Volume 7, No. 2, Fall 2003

Contents | Two Revolutions | Monday's Lesson | Ready to Teach | CC Portal | PDF Version

Ready to Teach:

A scalable support program for uncertified algebra teachers

Teacher quality is one of the most important determinants of student success. But certified teachers are in short supply in low-wealth schools. More than 70% of mathematics courses in high-poverty, high-minority middle schools are assigned to teachers who lack even a minor in mathematics (see note). Thus, the consequences of the shortage of qualified teachers in schools serving high-poverty, high-minority communities are predictable: lower performance of students from these schools. The glaring gaps in achievement between students in these schools and students in other schools will continue until the teacher certification gap is closed.

Drastic and immediate efforts are needed to address the problem of uncertified teachers in high-poverty and high-minority schools. There is new urgency for solving this problem because “No Child Left Behind” is now federal law that requires schools to have “highly qualified” teachers in all classes by 2006 to continue to be eligible for federal education funding. New ways of dealing with this problem are needed that can leverage available resources quickly and effectively.

Figure 1. One-by-one square.

Toothpick challenge In this activity, you’re going to build squares using toothpicks. The challenge is to figure out a rule or rules for determining the number of toothpicks needed to build a square of any size. Ready? OK. Let’s start with the first few squares in a sequence. The first square has a 1 x 1 dimension. That’s four toothpicks, one for each side. (Figure 1, above.) The second square has a 2 x 2 dimension. How many toothpicks do you count? (Figure 2, below.) What will the third square (3 x 3) look like? How many toothpicks does it take? Continue to build subsequent squares and determine the number of toothpicks needed in each case. Finally, determine the number of toothpicks needed to build an 8 x 8 square; a 21 x 21 square; and an n x n square where n is any positive integer. View the Solution

Figure 2. Two-by-two square.

The Ready to Teach program

The Concord Consortium’s Seeing Math Telecommunications Project and the PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service) Teacherline Project have joined together to create a program called “Ready to Teach” that will address the problem of under-qualified secondary mathematics teachers. The overall goal of the joint Ready to Teach program is to develop, implement, evaluate, and disseminate an affordable, scalable support program for uncertified algebra teachers. By joining together, the two projects can pool their resources to create a powerful new strategy for addressing the problem of under-qualified teachers: economical, effective teacher professional development that is delivered online. The solution could be expanded to encompass most disciplines.

The core innovation of the Ready to Teach program will be online Close Support™ courses for algebra teachers that will address both content and pedagogy needs of participating teachers. Close Support courses will provide content-specific, just-in-time assistance to teachers of Algebra I and II. Each teacher participating in a Close Support course will, at the same time, be teaching the same topic to students. Our goal is to ensure that each participant gets content and teaching support that will pay off immediately in the courses that the participant is teaching. This should maximize the impact of the teachers’ professional development and result in measurable gains in their students’ learning.

Creating Close Support online courses that are synchronized with classroom teaching is a major challenge. Teachers use a wide range of textbooks that have different approaches and even teachers with the same text cover the content at different rates, emphasize different sections, and bypass different chapters. In addition, we do not want to be too closely tied to textbooks, because their treatment is often chaotic and fails to incorporate what has been learned about how students learn.

Our design for Close Support courses for teachers begins by dividing the online Algebra I or II course into three-week modules, each of which focuses on one major topic. A module will not attempt to cover every detail of the different texts. Instead, the modules will be organized around a limited number of central ideas and will provide many ways for learning and teaching these ideas. Each module will include video of classroom teachers addressing the core ideas. The video provides a powerful stimulus for online discussions about teaching strategies and class organization. Each module also will have interactive applications for guided explorations of the key ideas. Teachers will be encouraged to use the online activities with their students, provided they have adequate technology support in their classrooms. Embedded assessments will allow us to provide ongoing assessment of student progress in classrooms that choose to use the software. Offline activities and assessments also will be available.

The modular structure of the Close Support Algebra content will allow us to craft online professional development course sections that match the needs of small groups of teachers. We are developing 22 modules that cover the core content of traditional Algebra I and II courses. A full-year course, that carries graduate credit and counts toward accreditation, will be composed of eight to ten of these modules. We will group participating teachers into sections of 20 teachers who have approximately the same classroom schedule. The appropriate modules then will be fitted to the consensus schedule for each section. Some teachers may have to make minor adjustments to their schedules so that all
participants in a section will be synchronized.

This design will ensure that every participant has a community of about 20 peers following the same schedule. They will be able to try out ideas and software together, share what they learn about their students, and gain a deeper understanding of the mathematics and the pedagogy through these discussions. Each section will be led by a trained facilitator who will guide the conversation and ensure full, thoughtful involvement of all participants.

Are you ready to join?

The Ready to Teach program needs help from professional development programs, pre-service teaching institutions, and schools to meet its tight development and implementation schedule. Algebra I modules will be tested in the spring, beginning in February 2004. Complete courses for both Algebra I and II will be tested during the 2004-2005 academic year. After revisions, the materials will be widely available in the fall of 2005.

We currently are recruiting a variety of organizations to test materials and course modules. In order to obtain quantitative results, we will need to randomly assign Algebra I and II teachers to two different kinds of teacher professional development. We also will need schools that have enough technology to use our software in their algebra classrooms, because the assessments embedded in the software will be used to track student progress. Participating schools will need to administer our standardized test to their algebra students and teachers at the beginning and end of the year. Finally, we will need access to records of student progress in prior years. (Data will be kept in strict confidence; no one outside the project will be able to identify specific students, teachers, or schools.)

Teachers in the study will enjoy free, high-quality professional development that will carry graduate credit toward accreditation. All teachers completing their professional development will earn a stipend. A part-time project coordinator at the school site also will be reimbursed.

If you are interested in joining the Ready to Teach program, contact Raymond Rose (ray@concord.org).

Robert Tinker (bob@concord.org) is President of the Concord Consortium.

Article Links & Notes

Note: Ingersoll, R. M. (2002). Out-of-Field Teaching, Educational Inequality, and the Organization of Schools: An Exploratory Analysis. University of Washington Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy.

Seeing Math Telecommunications Project — http://seeingmath.concord.org

Public Broadcasting Service — http://www.pbs.org

Teacherline — http://teacherline.pbs.org

The projects described in this newsletter are supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Noyce Foundation and others. All opinions, findings, and recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies. Mention of trade names, commercial products or organizations does not imply endorsement.

All Contents Copyright © 2005 The Concord Consortium. All rights reserved.