Letter to the CA Instructional Quality Commission

I sent this last week in response to public comment: https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/cc/cd/may2020iqcagenda.asp?fbclid=IwAR0EBBVjf3RFiR2YZDso3TiwnEP-6Rc0yYbgw-Xw54PhAu5cI2WxgR_FL74

To Whom It May Concern

I am writing as a parent of two children in California’s public education system as well as an educator for the past 15 years. Revising the current mathematical standards is an amazing opportunity to once again put California at the forefront of educational changes to prepare our students for the current and future digital ecosystem and careers that do not yet exist.

The foundational changes I am requesting the Standards Committee make especially in light of the COVID-19 situation are:

1) Less standards to cover to allow for greater depth and cross-curricular applications

2) Digital-first to support a wide variety of applications involving competency-based grading, micro credentials, pathways, and a comprehensive learner record for student ownership of learning achievements.

1) I taught mathematics in Fresno Unified, now California’s 3rd largest school district, for nine years including before and after the adoption of the current State Standards. The standards themselves were liberating and encouraged instructional innovation among teachers, administrators and edtech companies. However, in seventh grade that I was teaching, the shift was immense and students (and teachers) were not 100% prepared. Rollout and implementation was spotty at best — teachers who had been teaching the same things since 1997 were now teaching subjects previously reserved for upper or lower grades and they didn’t have the reservoir of knowledge nor the commercial curriculum support. Whatever the changes that will come with the new standards, if substantial changes are made I would strongly want to see a progressive introduction so that teachers and students are not forced into a curricular pathway that is not the one they started with. Introduction could be done in grade bands to ease teacher training and allow for true vertical articulation.

2) Moreover, for standards to be truly forward-thinking, they need to be in a machine-readable format such as IMS Global’s open CASE (competencies and Academic Standards Exchange — imsglobal.org/case) CASE as a specification — unlike PDF — can embed exemplars, rubrics, progressions of learning trajectories, notes for teaching, and even associations to other frameworks (such as California’s ELD framework, Depth of Knowledge etc). Putting standards digital-first instead of PDF’s will allow for more personalized learning due to accurate alignment of digital resources and allow for a wealth of opportunities such as crosswalks to digital credentials and actually truly give ownership to students of their learning record. IMS global’s CLR is endorsed by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Thank you for taking into consideration these two requirements that while different from the past, will substantially alter for the good fo students California Mathematics Standards adoption.