Chris Barker, 2009 Bay Area Chapter President

The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter did not have a K–12 initiative on an annual basis, nor had it organized workshops to train statistics teachers. However, the idea of arranging a K–12 project arose after I read an interview with a Silicon Valley Tech legend, Scott McNealy, in the San Jose Mercury News.

McNealy, former CEO of Sun Computers, was interviewed about one of his entrepreneurial projects, a company that provides a platform for “open source” educational materials called curriki.org. The essence of the open source is to provide a way for schools to not have to reorder textbooks every time there is a change. Instead, changed materials are added to curriki.org and downloaded by teachers.

In the interview, McNealy made a brief comment about math, but did not mention statistics. I emailed the journalist, Mike Cassidy, and asked him to forward a note requesting a meeting with McNealy so I could ask him about ensuring statistics be incorporated on curriki.org.

About a week later, McNealy called me to discuss the role of statistics in education and curriki.org in particular. He enthusiastically agreed that it was essential statistics have a role in curriki.org.

Next, I contacted Rebecca Nichols, the ASA’s acting director of education, to discuss curriki.org and find out who else at ASA may be interested in the website. Nichols described the ASA’s various offerings for K–12, including the ASA-sponsored Meeting Within a Meeting (MWM) and Beyond AP Statistics (BAPS), both held annually during the Joint Statistical Meetings. Nichols also mentioned the committee in charge of BAPS and MWM had expanded the scope—local chapters could organize a BAPS-style course and the ASA would help find an expert lecturer. This meant teachers from a chapter area could take a BAPS course closer to home. From these discussions and with the opportunity to have a workshop in statistics in the Bay Area, the chapter outlined the K–12 initiative.

California was one of the states that adopted the Common Core curriculum. Therefore, every K–12 math class in California will include statistics in the curriculum or extend/expand any statistics already in the textbooks by 2014.

The premise and mission for the chapter organizing a K–12 initiative was to let Bay Area math and AP Statistics teachers know there are more than 600 statisticians working in the Bay Area. The scope of the initiative included having a statistician visit an AP Statistics or other math or science class and give a one-hour seminar to students. Additional ideas considered for the initiative, based on conversations with ASA education experts, included arranging a teacher “shadowing” project, where an AP Statistics teacher could shadow a statistician at work, and incorporating the ASA’s Census at School project.

Recognizing that the chapter had not had any major and continuing K–12 initiatives in the past several years, we added an advisory committee to build credibility. This advisory committee included Alan Rossman and Roxy Peck at Cal Poly and Nacer Abrouk, a Bay Area vice president of biostatistics at a Bay Area biotech who formerly had a faculty appointment teaching statistics.

Finding AP Statistics Teachers

We thought finding AP Statistics teachers would be easy. Not so. The State of California Education Department does not have a publicly available list of AP Statistics teachers. We tried contacting the College Board, as they provide training for AP Statistics teachers, but we didn’t receive a reply and didn’t have a contact there.

We then asked for volunteers to help with the initiative and about 15 people signed up. We asked our chapter members to contact friends, neighbors, sons, daughters, grandchildren, or other relatives taking AP Statistics and let them know the chapter was undertaking a K–12 initiative. We organized an advisory board and invited people with K–12 experience to join. The role of the board was, where needed, to help with requests for volunteers and add credibility. The board included Peck, Rossman, Nichols, Martha Aliaga (from ASA), and Abrouk.

Next, the chapter sent out a request for volunteers to help with the project. We provided a link to a website describing the chapter’s initiative, which turned out to be premature in some respects as we did not know more than a handful of AP Statistics teachers.

We decided to organize a workshop for AP Statistics teachers and so contacted the ASA, which led to Michael Posner at Villanova helping locate a teacher for the workshop.

Our next challenge was advertising the workshop. Rossman was a grader for AP Statistics exams and a subscriber to the College Board email list. He helped by offering to place an announcement on the College Board’s email list.

By this time, it was nearing the end of the school year. The workshop was scheduled for the summer, and we recognized some teachers might be on vacation then. We were almost ready to advertise the workshop, but we had to figure out a price. After deliberation, we considered two scenarios: offer the course for free or offer the course for a nominal $50. We also would provide each teacher with a one-year teacher’s membership in the ASA, also costing $50. Our thought was that if the course was free, some might be inclined to register but decide later to not attend, so we decided to charge $50.

We started advertising the workshop in March. The low fee was a great idea for a variety of reasons. Based on comments from teachers, a higher fee would have necessitated teachers applying for grant money. As it turned out, $50 was an amount teachers could afford on their own. Looking toward next year, we will consider applying to the ASA for a grant and refunding the $50 for teachers who attend the class. We also will make arrangements for teachers to get college credit, which helps them obtain higher salaries.

The course was held August 11 and 12 at Carlmont High School in Belmont. Nichols and Posner helped arrange for two well-known professors and AP Statistics book authors to give the course: Rossman and Beth Chance from Cal Poly. Fifteen teachers from the Bay Area attended, and their feedback was unanimous and positive. View a picture of the teachers and lecturers.

For more information about how your chapter can host an AP Statistics teacher workshop, contact Nichols at rebecca@amstat.org.