The assignments students complete in a classroom guide their learning and reflect teacher and school expectations. A new report from The Education Trust analyzes the quality of over 1,800 classroom math assignments, finding relatively strong alignment to standards but little focus on cognitive demand and rigor. Worse, the report finds significant differences in assignment quality between high- and low-poverty schools and honors and non-honors courses.
Researchers applied a framework of five elements to math assignments from twelve middle schools in six districts across three states: alignment to the Common Core, cognitive challenge, rigor, mathematical understanding, and the potential for motivation and engagement. They measured assignments using multiple “analysis indicators” for each of the five elements. Sixty-three teachers responsible for ninety-one math courses submitted all of their classroom assignments (tasks that students completed independently or with peers) over a two-week period. Half of the schools had free and reduced price lunch rates of above 65 percent and were classified as high poverty.
To determine whether an assignment was cognitively challenging, the researchers used Webb’s four "depth of knowledge levels.” They found that just 9 percent of assignments demanded strategic or extended thinking (levels three and four) rather than basic recall or application (levels one and two). At high-poverty schools, that number was just 6 percent, half the rate as at low-poverty schools. And for all eighth graders taking pre-algebra courses (rather than algebra I), only 3 percent of assignments were considered cognitively challenging.
The report also found that most assignments were missing key aspects of the Common Core math standards. Although the standards encourage students to develop deep understanding through a combination of three elements of rigor (procedural fluency, conceptual understanding, and application), researchers found procedural fluency incorporated more than twice as often as the other two elements (87 percent, compared to 38 and 39 percent, respectively). The standards also say that students must learn to justify conclusions and communicate their understanding, but less than 40 percent of assignments required students to write more than the answer. Again, a difference stood out between high-poverty schools, where 26 percent of assignments required answers to be justified, and low-poverty schools, where 38 percent required justification.
Absent from the report is a clear benchmark for what its authors think would be the ideal percent of assignments fulfilling various standards from the analysis framework, which the Education Trust says is best used to evaluate a set of assignments across multiple days or weeks. Without suggested goals for time spent on each criterion (or a sample two-week plan showing educators how the framework’s elements of assignment quality should progress), the report’s admonition that “we as educators must do more” remains a vague suggestion rather than a guide for practitioners.
Although the report shies away from providing guidelines for teachers and curriculum designers, it is clear about one problem: the inequity in assignment quality between high- and low-poverty schools. Low-rigor assignments reflect low expectations, and students only required to apply basic concepts will have a hard time competing with wealthier peers who are given more opportunities for strategic thinking. With several examples of model assignments and a thoughtful analysis framework, the report should prompt district- and school-level practitioners—particularly those in high-poverty areas—to critically examine the quality of their own math assignments.
SOURCE: “Checking In: Are Math Assignments Measuring Up?,” The Education Trust (April 2018).
