School-based Mathematics Excellence Program for Five Junior High Schools in Qalansawe and Tira to Double the Number of Five-Unit Students in 10th Grade
The percentage of five-unit mathematics graduates in schools in Israel’s Arab sector is low in comparison with their counterparts in the Jewish sector. There are a number of predictors for this; for example, in PISA tests conducted at age 15, the rate of Arab students who excel in mathematics is less than 1%. This, and additional research by the Szold Institute, suggests that the mathematics basis among junior high school students is relatively weak, and that there is a large gap between the content knowledge of junior high students and the level required of five-unit students in high school.
Representative of this trend is the “Triangle” area in the eastern part of the Sharon region, home to more than 300,000 Arab citizens. In 2016, of the five communities of Tayibe, Tira, Kafr Qasim, Qalansawe and Jaljulia, where approximately 150,000 people live, only 6.4% (130 out of 2,000 twelfth grade students) took five-unit matriculation exams, less than half the national average. The Central District of the Education Ministry reports that while approximately 40% of ninth grade students study in the top-level streams for mathematics, only a quarter of them (10% of the total) are actually placed in five-unit tacks in high school.
The District, which until recently concentrated mostly on high school mathematics, concludes that there is a need to streamline and improve the transition from junior high to high school. They emphasized that it is important to strengthen the joint teamwork of the teaching faculties and to deepen the mathematical knowledge base of the students in order to better prepare them for five-unit courses. In addition, they highlighted the small number of skilled five-unit teachers, and the need to improve professional development processes for teachers in order to help improve student success.
Tira and Qalansawe were chosen as two focal points requiring special professional guidance: in Tira there are 25,000 residents and in 2014 only 23 of the 432 twelfth grade students matriculated the five unit track in mathematics (5.3%). In Qalansawe, which is home to 22,000 residents, in 2016 only 14 out of the 429 twelfth grade students matriculated the five-unit track in mathematics (3.2%). In both cities, middle schools are separate from high schools, which makes the effort to facilitate the smooth transfer of students from the top mathematics stream in middle school to the five-unit track in high school even more complex.
To help tackle this challenge, the District approached the Davidson Institute, the educational arm of the Weizmann Institute. Davidson performed an initial needs assessment together with Dr. Varda Shiffer from the Van Leer Institute, who has been working for a number of years with principals, education departments and mayors in municipalities in the triangle area. They interviewed school principals and mathematics department heads of the five junior high schools in Tira and Qalansawe. They listened to their needs and explored their readiness for a program to increase excellence in mathematics and to integrate a culture of excellence into their schools.
Davidson together with Van Leer are now proposing an intervention program that will help middle schools increase and expand the pool of students continuing in the five-unit track. The program will establish a regional professional community for leading mathematics teachers and department heads from each of the five schools. They will meet once a month and will focus on creating discourse between teachers, deepening mathematical knowledge, and pedagogies for mathematics teaching, and developing reflective processes.
In addition, in each school the mathematics teaching staff will meet as a group once every two weeks with the instructional coaches from the Davidson Institute, which will include observation of staff meetings, feedback, and advice. All teachers will participate in a 2-day learning seminar at the Davidson Institute, once a year, where they will be exposed to innovative clinical teaching practices.
In parallel they will establish a community for principals and senior school management to meet once a month with Dr. Shiffer and educational consultants from the Van Leer Institute, and on an individual basis, to discuss management of the mathematics team, monitoring the school process, and how to work with data. In order to assist the smooth transition for mathematics students between junior high and high school, teachers will work together, with instructional coaches, on how to ensure that students are better prepared for the five-unit level.
It is expected that within three years, the number of 9th grade graduates with suitable knowledge and skills for 5-unit study in 10th grade will double from an average of 10% to 20%, and that we will see an improvement in the number of students successfully matriculating the course.