Ike's new math program a number theory

YAKIMA, Wash. -- The word problem deals with DVDs.

Forty of them, or 5/9s of the entire collection, are comedies. So how many are there in all?

"I'm kind of confused right now," says Denisse Garcia, a 14-year-old freshman, clicking the hint button at the top of her screen. "Oh, now I get it. The denominator is the same. You're using common denominators."

Garcia is working through a unit on ratios and proportions in "Bridge to Algebra," part of a new $820,000 math curriculum purchased by the Yakima School District last summer.

It's an expensive gamble that new technology can solve a big problem: poor math performance.

The first results will be known next summer.

"We have to keep the focus on math because it is an area of need for our kids," says Yakima School District Superintendent Elaine Beraza. "Kids need to be mathematicians. We can't have kids saying, 'Oh, I can't do math.'"

To launch the new online effort, the district conducted extensive training.

Eighty teachers and math intervention specialists, or specially trained teachers' aides -- including 18 at Ike -- have been trained to teach and use the new curriculum. Principals have also received the training.

"It was a huge undertaking," says Stacey Locke, principal at Ike. "Overall, 26 people had to move classrooms to make this work. That's about a quarter of our teachers."

Introduced in 1995, Carnegie Learning was adopted by 75 U.S. schools within three years. Today, it's used in about 3,000 schools in more than 1,000 school districts by 500,000 students each year.

The interactive, online tutorial is integrated with the more traditional classroom practices of book learning and teacher instruction. It allows students to go at their own pace and track their own progress.

The aim is to help secondary students -- particularly those who are having trouble -- succeed in math. The district has paid for the program for three years.

One of the benefits for the district is a money-back guarantee offered by Carnegie Learning. The school district will be reimbursed for any student -- at $250 per student -- who does not pass the third year of math "at a minimum," according to Mary Murrin, vice president of government and public relations for Carnegie Learning.

"The most important objective of the Carnegie Learning math improvement program in Yakima is that students are improving their understanding and accelerating to high levels of achievement," Murrin says. "This will be best measured by how many students go on to take and pass advanced math classes and have success on the state tests."

Students are required to log a minimum of 50 hours per year on the software.

"It's a very comprehensive learning program," says Mary Masten, director of secondary education for the Yakima School District. "You can see where students are struggling. It gives you very finite information about how students are doing."

Carnegie Learning had previously been available in the district on a limited basis. Teachers had been using the online component "in bits and pieces" for the past two and a half years or three years.

And, Masten says, "We started seeing success with students in their math knowledge."

The expanded Carnegie Learning package -- which comes with teacher training and coaching and additional support -- was implemented this fall at Eisenhower and Davis high schools, Stanton Academy, Lewis and Clark, Franklin, Washington and Wilson middle schools, and Discovery Lab School.

The program incorporates elements of the federal School Improvement model, such as job-embedded professional development, classroom coaching and data analysis.

School Improvement Plans are required by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act for Title 1 schools not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks. The federal standard is measured by state tests and graduation rates.

The three high schools -- Eisenhower, Davis and Stanton -- and four middle schools -- Lewis and Clark, Franklin, Washington and Wilson -- are all Title 1 schools that didn't make AYP. Discovery Lab, which houses grades one to eight, is a non-Title 1 school.

Title 1 provides financial assistance to schools with high numbers or percentages of poor children to help ensure all children meet state academic standards.

The district used state Learning Assistance Program, or LAP, funds to pay for the program. Those funds are earmarked for students who are identified as needing support.

While Carnegie Learning can be used as an enrichment, the Yakima School District is mainly using the program as a remediation or intervention for pre-algebra, algebra I, geometry and algebra II.

At the middle school level, Masten says, Carnegie Learning is a supplemental math class. Students take it in addition to their regular math class. At the high school level, the program is integrated into math classes.

Students who scored in the lower two tiers of the state assessment -- the Measurements of Student Progress, or MSP, for middle schoolers, and the High School Proficiency Exam, or HSPE, for high schoolers -- are participating.

Students with scores in Level 1 or Level 2 have not met the state standard, meaning they scored lower than 70 percent on the math exam.

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Beraza recently visited Carnegie Learning classrooms at Ike and says she likes what she saw: "The program is sequential. It's very intuitive. It's really what you call smart software. If a kid is getting it, (the student) will get fewer questions. If a kid is struggling, (he or she) will get more."

But, Beraza stresses, the online component doesn't replace the teacher: "It's what we call blended instruction. You must have a teacher working with the kids."

At Ike, for example, classes divide into two groups. Half of the students receive instruction from the teacher, while half work with the online tutorial under the guidance of a math intervention specialist. Then, they switch.

At Stanton Academy, students are with their teacher 100 percent of the time, according to principal Clinton Endicott. Sixty percent of the class is spent on textbooks; 40 percent on the online tutorial.

"It's extremely comprehensive," Endicott says. "If you look at high-performing schools and/or districts, one of the things they have is a clear and shared focus. Well, we definitely have that around math now."

So far, says math teacher Lauri Anderson, "It's really going well" at Ike. "It's rigorous. I can see growth in the kids."

Because it's online, students aren't limited to their classroom. They can log on and work through the tutorial at home, before and after school, and during lunch. That helps them keep up -- or, in Garcia's case, get ahead.

"I do it at home almost every day, or whenever I can, because I want to show enough progress," she says, adding, "I like working independently."

Math is not her favorite. But, Garcia says, "I want to be able to pass it because I know I'll need it in life."

She also wants to take geometry next year. So she's motivated to complete both pre-algebra and algebra I as a ninth-grader.

Students can watch their progress on a "Skillometer," a bar chart which appears at the at the top right hand corner of the computer screen and provides immediate feedback.

"It shows the different types of things we're tying to achieve in the unit," Garcia says. "I can see what part I'm having trouble on."

It isn't the problem about the DVDs.

The answer, Garcia types, is 72.

"Each time you do one you understand more," she says.

* Adriana Janovich can be reached at 509-577-7653 or ajanovich@yakimaherald.com.