Cobb Hopes State Solves Math Problem

The Georgia Board of Education is expected to adjust some state math standards when it meets next month.

Robert Benson, the  assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, provided the county Board of Education an overview Wednesday of the expected changes in proposals made by the state board.

“This is an ongoing conversation regarding math,” he said.

The state proposals are a response to juniors failing the Georgia High School Graduation Test based on the new Georgia Performance Standards for math, Benson said.

The state proposals would let support classes for Math I, II and III count as core graduation credits for current high school freshmen, sophomores and juniors. The Georgia Performance Standards then would be divided into “discrete” or traditional courses and allow students struggling with the new integrated approach to take the same rigorous standards but in traditional courses.

Benson cautioned after the meeting that the suggested solutions aren’t a done deal.

“The state Board of Education will have to vote on this in March," he said.

The integrated math curriculum under the new Georgia Performance Standards combines the first part of statistics, geometry and algebra into one freshman course, followed by Part 2 of those three disciplines in the second year and Part 3 in the third year.

The traditional approach had students learning the first part of statistics and the first two parts of algebra during the first year. In the second year, students took all three parts of geometry and the second part of statistics. The rest of algebra and the third part of statistics came in the third year.

“I’m just really concerned about the Class of 2012 and their graduation rate,” said school board member Kathleen Angelucci.

Board Chairwoman Alison Bartlett added: “While these decisions are coming down, the state is not allocating more math resources.”

Earlier in the meeting, board member David Morgan led a discussion on how chronic course failure affects some county high schools. He said teachers are being tied up with Math I for students repeating the course after failing it.

The result, he said, is that teachers aren't available to teach upper-level classes to high achievers.

Bartlett cut off the discussion so the administration can provide numbers on chronic failures and teacher availability at a future work session.

Superintendent Fred Sanderson said staff reductions have contributed to the "growing" problem.