Algebra teachers in New York City are dreading the next school year, when almost all of them will have to use a commercial math curriculum that’s been called a “total disaster.”
Last year, teachers at 265 schools piloted the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, which Finance Minister David Banks hopes will help improve the city’s poor maths scores.
Illustrative Math is changing the way youngsters learn math. Teachers must stick to a set class with a strict schedule. Students work in groups on problems and are expected to “find” the answers with little guidance. Gifted students cope, but those who are below grade level and lack the necessary skills become frustrated, teachers said.
“It’s the worst,” one teacher recently wrote in a Facebook chat group that he shared with the Post.
“Nobody was happy with it. The kids didn’t know what the heck was going on when we used the lessons. Not to mention that if you go off script and don’t use the words in the curriculum verbatim, you get reprimanded by the principal’s office.”
“It was a total disaster,” agreed a colleague.
Another simply wrote: “IT SUCKS!!!”
The city’s Department of Education refuses to release information about the scores of students from 265 schools on the June 4 Algebra 1 exam.
“We don’t have the results yet,” a DOE spokeswoman said.
But DOE teachers scored all the exams within days, insiders said. Individual schools and students received their own results. This month, NYC must submit the results to the state, which will release the results for the entire city and districts in the fall.
But some data leaked to the Post already point to worrying consequences.
Students from more than 25 schools in three Bronx boroughs, including some that used Illustrative Math, scored an average of 56.5 on the exam, below last year’s Bronx borough average of 61.
In a Queens school district that used Illustrative Math, Regents scores fell from last year in all but two of 25 schools, an insider told The Post.
A passing grade of 65 points requires students to answer 35% of the questions correctly.
At Forest Hills High School, 660 children took the exam, but records show that only 44% passed.
The school’s average grade dropped from 65 last year to 62.
“Because we had to use illustrative math in Algebra 1, my students’ average grade dropped from 69 to 64,” one teacher told The Post.
The success rate of the teacher’s English learners – children who struggled the most with Illustrative Math – dropped by almost 20%
One of the hurdles of teaching illustrative math is that teachers must adhere to a rigid “step calendar” or timetable that is precisely defined.
“If my students didn’t understand something, we had to move on,” the teacher said. “There was no time to take the children aside and help them catch up. They were frustrated.”
Worse still, several skills tested on the Regents exam—rationalizing denominators, unit conversions, polynomials, and sequences—are “not adequately covered,” according to a DOE textbook in Illustrative Math, forcing teachers to add these topics as well.
Bobson Wong, a teacher at Bayside HS in Queens and co-author of “Practical Algebra: A Self-Teaching Guide,” said the curriculum offers “many interesting problems and activities.”
But Wong, who did not take part in the pilot project, is put off by the demand for uniformity: “It seems as if there is little scope for teachers to adapt the curriculum to the needs of our students. Everyone has to teach the same lesson in the same way on the same day.”
Gary Rubenstein, a math teacher at the elite Stuyvesant High School, which is exempt from the Illustrative Math curriculum requirement, writes in his blog that the curriculum is “doomed to fail,” primarily because it assumes – incorrectly – that students already have mastered the basic skills of solving equations.
Illustrative Math is a central component of NYC Solves, a Department of Energy mathematics initiative expected to cost $34 million over five years, including professional training.
Mayors Adams and Banks announced on June 24 that all 420 high schools in New York City – except for six specialized top schools – must adopt the curriculum this fall.
The Department of Energy had initially claimed on its website that Illustrative Math had the “support” of the respected think tank EdReports, which is funded by several charities, including the Gates Foundation.
But EdReports disputed the DOE’s statement. “It is inaccurate and was not provided or approved by EdReports,” spokeswoman Janna Chan told the Post. The group does not endorse or recommend curricula, she said.
Chan then contacted the Ministry of Energy, which deleted the word “approval” and spoke only of a “review”.
The DOE also said the curriculum had undergone “a formal review by a committee of New York City educators” and math experts. A spokeswoman declined to name the committee members or release the results.
