PRIME Grant Report to Board Looks At Strategies for Teaching Math to Indian Students

Seven years ago, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided funding for a new approach to teaching math to Indian students in Rapid City. Tonight, Dr. Ben Sayler of Black Hills State University and Dr. Suzie Roth from the Rapid City Area Schools will report to the Board on the successes and disappointments of this project and what researchers learned in the process.

A Gatekeeper Curriculum

Math is sometimes described as a “gatekeeper” curriculum. Whether you like it or not, if you get math in high school it’s a sign that you will probably graduate. As a group, Indian students in Rapid City in 2002 were not succeeding in math. As a result, many were not graduating.

To turn this situation around, the Rapid City Area Schools formed a partnership with Black Hills State University and TIE to launch a five-year Mathematics and Science Partnership aimed at reducing the achievement gap between Native American and non-Native students. Project PRIME (Promoting Reflective Inquiry in Mathematics Education) received grants funds from the NSF to provide professional development for teachers, support alternative testing for students and finance data analysis to evaluate the program.

Research has shown that the greatest single factor affecting student achievement across the board is the quality of the teacher. A teacher’s ability is in part shaped by the training they receive. For this reason, the Rapid City Area Schools and many districts across the country have increased their investment in professional development. Assessing the value of these professional development efforts, however, is often challenging because so many factors affect student achievement — especially when its measured on a single, high-stakes test like the Dakota STEP.

With the PRIME grant, however, NSF provided additional funding at the end of the five-year grant so that the project leaders could do a deeper analysis of the data they collected from students and teachers in the project. As a result, PRIME has the potential to offer District leaders an extraordinary analysis of what works and why in math education. Sayler has intimated that the data that he and Roth will share tonight will offer provocative insights.

Tonight’s Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. tonight to allow board members to attend Parent/Teacher conferences. The meeting will be held in the Council Chambers at the City/School Administration Center at 300 Sixth Street. A copy of the agenda is here: Board Agenda 11509

Readers interested in background on the PRIME grant can read Ben Sayler and June Apaza’s 2006 report here: PRIME – paper by SaylerApaza. A comprehensive analysis of the issues in math education for Indian students was developed by Inverness Research in September 2007:   PRIME – getting numbers dance Inverness Res 2007.