Top Online Implementation

In 2019, the foundation approved a grant to the Center for Educational Technology to establish an online program in high order mathematical thinking for Arab-sector middle school students. The goal of the program was to reach 1,500 students within five years. A grant from the foundation was sought to fund the development of materials and assessments, as well as half of the first year operation of pilot testing with 300 ninth grade students. CET envisioned that the Ministry of Education would partner in the program and allocate a 23 million NIS budget for its large scale operation.

In practice, the development of the program (Top Online) proceeded as planned. During the first year 300 students participated in a pilot program. However, since government did not commit to funding the program, it continued by relying only on the grant from the foundation. During the second year, 800 students participated and at present, 800 students are enrolled in the program. In order to measure the impact of the program, CET tested the students by means of a diagnostic assessment they developed, which is aligned with the PISA 5-6 proficiency levels.

The findings from the assessment show that students improved their technique and evaluation skills, however they struggled with modelling and reasoning which are key attributes of applied mathematics. Therefore, CET plans to improve the program with the hope of persuading the Ministry of Education of the program’s quality and of funding its continued operation. This is very important since Top Online is the only program that was originally developed especially for Arabic-speaking students, who still significantly lag behind in performance on the PISA assessment.

Since the PISA exam will be administered in 2022, we approached CET in order to check whether it would be possible to direct the program to 10^th grade as well. They are proposing to implement Top Online with an additional 1,250 students of the four and five unit tracks in mathematics in 10^th grade. They will recruit and train 20 additional Arabic-speaking mentors who will use the existing Top Online content in order to interact online with groups of students from 35 schools. Every week they will meet their groups for a one-and-a-half hour session, followed by small group tutoring. The schools and the teachers will be actively involved in recruiting students, and will be informed of each student’s participation and progress.