Results Update #3 - The Big One! (Building THinking Classrooms In Mathematics)

One of the things I was dying to see as I built a Thinking Classroom in Mathematics last year was whether or not all the obvious benefits of the Building Thinking Classroom practices would translate into the currency of our educational time- test scores.
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I teach in a very, very large U.S. school district that, in addition to yearly state testing, mandates its own quarterly standardized testing, too.  Those tests went really, really well both in December and in March. 

Those quarterly district results had me cautiously hopeful that the big ones - the annual state testing scores - might be awesome.

Spoiler alert: they were.

But first, some context.
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"The data is finally in, and upon careful analysis, it's terrific!"

I want to be clear that I'm not sharing these results to brag.  My goal in this entire series of posts on Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics has been to provide certain information that I wish I'd had when I started and that I see a desire for in the broader community of other teachings building such classrooms, like:

• advice for getting starting Building a Thinking Classroom in Mathematics
• specific "nuts and bolts" details on the Building Thinking Classrooms practices
• videos for those who want to see a Thinking Classroom in action to better conceptualize it
• reflections on the joys and challenges of Building A Thinking Classroom in Mathematics

and most relevant here, of course,

• quantitative evidence that it works

Evidence can provide both justification and permission to implement something new.  For anyone out there needing either justification or permission to start Building A Thinking Classroom in Mathematics, I wanted to provide the evidence that it at least worked wonders for me.

For additional proof that sharing these results is to laud the benefits I've seen from Building A Thinking Classroom in Mathematics and not to brag personally, allow me to start by sharing my downright awful state test scores from the year before.

In 22-23, I had read Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, but I didn't do anything with it beyond randomly seating my students each day and doing a "launching task" to kick of each topic of study and a "prediction time" to start each lesson.  Beyond that, I still taught though gradual release, training the kids to mimic.

I had absolutely wonderful students that year - eager, curious, conscientious, and engaged.  My mimicking instruction was on point that year, too.  I really knew how to craft a gradual release lesson andto manage students' attention.  I had added some new elements to my instruction andchanged how I paced out topics.  The kids were confident, they were happy, and they grew to be students who didn't just expect to be able to get by - they expected to understand.

It was one of my favorites years ofmy career.

When the state test scores came back that from that wonderful year, they were awful. 

• The average student scored 16 points worse than they had the year before.
• Three-fourths of the students scored lower than the year before.
• Over half had a double-digit decrease compared to the year before.

It was a bloodbath.  I was devastated.  One of the best groups of kids I'd ever had, and I let them down big time.

If you're a regular reader, and if you've ever wondered what my justification was for Building A Thinking Classroom in Mathematics, this was it.  The next year, I got started on day #1 and never looked back, documenting everything I learned along the way.

​All right.  Enough build up, enough caveats, and enough contexts.  You're here for the data, and here it comes.  

I had 85 students last year who went to 5th grade somewhere in my district, and for whom I thus had prior year scores I could use as a baseline. 

• 15 entered 6th grade with me "above grade level" (distinguished in Georgia lingo)
• 40 entered "on grade level" (proficient in Georgia lingo)
• 30 entered "below grade level" (developing or beginning in Georgia lingo)

After a year in a Thinking Classroom as 6th graders,

• 23 finished the year "above grade level" (distingiushed)
• 53 finished the year "on grade level" (proficient)
• only 9 finished the year "below grade level" (all in the developing tier)

On top of their achievement levels, Georgia also provided me with growth percentiles and comparisons to growth targets. 

The growth percentiles I understand.  

• 58 students showed "high growth"
• 19 students showed "typical growth"
• just 8 showed "low growth"
• none showed "no growth" or regression

​I don't know how the growth targets were set nor how the "math growth" level was established, but

• 75(!) were classified as distinguished by their growth target
• the remaining 10 were classified as proficient by their growth target
• none were classified as developing or beginning by their growth target.

​When I see those numbers compared to the prior year, where 3/4 of my students regressed, I can hardly believe it.  It was a substantially more difficult group of students, too. 

​Anyone who has ever tried knows that practices that genuinely "move the needle" quantitatively are really, really difficult to find.  It would appear that Building A Thinking Classroom in Mathematics has the potential to be one if implemented with fidelity.

"We've carefully compared the results, and we think you'll see that the difference is obvious."

I need to provide a caveat before concluding.  Building A Thinking Classroom was not the only major change I made last year, and the other one certainly contributed to this dramatic improvement, too.  I also worked with my school on an experimental schedule that, rather than providing me with a CQI/review/intervention time with some of my students some days, I got to have one with every student every day.  So in addition to Building A Thinking Classroom, I also massively increased the amount of time I could spend on retrieval practice and gap-filling with every single student.  I needed students to think better, but I also had major work to do on memory, so I decided to make big moves on both at the same time.

That said, I now have what I need unequivocally recommend Building A Thinking Classroom in Mathematics.  For my own students, it didn't just stop the bleeding; it genuinely got a bunch of them on track who were not previously.  Almost everybody made "high growth" in their mathematical achievement, however Georgia calculated that for them.  21 more kids are starting 7th grade "on grade level" that didn't a year ago, and 8 more have joined the "distinguished" elite of mathematical students, too.

​Need permission, justification, or inspiration to make the leap?  I hope this provides it!  Whatever might be the best step for you, to make, I hope I can help:

• Getting started in a Thinking Classroom
• How to study the practices
• Full-class recording of a Thinking Classroom
• Specific practices and how-to's
• What if I've Built A Thinking Classroom and it isn't working?
• Teaching Like A Champion In A Thinking Classroom

For many of us in the teaching profession, test scores are the professional currency of our time.  The results are in - Building A Thinking Classroom in Mathematics pays off.
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