Woman questions Prince William schools’ procedures on math book
The fifth-grade primer “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space” is not on the state’s approved list of textbooks and has its detractors.
Kim Simons, one such detractor of the text that teaches Math Investigations, said the Prince William County school system did not follow required procedure in adopting the elementary school textbooks in 2006.
Virginia Department of Education regulations state that assessments of textbook criteria must have the approval of the local school board.
Simon said she asked Prince William school officials, under the Freedom of Information Act, for a copy of the school board’s official approval of the book.
Simons said school officials told her that the school board didn’t do that, so they didn’t have a copy.
“As far as Prince William County was concerned, they were done. It wasn’t their job to approve the criteria,” Simons said.
Ken Blackstone, Prince William schools spokesman, said he was sure the school system followed all of the rules and that Simons’ allegations were baseless.
Blackstone said the school board delegated the approval of the criteria to a curriculum supervisor who went through all of the required steps for textbook approval.
“This and several other allegations have been brought forward time and time again. Basically, in a nutshell, it’s unfounded,” Blackstone said. “Everything was done according to the proper regulations and state laws.We adopt textbooks all the time ... so it’s not like it’s something we don’t know how to do.”
Simons wasn’t buying it.
She said the regulations didn’t allow the curriculum supervisor to approve the criteria. According to her reading of the regulations, it is the board’s responsibility to approve the criteria.
“The school board as our elected representatives in theory is supposed to debate those criteria,” Simons said.
School Board Chairman Milton C. Johns agreed with Blackstone.
“I do believe that there’s no procedural issue. I believe that the school system and the school board did everything that was required,” Johns said.
Last week, Simons sent an e-mail to Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, telling him that she thought procedures hadn’t been followed and that officials at the Virginia Department of Education were unresponsive to her complaint about the Prince William school system.
“Employees with the Va. DOE [Department of Education] even stated that local school districts should follow their local procedures rather than state procedures, and that failure to follow state procedures was no big deal,” Simons wrote in the e-mail to Marshall.
Marshall said everyone should be following all of the rules.
“Frankly, the state education employees have no discretion to ignore that,” Marshall said of the Virginia regulations governing the use of non-aligned textbooks. “The laws are passed for the common good and they ought to be obeyed.”
Marshall forwarded Simon’s e-mail to Nicole Cheuk, a staff attorney with the Virginia Division of Legislative Affairs, who agreed that if Simons’ allegations were true, the regulations had been ignored.
On Tuesday, school board attorney Mary McGowan sent a letter to Marshall stating that procedure for approving the textbook had been followed.
McGowan wrote that Simons and a group of parents who opposed the textbook led an “after-the-fact” attack to remove the book from the schools and that the parents didn’t participate on the evaluation committee when the textbook was approved.
Marshall said McGowan’s letter hadn’t persuaded him to withdraw his request asking the state attorney general look into the matter.
Manassas Bureau Chief Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.
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“Lie and cheat? Who has lied and cheated?“ - blue_doggette
In official correspondence from the PWCS Math Department Supervisor, on behalf of the Superintendent, December 5, 2007, the Math Deparment Supervisor stated, “Investigations was one of the texts recommended by the Virginia Department of Education.“
This correspondence was sent to each and every PWCS Board member, the Superintendent, and central office key administrators. I would say that this is perhaps the first of the official statements in print that would be classified as a “lie” (using the blue_doggette language). Math Investigations was rejected by Virginia DOE - not recommended (MI Grade 5).
Children in public schools and the parents who support public education with their tax dollars have a right to instructional materials selected in accordance with state law. One’s position as a public employee does not give a small but determined group of county school officials the right to ignore the law to pursue personal ideological agendas. If Math Investigations were the great program PWCS asserts it to be, then why couldn’t the county have selected it by complying with the law? The law requires School Board approval of textbook review and evaluation criteria whenever a district is considering adopting non-state approved materials. It simply didn’t happen in PWCS. Yet we can’t admit mistakes because of the $$ millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on this dumbed-down mathematics program. All for the sake of the personal ideologies of a small but empowered group of PWCS administrators.
To my knowledge, the state Board of Education and State Department of Education haven’t issued any decisions on the issue. The article certainly didn’t reference or indicate that anyone affiliated with those state groups had even reviewed the issue.
So, at this point, all we’ve got the PWC school board asserting that they followed proper procedures.
I have spoken with my child’s teacher about math in parent teacher conferences. It wasn’t that my child didn’t understand the math, she does, it’s that she’s bored out of her skull because the program moves so slowly. I was concerned that she seemed to be spending a inordinate amount of time during math chatting with her friends.
I was told by my child’s teacher that the program was what it was and that she had little leeway to change the nature or content of the lessons. She, the teacher, said she had to follow the lesson pacing and structure. She could toss a few more worksheets at the students but couldn’t pull entire units or sections and replace them with alternate materials.
That pretty much ended our conversation about math because there was little she could do to adapt the program to provide greater depth of instruction.
I’m not sure what creationism has to do with this issue, but blue dog brings up a good point.
What if PWC approved a creationism based science program and mandated it’s use county wide? How would parents respond to that? Would they sit back and accept the decision, or would they fight to bring back what they felt was a more appropriate science curriculum?
