings by the relevant committees in the House, the Senate, and by the joint-house-senate conference committee. Besides the general testimony of the Commissioner, most of the subject-specific testimony was given by Delaney, Fristedt, and Gray. As the process goes forward with state tests aligned to the new standards and school districts possibly asking for suggestions or clarifications, Fristedt, Gray, and Miracle, as well as the Institute of Technology Center of Education Programs directed by our own faculty member Harvey Keynes, are resources on which the State can call to provide substantive input. Bert Fristedt, Professor of Mathematics |