Investigations Math Poll Results
Introduction
Have you ever wondered why so many Charter schools are having success in our
area? They seem to fill pretty quickly. These results may provide the answer.
If you were one of the over 50 people that participated in our Investigations Math poll, thank you very much. I think the results have been interesting and
hopefully
will provide some insight into how we can better come to an understanding of
what our children are being taught in math and how to improve that important
knowledge base.
Background for Investigations math Poll
Personally, I have had a fairly negative
attitude toward the Investigations Math program but due to our elementary
school principal maintaining that the program was
good, I have tried to keep an open mind about it.
I was surprised a
couple months ago (March 2005) at a community meeting to become acquainted with
a few
parents
that
absolutely
loved
Investigations
Math.
These
were
the first people I had met that felt that way that weren't teachers or somehow
connected
to
the school district.
At this meeting, I
told
the school board they ought to conduct a poll and see why there is such
a disconnect between the school district personnel that love the program, and
the parents
that greatly dislike the program. I got several patronizing
head nods and knew they would do nothing
about it. So I decided to go ahead and
create a survey in hopes of discovering the answer myself.
I was referred by the school board to an individual in the school district
in charge of the math program and after hoping for some publicity to make the
survey
results more
inclusive of a larger population all across the district, was finally told
that if the school district wanted to run a survey such as this, they had the
resources
to do it on their own web site. In other words, nice poll Oak, but if we
wanted to know people's opinions, WE'D ask them.
I have attempted to make the questions as fair as possible and one school
board member that responded to me privately on the survey did recognize that
I had attempted to keep any bias out of the survey so I felt like I had struck
the proper balance to make this as objective as possible.
Results
The next several pages will detail the results of this survey. I have looked
at every question compared to every question. This was a very tedious and manual
process, however, I think it is enormously beneficial to
understanding the data.
Some of the responses I received were not valid (see the Q10 page), but
I did get a good number of responses with 52 individuals taking the poll. I
also recognize
that I didn't perform a true random sampling but I did get a variety of responses
and in analyzing them believe there is merit to the survey and it should
be closely examined by the school board, teachers, and parents to understand
what
Investigations Math is all about. In the process of separating those that
rate the program high vs. low, a lot can be learned about some weaknesses in
the
program and its implementation.
On each of the sub-pages, I have removed some of
the graphs that do not portray "interesting" comparisons
between items. For example, it is interesting to note the number of
people that say they really LIKE/LOVE the Investigations Math program with
how many
of them think the schools are NOT doing a good job implementing it. It is NOT
very interesting to see
how many parents that think their child is not progressing fast enough compared
to how many think the program is too slow because those questions are too similar
in nature.
After the question response pages there are a couple pages
of analysis of this program as it compares
to traditional
math
and another
popular program being used in other school districts and charter schools
called Saxon math. I have marked with asterisks
the most essential pages for you to read on the menu below. If you skim the
site, at least read those pages as they are vital to understanding what is really happening with this program.
Then I have provided you with links to contact
the school
board
and
make
your
own
personal
desires
known to them on the conclusion page.
This menu is at the bottom of every page:
Investigations Math Poll Introduction and Question
Summary*
Poll Conclusion and Action Steps
Investigations Math Menu
** Most important pages to read (all have value but if you will only read
a few pages make it these)
* Very important
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