Math "course correction" coming

It's time to demystify math and help parents understand what their children are learning, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson said Friday during the Northwest Math Conference.

Bergeson spoke to more than 300 teachers and educators at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue for the annual conference that rotates among Oregon, British Columbia and Washington.

The three-day event, which wraps up today, drew about 1,900 people, the most it has had in recent years, according to conference organizers. The event included more than 250 sessions and courses on math-related topics and lesson-plan ideas for math teachers, coaches and administrators.

On Thursday, panelists from local companies talked about what kind of math skills they were looking for in job candidates.

"This is the first time ever I've seen this much interest in math," said Joyce Frost, one of three copresidents who organized the event, and who has been a math teacher for 30 years. "There's a buzz about it."

That buzz comes, in part, on the heels of a review of Washington's standards for mathematics that found them sorely lacking, especially when it comes to the basics. The report echoed concerns expressed by parent groups such as "Where's the Math?" which have criticized math curricula taught in local school districts, including Bellevue and Lake Washington.

With the outside review as the basis, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction is working on revisions to state math standards, which will be presented to the Legislature by the end of January.

"Math is the main thing on our radar screen," Bergeson said. "We have to make a course correction." And that means including more math basics, and making sure students know how to conceptualize math problems, as well as the basic algorithms and math facts to solve the equations.

The state and school districts also have to help parents understand what their children are learning in math, Bergeson said. Too often, children come home with math homework that parents don't recognize because it doesn't include standard algorithms for solving the problems.

"If parents can't help their kids with their homework, we're cooked," Bergeson said. "We have to build bridges to parents. We use all of our education babble, we use words that ... have deep meaning to us, but if a person doesn't understand the context, they won't have a clue what we are talking about."

On Thursday evening, the conference invited a panel of executives from Microsoft, Intel and Boeing to discuss what kind of math qualifications job candidates need to be competitive in the workplace.

The panelists talked about how few people are attaining degrees in math, science, technology and engineering to fill local jobs.

That's why big businesses are going outside the state, and the country, to hire employees, said Frost, a math coach in Lake Washington School District.

"They [the panelists] would like to encourage more people to go into those fields," she said. "There's an overall emphasis on the importance of math for everyone. It's gone from being math for the elite, to being math for all."

Rachel Tuinstra: 206-515-5637 or rtuinstra@seattletimes.com