NYC Algebra teachers are dreading the next school year — when nearly all of them will have to use a commercial math curriculum being blasted as “a complete disaster.”
Last year, teachers at 265 schools piloted the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, which Chancellor David Banks is betting on to improve the city’s lagging math scores.
Illustrative Math overhauls how teens learn math. Teachers must stick to scripted lessons on a rigid schedule. Students work in groups to tackle problems and are expected to “discover” the answers with little instruction. Gifted students can handle it, but those below grade level without the prerequisite skills become frustrated, teachers said.
“It’s the worst,” a teacher wrote recently in a Facebook chat group shared with The Post.
“No one was happy with it. The kids didn’t know wtf was happening when we used the lessons. Not to mention you get reprimanded by the superintendent’s office if you go ‘off script’ and don’t use verbatim the words in the curriculum.”
“It’s been a complete disaster,” a colleague agreed.
Another wrote simply, “SUCKS!!!”
The city Department of Education refuses to say how students at the 265 schools scored on the Algebra 1 Regents exam given on June 4.
“We do not yet have the results,” a DOE spokeswoman claimed.
But DOE teachers finished scoring all the exams within a few days, insiders said. Individual schools and students have received their own results. This month, NYC must submit scores to the state, which will release citywide and borough results in the fall.
But some data leaked to The Post already suggests troubling outcomes.
Students from more than 25 schools in three Bronx districts, including some that used Illustrative Math, scored an average failing 56.5 on the exam. That fell below last year’s Bronx borough average of 61.
In one Queens district that used Illustrative Math, Regents scores dropped from last year in all but two of 25 schools, an insider told The Post.
A passing grade is 65, which requires that students answer 35% of questions correctly.
At Forest Hills High School, 660 kids took the exam, but just 44% passed, documents show.
The school’s average score dropped from 65 last year to 62.
“Being forced to use illustrative Math for Algebra 1 brought down my students’ average score from 69 to 64,” a teacher told The Post.
The passing rate of the teacher’s English language learners — kids who struggled the most with Illustrative Math — dropped by nearly 20%
Among the hurdles of Illustrative Math, teachers must stick to a rigid “pacing calendar,” or schedule of lessons, which are tightly scripted.
“If my students didn’t get something, we had to move on,” the teacher said. “There was no time allotted to pull kids aside and help them catch up. They were frustrated.”
What’s worse, several skills tested on the Regents exam — rationalizing denominators, unit conversions, polynomials and sequences — are “not sufficiently covered” by Illustrative Math, according to a DOE instructional guide. That forced teachers to squeeze in those topics.
Bobson Wong, a teacher at Bayside HS 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 did not take part in the pilot, recoils at the required uniformity: “There seems to be little leeway for teachers to adjust the curriculum based on our students’ needs. Everyone’s got to be teaching the same lesson on the same day in the same way.”
Gary Rubenstein, a math teacher at elite Stuyvesant High School, which is exempt from the Illustrative Math mandate, says in his blog the curriculum “is destined to flop,” largely because it assumes — wrongly — that students have already mastered the basic skills required 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 professional training.
Mayor Adams and Banks announced on June 24 that all 420 NYC high schools — except six top-tier specialized schools — must adopt the curriculum this fall.
The DOE initially claimed on its website that Illustrative Math had the “endorsement” of a respected think tank, EdReports, which is funded by multiple philanthropies, including the Gates Foundation.
But EdReports disputed the DOE statement. “It is inaccurate and was not provided by or approved by EdReports,“ spokeswoman Janna Chan told The Post. The group does not endorse or recommend any curricula, she said.
Chan then contacted the DOE, which deleted the word “endorsement,” citing only a “review.”
The DOE also said the curriculum “has undergone a formal review by a committee of NYC educators” and math specialists, but a spokeswoman would not name those on the committee or release its findings.
