New York City algebra teachers are dreading the coming school year because nearly all of them will have to use a commercial math curriculum that has been panned as a “total failure.”
Last year, teachers at 265 schools piloted an “illustrative math” curriculum that Chancellor David Banks hopes will help improve the city’s struggling math performance.
Illustrative Math is a radical rethinking of the way teenagers learn math. Teachers are tasked with a rigid schedule of scheduled lessons. Students are expected to work through problems in groups and “discover” the answers with little guidance. Gifted students can handle it, but teachers say it frustrates students below grade level who lack the prerequisite skills.
“This is the worst,” one teacher wrote recently in a Facebook chat group shared by The Washington Post.
“Nobody was happy. When we used the lessons, the kids had no idea what was going on. Not to mention the reprimand from the superintendent’s office if you went ‘off script’ and didn’t use the curriculum word for word.”
“It’s a complete disaster,” a colleague agreed.
Another simply wrote: “This is the worst!!!”
The city Education Department has refused to release information about how students at 265 schools performed on the June 4 Regents Algebra 1 exam.
“The results are not yet available,” an Energy Department spokesman insisted.
But New York City Department of Education teachers finished marking all the exams within days, according to a source. Schools and students have received their results separately. Later this month, New York City must submit the results to the state, which plans to release citywide and borough-wide results in the fall.
But some of the data leaked to The Washington Post already suggests some worrying results.
Students in more than 25 schools across three Bronx boroughs, including those that used Illustrative Math, received a failing average score of 56.5 points, down from the Bronx’s average score of 61 points last year.
Insiders told the Post that all but two of the 25 schools in Queens that have adopted Illustrated Math have seen their Regents exam scores drop from last year.
The passing mark is 65 points and students must answer 35% of the questions correctly.
At Forest Hills High School, 660 students took the test, but only 44 percent passed, according to the documents.
The school’s average score fell to 62 points from 65 points last year.
“Because we were forced to use descriptive math in Algebra 1, students’ average scores dropped from 69 to 64,” one teacher told The Post.
Pass rates for teachers’ English language learners — the kids who struggled most with graphic math — dropped by nearly 20 percentage points.
One of the hurdles of Illustrated Math is that teachers must follow a strictly planned “pacing calendar,” or schedule of lessons.
“If the students didn’t understand something, we had to move on,” the teacher said. “We weren’t given time to call them and help them catch up. They were frustrated.”
To make matters worse, the DOE’s teaching guide says that some skills tested on the Regents exam — rationalizing denominators, unit conversions, polynomials, and sequences — are “not adequately covered” in Illustrative Math, forcing teachers to cram those topics.
Bobson Wong, a teacher at Bayside High School in Queens and co-author of “Practical Algebra: A Self-Teaching Guide,” said the curriculum offers “a lot of interesting problems and activities.”
But Wong, who is not involved in the pilot, rebels at the uniformity required: “There seems to be very little room for teachers to tailor the curriculum to the needs of their students. Everyone has to teach the same lessons in the same way on the same days.”
Gary Rubenstein, a math teacher at the elite Stuyvesant High School, said his school is exempt from mandating “explanatory math.” He states in his blog: The curriculum is “doomed to fail,” primarily because it incorrectly assumes that students have already mastered the foundational skills needed to solve equations.
Illustrative Math is a key component of NYC Solves, a DOE math initiative expected to cost $34 million over five years, including training experts.
Mayor Adams and Mayor Banks announced On June 24, all 420 high schools in New York City Excluding six top-class vocational schools — We have to implement the curriculum this fall.
The DOE initially claimed on its website that Illustrative Math was “endorsed” by EdReports, a well-respected think tank that receives funding from several philanthropic organizations, including the Gates Foundation.
But EdReport disputed the Department of Education’s statement. Spokesperson Janna Chang told The Washington Post, “This is inaccurate and is not provided or endorsed by EdReport.” The organization does not endorse or recommend any curriculum, she said.
Chang then contacted the Department of Energy, which removed the word “approved” and cited only “consideration.”
The New York City Department of Education also said the curriculum “underwent a formal review by a committee of New York City educators and mathematics experts,” but a spokesman declined to identify the committee members or release the findings of its investigation.
