Challenge: Our systems are complex, representing the largest in the country, and the ability to implement and sustain systemic change requires time, resources, and planning at a unique scale.  

The scale of math curriculum implementation is significantly more challenging when operating across hundreds of schools

There are competing priorities within systems and math has received less attention in recent years 

Objective for District Community of Practice:

Developing effective communication across all stakeholders is necessary to not only build a shared understanding of efforts underway, but also to garner support and promote policies and practices that are sustained over time to improve math outcomes for all students within our districts. 

Challenge: Students do not have equitable access to high-quality instructional materials and effective instruction. 

Selecting high-quality core and supplemental materials that are a good fit for our local context and that teachers, students, and families want to use is a delicate balance.

The consistency of the student experience matters. For example, math materials used for core instruction compared to intervention or after-school tutoring might present a disconnected learning experience that hinders students’ acceleration.

Objective for District Community of Practice:

Share best practices from our districts to learn from one another and from experts about how to plan for instructional coherence in math, including alignment of core and supplemental materials.

Challenge: Our systems, both internal and external, are not designed to set up educators for success in teaching math. 

Building the capacity of educators goes beyond professional learning for teachers. It is inclusive of teachers — current and future — and leaders across the education ecosystem. Many teachers are not sufficiently trained in mathematical pedagogy and best practices, and many lack the necessary resources and deep content knowledge necessary to support student numeracy and access to grade-level math content. Early-grade teachers, in particular, lack content knowledge, and there have been concerted efforts in early literacy that have not been mirrored for mathematics. 

Objective for District Community of Practice:

We will learn from one another and leading experts about promising practices for strengthening the capacity and expertise of teachers through sequenced, job-embedded supports to build content knowledge and pedagogical practices that improve math learning. We are working together to further our shared understanding of evidence-based instructional strategies tailored to diverse student populations, ensuring equitable access and engagement in math learning, including leveraging technology and personalized learning opportunities.

Challenge: School building leaders face competing priorities that include but don’t always prioritize instructional leadership in math.

Anecdotally, we see many of our school leaders (i.e., principals) tend to have more comfort and experience in ELA instruction than in math, especially in the early years. Yet, they are responsible for the execution of and fidelity of math HQIM implementation.

School leaders must also support their teachers’ instructional capacity-building, which means they need to build their own instructional capacity first.

Objective for District Community of Practice:

In addition to efforts related to educator capacity, we will also learn from one another and leading experts about promising practices for strengthening the capacity and expertise of leaders, including investigating successful models of math coaching at scale.

Challenge: Our system perpetuates the misguided belief that math is not for everyone which limits the potential of students, educators, and the future of society.

There is a popularized narrative that math is not for everyone. This narrative inhibits the critical buy-in from educators, parents, and the community necessary for changing instruction in math. 

Objective for District Community of Practice:

By building upon mindset work from the Math Narrative Project and other researchers, our districts will be able to identify messages that resonate with stakeholders and share feedback with one another, evolving our messaging and approach together, including supporting sustained change management across our districts.