Superintendent Anna Nolin said last year that she would be working on improving and unifying the district’s math curriculum. And work on that goal has begun.

At a recent School Committee meeting, two educational consultants, Norma Gordon and Jacob Foster, presented a “self study” of the district’s math curriculum.

The consultants, teachers and administrators analyzed classrooms across the district to determine what areas needed to be improved and what successes could be built on, in order to advance the district’s curriculum.

The Findings

“Curriculum is not a script, it is a framework. It sets the foundation while teachers bring it to life,” said Dr. Gina Flanagan, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning.

A lack of common or standardized math curricula across grade levels and schools was a common theme throughout the presentation.

Common curriculum is a broad term used to describe a set of standards, learning materials and assessments used within classrooms to teach students.

Consultants noted that this was particularly prevalent on the pre-k and high school level.

Gordon said that a common set of teaching standards developed under a shared philosophy for math curriculum would increase collaboration among math teachers, and encourage them to work together as a larger group.

Professional development for math teachers was also found to be inconsistent, particularly for special education professionals and support staff.

Gordon said that support for educators is present when new curricula is rolled out, but there needs to be more space for continuous training for staff who implement directed changes within the classroom.

Finally, the consultants made the recommendation to move toward “heterogeneous classrooms” or classrooms without levels like college prep, honors, accelerated, etc., for math levels 1-3. 

Gordon said the idea behind this is that any time classes are separated by level, some students miss out on higher level materials and subsequently remain stuck in the same level for math.

A heterogeneous or multilevel classroom, he said, would increase students access to all levels of instruction thereby increasing equity.

Ryan Normandin, a math teacher at Newton South High School, said he was concerned by this recommendation.

Normandin said that the school’s administration shared data showing that representation of black and Latino in the college prep level courses or lowest level increased when they were put in multilevel classrooms.

Next Steps

All of these findings are only recommendations on the part of consultants and represent a very early stage in potentially changing the districts math curriculum.

The recommendations will be reviewed by the math curriculum review committee made up educators and administrators across the district.

The committee will be separated into subcommittees, one working on developing new curriculum and instructional materials, another on new professional development, and the final one working on communicating the entire process to all members of the school district.

The new curriculum will be piloted starting in November.