What I don't understand is how the United States spends 154 hours on math instruction each year, 20hrs more than the international avg, & 40hrs more than high scoring EU countries like Finland & England. In fact, you'd think there was an inverse correlation between instructional time and outcome. 😵‍💫 - ThreadSky

covingtonedu.bsky.social • 95 days ago

What I don't understand is how the United States spends 154 hours on math instruction each year, 20hrs more than the international avg, & 40hrs more than high scoring EU countries like Finland & England. In fact, you'd think there was an inverse correlation between instructional time and outcome. 😵‍💫

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sgooch.bsky.social•95 days ago

I wonder if this is related to our tendency to go a mile wide and an inch deep?

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

(Had to use the 2019 TIMMS instructional time data because I couldn't find it in the 2023 report, might not be released yet?)

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

This on top of the United States ranking 8th among OECD countries in instructional time overall.

https://www.educationnext.org/time-for-school-assessing-inequality-access-instructional-time-united-states/#:~:text=Based%20on%20middle%20school%20data,depending%20on%20where%20they%20live.

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

All this is not to say that schooling is not important or effective for math instruction but that the United States is socioeconomically distinct from our OECD peers, where our child poverty rates look more like Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, and Mexico and far less like Denmark, Norway, & Finland.

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

TIMMS & other international assessments simply highlight the unique child poverty problem in the United States among its OECD peers. What can schooling & instruction can do to close a 26.2% child poverty rate that robust social programs & anti-poverty policy wouldn't do better & more effectively?

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

But I suspect policymakers and advocates will likely draw the wrong conclusions & instigate another round of pedagogical moral panics, failing schools, and Science of Math instruction to save face. 😫

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

If we want the test scores of countries like Finland, Latvia, or even England - whose children spend far less time in school or instructional hours on math - we could get there overnight by halving our child poverty rate without changing a thing about schooling & instruction.

duanehabecker.com•94 days ago

What a wonderful thread. Thanks for sharing.

I notice Turkey on both lists.

They have higher child poverty than us yet significantly outperform us in math.

Do you have any thoughts about what Turkey might be doing with math instruction to counter the poverty?

heymel.bsky.social•95 days ago

Take a look at Michael Moore’s “Where Should We Invade Next?.” it has some very good information about the differences between our school system and those of the countries you reference.

thejosevilson.com•95 days ago

I. Have. Thoughts.

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

heidisabnani.bsky.social•95 days ago

Same

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

Here!

https://bsky.app/profile/thejosevilson.com/post/3lcjgou3xks2o

mathowitz.bsky.social•95 days ago

Does that "instruction" time include test prep/ testing time? I found that in a 3 week unit, at least 3 days were spent on assessment.
Also with all that classroom time, how much prep time are teachers given?

tomdee.bsky.social•95 days ago

This seems like the right kind of question to be asking. Our math-policy discourse seems to focus on indiscriminate acceleration/deceleration & less on the possibilities of changing practices within classrooms.
https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-ninth-grade-algebra/

mathillustrated.bsky.social•95 days ago

Thanks again for this @jillbarshay.bsky.social

damianmolinari.bsky.social•95 days ago

This is one of the keys, and it tracks with my own experience in heterogeneous classes.

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

💯 "Low floor, high ceiling" education experiences are a key principle of universal design and should be considered across the board as meaningful for recruiting and maintaining engagement, challenge, and motivation!

larryferlazzo.bsky.social•95 days ago

Would you have any suggestions on additional things to read about this, especially offering examples?

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

The best math example I have seen in practice is Tal Thompson's self-directed, flipped math class at Albemarle's Community Lab School. His class can take kids who are behind & credit deficient in math and put them ahead in the span of a year with very little large group direct instruction.

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

As far as reading goes, I think @fritztesha.bsky.social's Anti-Racism and Universal Design for Learning is the most accessible summary I've found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZgBpZyD17s&ab_channel=HumanRestorationProjectClips

liza-on-reading.bsky.social•95 days ago

“Low floor, high ceiling” sounds like a great way to spend a lot more time than other countries on math instruction without teaching as much material. Is there evidence for any of this?

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

Low floor, high ceiling is both a key piece of Universal Design for Learning and designing for flow, where ability and difficulty are balanced and managed through a combination of autonomous user decision-making and learning design.

liza-on-reading.bsky.social•95 days ago

That all looks very reasonable. Has someone checked whether the students learn the math from those problems, though? One way to explain the pattern you’ve noted is that inquiry based methods take longer and don’t work as well. So, more hours, worse results.

tomdee.bsky.social•95 days ago

Fair question. This random-assignment partnership study finds that this pedagogy + higher expectations increased math achievement (& attendance!) for kids deemed below grade-level.

Just one district-specific study but a novel proof point, I think.

https://edworkingpapers.com/ai24-986

liza-on-reading.bsky.social•95 days ago

This makes a strong case for detracking with better differentiated instruction. I guess I wonder about the most efficient way to provide the second part. By “this pedagogy” do you mean low floor/high ceiling questions, inquiry based methods in general, or something else?

davidweingartner.bsky.social•95 days ago

If you want to go down a rabbit hole: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-to-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-for-teaching-less-math-in-school?amp

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

clbergpowers.bsky.social•95 days ago

The challenge I always have with this is that in addition to agreeing with you about all of this, I genuinely don't understand the metrics we're using well enough to know how much I should even care about THOSE rankings.

covingtonedu.bsky.social•95 days ago

Exactly. Do these rankings matter? Probably not. 😅

clbergpowers.bsky.social•95 days ago

It's like a whole other level you have to explain when you're explaining how garbage the US tests are. Like, also, these ones also probably don't matter? What are we even doing here? It feels like so much work to move people's attention toward useful metrics.

susandblum.bsky.social•95 days ago

Our math instruction is terrible. Most of our math teachers, in the early grades, aren't trained to teach math. They convey math phobia, which fuels failure, and more phobia.

impactology.bsky.social•95 days ago

Same problem in India

emad95m0.bsky.social•95 days ago

I Love (with a capital L!) teaching math in the early grades. We get to spend time exploring the wonder and beauty in patterns to build number sense and fluency. It’s my favorite time of the day!

susandblum.bsky.social•95 days ago

Your students are lucky!

emad95m0.bsky.social•95 days ago

The insane amount of standardized testing -especially for primary students- needs to have a serious overhaul. We spend so much time gathering redundant data when the kids could be exploring content and practicing for mastery.

rysaaron.bsky.social•95 days ago

And I hate to sound so critical, but the majority of people in the education field don't know what to do with the data when we have it. Like, somewhere there are actual people struggling to figure out why half of our kids always score below average and what we need to do about it.

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