In classrooms across the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, students are struggling with quadratic equations, similar triangles and the meaning of pi. The solution, according to the board, is to educate teachers before educating students.

Alanna Street is a Grade 10 applied math teacher at Lisgar Collegiate Institute. She says that her biggest challenge as a teacher is convincing students that learning about similar triangles, quadratic equations, and pi is useful and important.

“A lot of them don’t see the validity of what they learn because they don’t use it in their everyday life,” Street said. She tries to engage students by using their own personal interests to apply abstract math problems to everyday life.

At a meeting of the OCDSB Education Committee tonight, OCDSB superintendent Pino Buffone will present his plan to help combat stagnant performances on standardized math tests.

Results from last year’s Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) assessments indicate that the literacy skills of students in the district have improved, but their math skills have not.

Graph by: Robin Levinson with data from EQAO

EQAO results help school boards measure student performance against provincial standards. They also indicate how different groups of students compare with one another across the province. Buffone said OCDSB’s lack of improvement in math indicates that something needs to be changed.

“We have invested over the past seven-to-10 years a great deal of professional development resources in the area of literacy,” Buffone said. Now the board is trying to apply the same strategy to math departments.

Buffone is suggesting a new program that focuses on teacher education and research. This District-wide Action Plan for Numeracy would provide more opportunities for teachers to collaborate with their peers, administrators, and even with students. It would also give teachers a chance to brush up on their own math skills. Ideally, by learning from one another and from their students’ needs, teachers will be better equipped to teach math in the classroom.

According to the action plan, the program will require about $550,000 of provincial funding.

Street says most teachers continue their professional training long after leaving teacher’s college, but that a bit of financial help and administrative support would be welcome.

“If someone gave me a calculus exam right now, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to do all the things,” said Street. “A lot of people will do the training on their own, so if they’re going to do the training anyway it would be nice to have the funding there.

In order to get a sense of how students are handling the material she teaches, Street spends time with each student individually during class.

“It’s good to have something standard to compare kids across the board because one teacher can’t go to every kid in the province and see how they’re doing,” said Street. “But it’s not the most accurate way to assess a student’s ability.”