What if they discovered that the program the county mandated didn’t meet state standards, and that process followed to adopt the curriculum didn’t appear to follow state law? What then? Would they just accept the school systems assertions that the process was proper or would they ask for a review of the issue from someone outside of the school system?
What if that person said the process appeared to have been in violation of state law and the school board still didn’t care. Would the parents stop there or would they continue to move ahead?
It could happen. The school system has demonstrated that they really don’t care about following state law and that they really don’t care what parents have to say about the instructional programs those parents children have to endure.
If the math program was brought in under the cover of darkness then any other controversial program, like creationism, could be squirreled in as well.
“ Posted by ( blue_doggette ) on April 24, 2009 at 2:08 am
Is Marshall now setting up a text book vigil?“
HA HA HA HA HA HA!
That’s funny, blue doggette.
It surprises me that this argument has not been dealt with in parent-teacher conferences. By that, I mean, if a student isn’t learning and a parent cannot help the child, I am quite sure most teachers would be willing to help both. If parents want to continue the fight, they can, but they should not devote so much time to the fight that as they say, their children are hurt.
Children are hurt when they think there is a feud between people who are important to them—here, it would be their parents and the teachers/school.
When parents and teachers are not on the same team, education is underminded.
And I don’t see any parents rushing to support MI. The only supporters are TERC, Pearson and the math department. Poor misguided fools.
There are so many parents out there horrified at the math but don’t know how to speak out; the school board and the math dept. are all CYA and the kids are getting hurt. Sad.
And how do you know what the state board of Ed think? For an outsider, you seem to have a heck of a lot of information.
This has nothing to do with creationism so why bring it up?
It is all about an experimental math program being forced on kids in a heavy handed manner with no thought to their future. Have you made the belief shift that Ms Knight talks about? That’s is worse than creationism; that is belief without merit.
Lie and cheat? Who has lied and cheated? Again, the school board and the VA State board of Education don’t seem to think there has been wrong doing.
My interest in this situation is rather irrelevant. It shouldn’t matter or make me any more or less a stake holder.
I didn’t see any great protest over creationism. Is that what is coming next?
Since when do parents get to single handedly choose curriculum and curriculum materials?
So you think it’s ok to lie and cheat to get what you want?
The wrong decision has been made for all the wrong reasons. They have their backsides to cover.
We may yet have our day in court. As you don’t have any kids in this, what’s it to you?
Actually I am fairly critical of wrong-doing. I think you and your band of merry men and women are guilty of wrong-doing. The decision has been made. Your side did not prevail. You had your day in court, so to speak.
Your opinion is not the only show in town, yet you are treating it as the holy grail of math education. Thank goodness it is math being discussed. What on earth would happen if you people were he!!-bent on teaching creationism in place of science?
No, I am not an employee of Prince William County Schools. Thank goodness I don’t have to put up with you all for a living.
“McGowan wrote that Simons and a group of parents who opposed the textbook led an “after-the-fact” attack to remove the book from the schools and that the parents didn’t participate on the evaluation committee when the textbook was approved.“
Two Points. First the only attempt to remove the book (Grade 5 Investigations) was a Feb 4 2009 School Board Action Item placed on the Board’s Public Meeting Agenda by… the Board Chairman on the heels of a volatile 21 Jan Board meeting where citizens asking for academic choice to accommodate all learners were subjected to verbal tirades by Board members Lattin and Richardson.
The Action Item for Board vote read:
“Recommendation: That the Prince William County School Board direct the Superintendent that the textbook series “Investigations in Number, Data and Space” shall not be used as the primary textbook for 5th Grade instruction, but materials in the series may be used to supplement the currently approved 5th Grade textbook. (http://66.23.136.24/)“
This was a Board initiative by the Board Chairman not to be confused with the parent initiative to allow academic choice of mathematics instruction in PWCS elementary schools. The Action Item was subsequently removed prior to the meeting…presumably because the Board did not want to have to deal with the controversy that was likely to ensue between Board members that likely would have resulted in a split vote on the board vice the usual 8-0 rubber stamp. So I guess Ms. McGowan is accusing the Board of attacking…the Board??!!
Second Point - by PWCS regulation parents are appointed to positions on textbook adoption committees by the school board. Parental notification that texts were subject to public review and comment was limited to a notice on the division website—no school by school notification occurred—the overwhelming majority of PWCS parents didn’t find out that PWCS had chosen a fuzzy math program until it was rolled out in the schools in 2006-7…which (surprise) is about when parents realized the program was woefully short on mathematical content.
Conceding that “lawyer speak is lawyer speak,“ the obvious intent on part of PWCS in responding to Delegate Marshall is to sound “truthy” as Steven Colbert would say, but not be necessarily truthful. For that, the PWCS attorney’s office should be praised for their mastery of such written prose.
The point is for non-state approved texts, the school board must approve the criteria; they didn’t.
Guilty tends to be discovered after not before..
The rubric that they were referring to wasn’t even used because as far as we can tell, it did not point to investigations.
By Ms Knights’ own admission it was only used as the basis for discussion.
They moved the goal posts until they got what they wanted; it’s disgusting.
Blue whatever, it’s time you started being more critical of wrongdoing; unless of course, you are one of them.
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