By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2008

New state test results show that Prince William County's third-graders are struggling to score at the highest level since the implementation of a controversial math program that was intended to boost performance.

The scores, which are the first state Standards of Learning (SOL) results to gauge the new program's effectiveness, reveal that fewer than half of Prince William's third-graders scored in the advanced category this year, the first that the Pearson math program "Investigations in Number, Data, and Space" was taught in that grade. Last year, third-graders who had not begun "Investigations" posted the same results.

The flat scores are a sizable decline since 2006, when 56 percent of third-graders reached the advanced level in math.

" 'Investigations' didn't cure the problem," said Vern Williams, a Fairfax County teacher and former member of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel who was invited by the Prince William School Board to speak at its work session later this month.

This year's results mark the first time in three years that the percentage of Prince William third-graders who achieved an advanced score in math dipped below the state average. From last year to this year, the majority of Prince William's elementary schools experienced declines in the percentage of students reaching the advanced level.

"Investigations," which de-emphasizes traditional algorithms and focuses more on larger concepts and activities, is used in varying degrees in several Washington area school systems, including Arlington and Loudoun counties in Virginia and Frederick, Charles and St. Mary's counties in Maryland.

The program has emerged as a focal point in a debate about how to teach math and prepare students for algebra, college and an increasingly competitive global job market.

Many education experts and Washington area school officials hail "Investigations" and similar programs as effective ways to teach children how numbers work together and why solutions make sense. Lessons include how to break numbers into round or simpler numbers before computation and using inanimate objects to visualize and solve a basic equation.

Prince William, like many other school districts using the program, has recently begun supplementing "Investigations" with such traditional methods as flash cards and memorization to shore up students' fundamentals.

The program was developed by the nonprofit organization TERC, based in Massachusetts, and was introduced in the 1990s and later updated. Some parents and educators deride "Investigations," saying it does not focus enough on memorization and traditional math lessons. Many parents, meanwhile, find its methods unnecessarily convoluted.

Prince William school officials said that they would have preferred to see higher scores after implementing the program but that new initiatives can take a few years before achieving improvements. They also said it was an accomplishment that the overall percentage of proficient and advanced students stayed flat in the two year-period because new programs often result in sudden drops.

The Prince William School Board, concerned by a persistent corps of parents who want "Investigations" scrapped, is scheduled to meet Sept. 17 to discuss the new SOL and data from the Stanford Diagnostic Mathematics Test.

"Let me put it this way: We're looking forward to sharing the results of the test with the School Board," said Pamela Gauch, Prince William's associate superintendent for student learning and accountability, who declined to release the Stanford results in advance. Last year's Stanford exams indicated that 80 percent of second-graders who used "Investigations" in the 2006-07 academic year were proficient in all 10 of the test's skill areas.

Kate Miller, a spokeswoman for Pearson, said in an e-mail: "Every year more and more schools across the country, and outside the U.S., too, opt for this program because its goal is to create 'mathematical thinkers' -- providing young children the basic grounding that they will need to be successful in higher level math. If 'Investigations' were not successful, why would Pearson continue publishing it year after year after year?"

Gauch, who said she and other top administrators were proud of the teachers' hard work, said it does not reflect poorly on "Investigations" that the percentage of advanced third-graders fell in the majority of the county's elementary schools.

"I am not going to look at that decline and say, 'Oh my God, we've got a problem here,' " Gauch said, adding that she wants to review the data further. "How many of the kids who scored advanced got perfect or near the top of advanced, and how many got it by one point? If you want to split hairs, you'd have to really look at the scores."

In Arlington, where "Investigations" has been used in all elementary schools since 2006, along with traditional math materials, the results have been mixed: The percentage of advanced students rose from 56 in 2007 to 57 in 2008. But the proficient students dipped from 35 percent to 32, according to the data.

"We would be foolish not to have supplemental resources," said Pat Robertson, Arlington's mathematics supervisor. "We do know that no program is perfect, but parents see it as a different way than the way they learned. It's kind of a rumor mill. Things get blown out of proportion."

Grant Lattin, the vice chairman of the Prince William School Board, said he is optimistic that teachers can learn techniques to improve scores and how students grasp the lessons from "Investigations."

"We're bringing all the lower-level math kids up, but we're not bringing up the kids already proficient," Lattin (Occoquan) said. "It's a matter of improving upon 'Investigations' and using different strategies to reach different levels of kids."