A Position Paper from The Southern Oregon Math Cadre

The Oregon Department of Education’s recent decision to suspend operational problem solving assessments across the board calls for a response from the math community.

While the memorandum briefly refers to the continued use of problem solving work samples in determining a student’s eligibility for the Certificate of Initial Mastery, it stops far short of the necessary endorsement of problem solving as an integral part of the math curriculum. Indeed, problem solving has not been removed from the NCTM Standards, nor has it been removed from the Oregon Grade-Level Standards. In fact, it remains at the center of all mathematics learning. Problem solving continues to reside at the center of all of the math strands; it is the meeting point of skills, applications, and concepts in all strands. Problem solving encourages students to engage in tasks for which the solution or strategy towards the solution is not readily obvious. It teaches students the skills necessary for them to get started when they encounter unfamiliar mathematical situations. Problem solving skills help students to make connections between what they know and any new mathematical situations in which they find themselves.

Oregon has been a leader in the attempt to measure problem solving using performance tasks. In developing this type of assessment from the ground up, the field-test process has left teachers and the state struggling at times to achieve consistency from one year’s test to the next, making the results not always seem fair to all students. But these frustrations and difficulties do not extend to the classroom level where teachers are able to ask lots of questions during the school year and only require successful completion of two at the CIM level and one at other levels. In this setting, questions of comparable difficulty are more easily attainable and adjustments are easier to make. The key issue here is that the continued use of problem solving work samples plays a major role in the development of a student’s math reasoning and communication skills and functions as a truly authentic math assessment. The suspension of Math Problem Solving as a state assessment only increases the need for problem solving work samples at the classroom level. To ignore this need is akin to removing writing from the Language Arts/English classroom. Assessing only a student’s ability to come up with correct answers on a multiple-choice test in math is like assessing writing only by means of a multiple-choice test on sentence structure and conventions.

So, how then should we proceed? First and foremost, we continue to express to students the importance of problem solving. We continue to show them that it is an integral part of mathematics. We incorporate a culture of problem solving into our classrooms. We show students that problem solving is not an isolated topic taught as a separate unit, but an approach to the study of mathematics that involves curiosity, exploration, and risk taking. We do this in part by carefully considering our expectations of students. We also do this by carefully considering the types of questions we ask them.

Furthermore, we proceed by offering students numerous opportunities to engage in interesting, multi-level questions that require them to apply what they have learned in new and unique ways. We ask them to look at problems from a variety of perspectives. We give them plenty of feedback and in many forms including, but not limited to, multi-dimensional scores such as those given through the Oregon Math Problem Solving Scoring Guide. It is essential that we not abandon problem solving instruction in the absence of state, "on-demand" assessment

The implementation of problem solving as a state test in Oregon has done more to effect change in the teaching and learning of mathematics than any other single thing over the past decade. We need to remember this as we move to a model of assessment that may not include an "on demand" state test. We need to remember that problem solving is not merely an assessment, but a best practice. This is the starting place from which we should now move forward.