MATH TEST FAILURES: PITIFUL RESULTS ROOTED IN PAST

There's been a great deal of criticism of the Clark County School District because of the results of the semester math exams, which I was responsible for creating.

To understand these results, we have to go back about eight years, when the school district hired a new superintendent. Well before his plane touched down at McCarran International Airport, he declared that all students in Clark County would take algebra by the eighth grade. While that was a laudable goal and had the support of many in the community, it was not realistic or attainable.

I was not then -- and am not now -- aware of anybody in the math community who agreed with or supported that initiative. I spoke with the former superintendent to try to dissuade him from this initiative by explaining that the district's course of study did not align so students would have the necessary background for them to succeed in algebra by the eighth grade, that some of our students did not have the pre-requisite knowledge or skills to be successful in algebra, and that with the teacher shortage, we did not have the math personnel to make sure each student had a qualified teacher.

He responded that he'd rather have students fail algebra than take general math over again.

To be fair, there is some merit to that argument. You can't increase student achievement without increasing rigor.

In the end, the extreme position of everyone -- all students -- taking algebra was the order of the day. In addition, there was an agreement that if we followed this directive, algebra would not be watered down. But that agreement did not last long.

Shortly after the implementation of the algebra initiative, to ensure students had mastered basic facts and procedures, we asked for and received permission to create and implement computation tests in the fourth and seventh grades to ensure students mastered basic skills. An end-of-year algebra test also was created and administered.

The idea behind picking the fourth and seventh grades for testing was to give schools an extra year, in either fifth or eighth grade, to help those students who did not master basic mathematics before they might be held back.

Those three tests were administered. The results were not good.

The following year, the school district hired a consulting firm to build a system for tracking individual student performance. That system tracked performance by testing students on the standards used to better prepare students for the High School Proficiency Exam -- a test very different from end-of-semester exams.

With the district buy-in on the tracking system, the fourth- and seventh-grade computation and the end-of-year algebra tests were discontinued in favor of quarterly interim assessments that were aligned with the state's testing program. The district rewrote its curriculum, syllabi and benchmarks. That re-write required that almost the entire first quarter of a course, such as first-year algebra, had to be spent preparing students for the interim assessments based on the standards needed to pass the High School Proficiency Exam, rather than on algebra standards.

The good news: The number of students passing the state's proficiency exam increased from 39 percent to 45 percent. The down side: Less time was spent teaching an already dense algebra curriculum, which might predictably result in lower scores on an algebra test.

This watering down of the academic curriculum was repeatedly brought to the previous superintendent's attention, and I was told repeatedly, year after year, that this would be fixed. But without having the results of the end-of-year computation tests in the earlier grades and in algebra, there was no sense of urgency because there was no hard data.

When Walt Rulffes became superintendent last year, I showed him school district documents focusing on how the entire first quarter of first-year algebra had very, very little algebra in it. My argument was simple: Algebra should be taught in an algebra class, geometry taught in a geometry class, as well as trig being taught in a trigonometry class. He agreed and directed school district personnel to immediately make changes so that college preparatory classes such as algebra reflected algebra standards.

Mr. Rulffes also knew the problem of students not mastering basic skills began earlier than middle school and high school. To address this, he was going to re-institute the computation tests in fourth and seventh grades to ensure students were mastering basic skills.

At this point, teachers were rightfully complaining to state lawmakers about the number of tests they were required to administer, and the Legislature passed a bill that did not allow any new additional tests that were not approved by a certain date to be administered. That legislative action precluded Mr. Rulffes from reinstating the computation tests this year.

Mr. Rulffes took the bull by the horns, as we would expect any responsible leader to do. He identified a problem, made the appropriate changes in curriculum and backed that up by testing. He has taken corrective measures to ensure our students are mastering the basic skills, that they are more appropriately placed, that the classes will have the rigor to prepare students for the High School Proficiency Exam, ACT and SAT, and transition them into college without remediation.

He's also making sure all schools place the same level of emphasis on preparing students for tests, high-stakes or otherwise, and he's instructing school administrators to take a closer look at instruction to ensure student understanding earlier in the school year.

Walt Rulffes should be seen as a hero in this. This is his second year as superintendent, and rather than stick his head in the sand and ignore problems, he chose to do what is in the best interests of students and their futures. For that he should be saluted, not criticized.

Bill Hanlon is director of the state-funded Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Center, which trains Clark County School District teachers, and a former member of the State Board of Education.