In a bid to improve state test scores, New York City public schools have embarked on a major undertaking to standardize math instruction across its middle and high schools — but some teachers have misgivings about whether a new curriculum will change the equation.
After a pilot last school year, nearly all high schools are now using the same curriculum for Algebra I. Called “Illustrative Math,” it encourages students to use their current knowledge and reasoning skills to solve problems, rather than rely on memorization and repetition. Another 93 middle schools in eight local school district chose between Illustrative Math and two other curricular materials ahead of this fall, plus professional development for teachers.
The push follows a similar effort to standardize reading curriculum in elementary schools, which its supporters say promotes high-quality instruction, common professional development, and smooth transitions for students switching schools. But while the literacy mandate was done jointly with the city’s powerful teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers is growing increasingly critical of the math overhaul.
“The prerequisites are not there for the children to do the work,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said earlier this month.
Only about 53% of local public school students are considered proficient in math, according to last school year’s results. Racial disparities persisted, with lower pass rates for Black and Hispanic students: 38% and 40%, respectively.
A Queens math teacher who started with Illustrative Math last year said it assumes students have certain math skills coming in and does not include enough practice. The approach also takes for granted that students will engage with routines, such as class discussions, that have been difficult to implement.
“We’re setting kids up to fail who have already been failed by COVID and have very low level math skills in many cases,” said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Other teachers have found the model effective. During a math lesson last week at the Bronx’s Fannie Lou Hammer Middle School, where teachers have been using Illustrative Math for seven years, eighth-grade teacher Emma Comstock Reid handed the group a worksheet with five pairs of similar shapes.
For each, the task was to decide if the forms were the same but positioned differently. With a few tools at their disposal — a ruler, protractor and tracing paper — they rotated and flipped over the shapes, and deliberated with a partner.
Comstock Reid, who wore a t-shirt under her blazer saying: “You are a math person,” asked students at Fannie Lou Hammer Middle School and their visitors — a gaggle of reporters engaged in the math simulation — to share their answers and rationale. After a class discussion, she introduced a new term for what they were doing.
“This was the first introduction to the word ‘congruence,’” Comstock Reid told the press. “It’s a good example of building an experience, and then labeling it with a word.”
“If I started a lesson with ‘Hi everybody, this is what congruence is. Here’s a worksheet. Decide which ones are congruent’ — I think that would be a much less memorable way to understand the word.”
Over the next several years, the education official in charge of curriculum mandates, Deputy Chancellor of School Leadership Danika Rux, said she plans to expand the math initiative, known as “NYC Solves,” to other high school subjects, such as geometry and calculus.
The UFT’s Mulgrew — who recently met with incoming Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos and five schools about the math push on the Walton Campus in the Bronx’s Jerome Park — told reporters the implementation of Illustrative Math has been “really problematic.”
“It’s not a damning of that curriculum, per se,” Mulgrew said at an unrelated press conference this month outside City Hall. “That curriculum has proven to be successful when the prerequisite learning was in place. But you can’t just drop it in ninth grade, unless you change what they were learning in sixth, seventh and eighth grade.”
For example, Mulgrew added, the first 14 lessons of the math curriculum are on statistics, despite students having no previous exposure to the subject. He asked for more flexibility from the public school system.
“We’re afraid this is going to frustrate our students and really make them uncomfortable with math — one of our difficult subjects to teach,” the teachers union president said. “The math teachers in mass are saying that.”
Rux, the deputy chancellor, said education officials are meeting with the UFT to learn more about the challenges teachers are experiencing and to address them in real time. But she insisted on staying the course, adding that the first year of any new curriculum is a period of learning.
“We know what we were doing was not working in the past,” Rux said.
Bobson Wong, who teaches geometry, Algebra II and AP Statistics at Bayside High School, could be next in line for the math mandates. While he recognized some benefits in Illustrative Math’s curriculum, he called for more teacher autonomy in practice.
“The lessons are just not realistic,” said Wong. “That’s the biggest problem. There’s a lot of good stuff, interesting tasks in the curriculum, and a lot of problems in there I would happily incorporate into my lessons. But the problem is I as a teacher know what I can fit into one period, and the people writing the lessons didn’t take that into account.”
