New D181 Math Pilot Voted Down by Board Members

The District 181 Board of Education on Monday night voted against approving two sets of elementary math materials the district’s administration wanted to pilot next year, meaning all students in kindergarten through fourth grade will return to University of Chicago materials that have been a mainstay in the district for more than 15 years, Superintendent Renée Schuster said.

The district administration had recommended two new sets of materials—enVision Math Common Core and Investigations in Number, Data, and Space—that its math committee determined would align best with the federal Common Core standards that need to be implemented by 2014-15, which emphasize depth over breadth in their approach to math concepts according to District 181 assistant superintendent for learning Janet Stutz, as well as with the district’s new Advanced Learning Plan.

Board President Marty Turek voted against piloting the new materials along with Mridu Garg, Brendan Heneghan and Jill Vorobiev.

Glenn Yaeger and Gary Clarin voted to approve the administration’s recommendation, and Michael Nelson was absent.

Turek said he believed the administration was moving quickly at a time when, according to District 181 administrators, details of the Common Core and its assessments are not fully known. 

“I’m all for pushing forward, but not taking a massive risk,” Turek said. “It feels this is more of a risk right now.”

Schuster said that as a result of Monday night’s vote, Everyday Math materials would return to all kindergarten through fourth grade classrooms.

Had the board not taken action Monday—the item was actually listed on the meeting’s agenda as information only—the pilot program would have taken place in pairs of schools at the kindergarten, first grade, and second grade levels next year. At one of the schools, enVision would be the primary resource, while Investigations would be the secondary resource. The primary/secondary materials would be flip-flopped at the other school.

After a year during which there was not one set of materials used in third-grade classrooms district-wide, the pilot math materials next year would have been in all third grade classrooms, as well as all fourth grade classrooms, with a similar primary/secondary setup.

According to the math committee’s presentation, enVision is used in Butler District 53, LaGrange Highlands District 106, Lincolnshire-Prairie View District 103, and Avoca District 37. Investigations is used in Winnetka District 36, North Shore District 112 and Avoca District 37.

“They are good, solid resources that we’ve done the investigation on,” director of pupil services and math committee member Christine Igoe said before the board took action. “It’s not as if we’re picking something out that we haven’t done the research behind or hasn’t had a positive impact on students.”

Stutz and Igoe both said that the recommended materials align with Common Core standards and, at the same time, the district’s Advanced Learning Plan better than Everyday Math, which has been used in the district since 1997, and its available Common Core supplement.

Yaeger, who voted in support of the pilots, cited the math committee’s belief that current materials are not in line with the Common Core.

“I think the teachers are screaming for a resource that more clearly aligns with the Common Core and we need to provide that,” Yaeger said.

The board’s vote came after a number of concerned third grade parents asked that the district discontinue the curriculum-compacting in that grade that began in 2012-13 as part of the Advanced Learning Plan after it was discussed at the board’s May 20 meeting that only 47.7 percent of third grade students hit their MAP math growth targets this year. It was the first year curriculum was compacted and Everyday Math was not used in third grade.

In 2011-12, 55.7 percent of third grade students hit their growth target.

READ: Less than Half of D181 3rd Graders Hit Math Growth Targets

An online petition against the administration's math pilot had gotten more than 200 signatures as of Monday night.

Before voting against the new pilots, Garg said she appreciated the district taking a risk and setting the goal of accelerating all District 181 students by one grade level in math.

“But as a board we need to look at the data, and the data shows that learning went down, that the growth went down,” Garg said. “I don’t think we can go forward with another pilot without the support of the community because it’s a lot of kids being affected.”

In an email Tuesday, Schuster did not confirm whether curriculum compacting would continue in third grade.

“The Department of Learning is revising the plans for third and fourth grade math and will communicate the details in the near future,” the superintendent wrote.