AMAPS Meeting
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Minutes
83 members/guest in attendance.
The meeting opened with a welcome to all new AMAPS members from Danny Jaye. A welcome was extended to invited guests Linda-Bey Curtis, Ron Schwarz and Miguel Cordero.
Dues were collected by Phil Sevrinsky, while Danny presented Newton Fellowships from Math for America. Mfa.org is the website for any master math teacher who would like to apply for this fellowship.
The Petrie Program is available for all new math assistant principals. The program is at CCNY.
Ellen Fee presented information on HSST that will make the job of the math AP easier.
Staff Development Day November 2, 2004. Math Team Coaches meeting at Stuyvesant.
Darren Starnes was the guest speaker on Statistics education. He discussed the continual national growth of AP Statistics over the past 5 years. He spoke on the importance of offering general high school statistics that can lead to AP-Statistics. Statistics through applications gives students an opportunity to use statistical mathematics in real-life situations.
Geometer’s SketchPad learning centers in Queens for teachers and AP’s. Paul Cinco Region (3) is the point person for further sketchpad information.
New Math Standards
New math standards are currently written for grades K-12 and will be published on November 5, 2004. Key information is the recommendation for a return to 3 one-year exams after the 9th, 10th, and 11th year curricula. No more than (4) credits can be given for the commencement level grade 9.
Intermediate Algebra. Local districts will be given an option for alternative math courses that will be available for non-college bound students. Five content strands (1) Number Sense and Operation (2) Algebra (3) Geometry (4) Integrated Algebra and (5) Probability & Statistics. Each strand has a number of content bands.
Danny addressed key questions about graphing calculators, textbooks, construction of the new math exam and the start date for the new exam for January or June 2006. Curriculum design will be forth coming by the state and textbook companies, etc. There will be a few modeled curriculum; however, the recommendation is for a state designed curriculum.
Linda Curtis-Bey addressed calculators and books that are allotted to mandated and non-mandated schools. Each school must replenish and/or add to supplies after the initial shipment. Funding at the Department level is minimal. Linda further stated that the Department of Education only committed to the implementation of materials for Math A. Advanced mathematics was never part of the DOE’s commitment to schools. DOE’s recommendation for students is to take mathematics 4 years in high school.
Math A Recovery materials should be delivered by November 2004; however, the schools will receive a percentage of their initial order. Schools that have only single period repeating M#A/B classes will not receive the Math A Recovery material. The program is designed for two-periods. The two periods however, do not have to be back-to-back.
Harry Rattien discovered new topics included on the new PSAT exam which include inverse/direct variation, fractional/negative exponents, absolute value, and functional notation.
Due to concerns about the Grow Report Data, it can come earlier than October of the current year. Bilingual pacing calendar for ELL teachers contact MCordero@nycboe.net.
Additional tablet training will be given at a later date for AP’s; however, you will be excluded from the Level 2 training if you did not complete the full training during the summer.
Our next meeting will be November 18, 2004 sponsored by Key Curriculum Press. The location has yet to be finalized. Please RSVP through the website for further meetings.
All members were encouraged to check that their contact information is correct before the AMAPS directory is printed. See Susan Sladowski with questions.
Respectfully submitted,
Robin Pitts