Starting in September 2012, the Fort Bend Math Collaborative focused on the goal of increasing the percentage of 5th graders across Fort Bend County scoring at the “Advanced” and “Satisfactory” levels on the Texas STAAR exam. “Advanced” level scoring is important to the Math Collaborative because it more clearly indicates readiness for 6th grade work.
Based on its analysis of data and exploration of effective math practices across the county, the Math Collaborative introduced some new strategies in nine pilot schools starting in September 2013. The strategies included increasing the time students spend “exercising the math muscle,” giving one-on-one assistance to struggling students, emphasizing math fluency and “math facts,” and sitting down with any child whose work was less than 70% accurate.
And all of this effort was focused primarily on economically disadvantaged students – those students whose prior performance in math shows that they need the most attention and support.
The results? Schools that used the new strategies in the most complete way got strong results; those that didn’t put the new practices in place, tended to get about the same results in 2014 that they got in 2013.
Here’s what can happen. In the school with the most complete implementation of the promising math practices identified by the Collaborative:
- Economically disadvantaged 5th graders scored at the “Advanced” level in math at a rate that is 9% better than last year’s economically disadvantaged 5th graders. What’s more, the 9% increase at the “Advanced” level is three times higher than the 3% target that the Math Collaborative established when it started the work.
- At the “Satisfactory” level, economically disadvantaged 5th graders scored at a rate that is 21% better than last year’s economically disadvantaged 5th graders. This increase at the “Satisfactory” level is more than twice the 10% target that the Math Collaborative established when it started the work.
Following its core operating principle of continuous improvement, the Fort Bend 5th Grade Math Collaborative has begun its second year of implementation, doubling down on the most productive of its key strategies, targeting staff development, and creating ways that teachers can share their experiences from last year to improve results even more in the coming year. STAY TUNED!
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