Saxon-meeting math standards

Why do you ask?

I know this is an LD board, but a lot of you really know your math.
Our school is looking at getting a new math series for the entire elementary. Currently we have HBJ @1991. Our state, ND, has just been getting into standards and have tested the 4th grade the last two years. Normally our kids have done well not only from our school, but also from a national point. There are a few teachers who want to see us switch to Saxon. I know the time is coming in which we have to teach to standards. I was just curious on how Saxon is holding up to achieving math standards. The test they used in our state was very language based and Saxon doesn’t appear to be. Any insight or data from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

I do know that one school in MN who had Saxon for the last 8-10 years switched this year to McGraw Hill as they were not meeting the standards for their state and had been put on probation.

(I don’t know why they are trying to fix something in our state that doesn’t need fixing. I know we can always improve, but I don’t get the point. - another topic of discussion.)

I greatly appreciate all help. :)

One problem with this whole discussion is that it often needs to be moved up a level — not what program meets the standards and gets high grades, but what the standards are and why those standards were chosen and whether they are appropriate.

If the standards are age-appropriate and are chosen on the basis of educational/mathematical value, any good math program properly taught should meet them.

But if, as is often the case, they are copied almost word-for-word from some publisher’s handouts, then only that publisher’s stuff will teach the particular trick questions asked; and if they are the result of the latest fad in the education faculty’s ivory tower, than only the latest experimental program dreamed up by that group will meet them.

I always have mixed feelings about what people describe as “very verbal” math tests; on the one hand, of course you need to learn to understand verbal presentations — that is what you do in real life; on the other hand, some people go too far in the opposite direction and put in loigic puzzles and tricky wordings that are *verbally* too far above the kids’ developmental level, forget the math level. A happy medium is needed here. A *good* math program will include verbal problems as well as a lot of visual-concrete reasoning, and will show *how* to connect the verbal questions to the physical problem.

Like it or not, as a classroom teacher I have to be accountable to standards. Our state is just starting with this process. As far as the selection of the standards, that is another topic of discussion like you said. Currently I have no control over that. I have to do my job.

Absolutely.

First, I’d get a copy of those standards your state is putting out and I’d read them with a critical eye — not only what the students are being asked to do, but what the sample problems look like, and where the thought is coming from.

If there aren’t any sample problems for students to practice, I’d ask for some and encourage other teachers to do the same. Enough pressure will produce some sample tests.

With your critical eye: Are the standards a “back-to-basics” system which rewards quick calculation and wants memorization over and beyond the necessary, ie 12 X 12 and more? Do they look suspiciously like the “creative” problems found in certain textbooks and use specific jargon — and if so, which publisher are they following? Do they have rambling and confusing explanations and is it unclear what question is being asked — and in that case, which math professor is trying to make up something original?

Once you have identified what is going on, then you can do two things — obtain the texts used by the people making up the tests so you can be sure to cover all the material with your students; and write to the appropriate people — state standards committee, state superintendent of education and/or chief math consultant, congresspeople, etc. — about any of the more egregiously unsuitable demands.

Finding out what is going on ahead of time and integrating the material into your curriculum in a logical fashion is the *opposite* of “teaching to the test”. The problem with “teaching to the test” is waiting until a few weeks beforehand and drilling specific questions by rote — which has less than zero retention and doesn’t work very well even for the specific test.

Good luck with this

/

Our school uses the Saxon program and has high scores on state tests. The curriculum is spiraling, so concepts are continually reinforced. It is fairly language-intensive, students are required to do a lot of reading and understand many math vocabulary terms.
When it was implemeted here, they began with 1st grade the first year, then added 2nd grade the next year, etc… so that the students became familiar with the format and weren’t thrown into a new program from one year to the next.