Quakertown Editorial

26 January 2007
Paul R. Stepanoff, PE
To the Editor:

Although a QCSD Director, these comments are my personal ones.

As a parent of five, an engineer, and senior manager, I watched with horror the type of "math" homework my children brought home. The "Integrated Math" used at QCSD was clearly not math. In fact, my 11th grade honors student could not add or multiply simple fractions without a calculator or understand rudimentary algebra. All of the parents and students I spoke with made me realized that QCSD students were literally "math illiterate". Something had to be done. Although not a politician or educator, my response was to run for school board. Very quickly I learned that the teachers were doing everything possible to "supplement" Integrated Math with traditional components, but their complaints to the administration fell on deaf ears. Many other teachers reported being "afraid" to even bring this subject up. PSSA improvements, most likely caused by unsanctioned Traditional Math supplementation, allowed the administration to make it appear as if there were no problems. The school board rubber-stamped the administration's actions without any oversight. Legions of parents, students, teachers, and even a couple of rookie school board members begged for change but seemed powerless and were systematically vilified.

Then, a true miracle! A Superintendent vacancy occurred and thankfully, Dr. Landis filled this role. Immediately, open and fair dialogue prevailed, including the "math war" debate. One very determined resident, CAC member Lou Renshaw, took on QCSD's Integrated Math program. Teachers, staff, and the CAC volunteered for Dr. Landis' Math Task Force and after a shaky start, worked towards a fair resolution. What they found, albeit described as "surprising", was what the community had already long known. Nevertheless, their finding is a very bitter pill for the QCSD to swallow. The student / parent surveys and college performance data echoed national trends and showed with no ambivalence that IM had "handicapped" our recent graduates worse than even the staunchest opponents of Integrated Math could have imagined. Unlike the previous administration that had nearly identical data more than a year ago and refused to act on it, our Task Force accepted the findings and made the courageous decision to finally put the student's interests first, publicly admit IM's failure, and terminate this curriculum for immediate replacement by Traditional Math!

Bravo! This parent and school board member shares the community's relief and elation over this long-overdue decision. I am proud of our community success. I trust I can speak for those many parents who supported this change by publicly thanking Dr. Landis, Dr. Newcomer, the entire Task force, the teachers who have endured so much, and especially the CAC members for finally putting this nightmare of Integrated Math behind us. There is hope and a bright future for QCSD.

However, much work remains. Implementation and measuring success with the new curriculum will be a challenge. Clearly PSSA results (the only scores benchmarked at QCSD) are not an accurate prediction of college preparedness and we need to find better metrics. Current students will need to make huge changes and may find themselves lost without remediation. Also, let us not forget our recent graduates, like my own daughter, who is a year behind in math and struggled to achieve a C in a remedial algebra course at PSU (all other grades were A's and B's). If anyone has doubts about how badly the Integrated Math program devastated the very students we were supposed to be preparing for life, I urge you to read each survey comment, if you can make it through them without tears!

Finally, it is now the board's turn to be courageous and learn from this mistake, no matter how bitter the pill. First, the board must fully accept the responsibility for this colossal management failure (perhaps starting by apologizing to the community and offering no-charge summer math tutoring for graduates), and secondly adopt policies that will prevent recurrence, including being more receptive of public input. In this case, the community and teachers were right and we were wrong. If we had only listened, this and many other problems may have been solved years ago, preventing the public's growing and explosive animosity towards the school district that has become pervasive even in the press. Only with an acknowledgement of responsibility, apology, and immediate policy change will we begin to build trust with the community and set a course to become true advocates for the children that "enter to learn and leave to serve".

Thank you,
Paul Stepanoff, PE