Governor Huntsman Welcomes PCMI Participants

This morning we heard from Governor Huntsman (Utah). He welcomed participants of PCMI (Park City Math Institute) to Utah, and asked us to consider several things as we participate in the three week institute. Here are a few of his thoughts and questions (paraphrased) and some of my responses.

• After the first three years of teaching, 50% of the math teachers leave the classroom. There are many pursuits professionally that lure them away, but we need to get something figured out to keep them. How do we do this?

I think that a major step in keeping teachers will be to pay them competitive salaries. I know there are a lot of people out there who say that teachers only work 9 months of the year, so why should we pay them more. I agree. I propose that new teachers be required to work 12 months of the year, and that starting salaries for this 12 month work schedule be double the current starting salary (in my district this would mean approximately $56,000). Teachers would spend their summers working on curriculum, technology implementation, and/or improving their teaching methods.

• There should be a concern for the new underclass of mathematically and scientifically illiterate. How is it that we begin to close the gap as kids work through their early years of schooling so that we don’t develop the underclass that could exist. Teachers are a key to inspiring our kids to pursue math and science.

One of the reasons that students don't pursue mathematics and sciences is that they don't have the opportunity to experience math and science in the secondary school setting. Allowing students to get into the mathematics on their own is necessary to getting them interested in pursuing math long enough to gain numeracy.

• We are entering a STAR (Science, Technology, and Research) world. How best can we reach back into our high school and middle schools to help them meet the bench marks of literacy and numeracy that will prepare them for this STAR world?
  

This relates to the first two problems I have mentioned. We need to pay quality teachers, as they are the key to inspiring our students to pursue math, science, and technology. We need to require our new teachers to learn to teach better. As one of the presenters today pointed out, teaching is a profession that needs to be learned. We all benefit from practice. As we require teachers to spend their summers improving their teaching, their teaching will improve.

And finally he gave us a homework assignment, which is essentially to answer the questions and problems posed above. Here are the questions as I wrote them this morning.

How do we shift the focus to numeracy? As we move toward heightening literacy standards, what do we do for numeracy? What benchmarks should we have? What do we do for the teachers? What nationally do we look at? What do we do to keep math teachers in place (differential pay, something else)?