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After a contentious road to approve a new set of statewide guidelines on teaching students math, California officials must still figure out how to support school districts with implementation.
The 2023 Math Framework, which the State Board of Education passed in July, is a 1,000-page document that details what many state and education officials accept as the best practices to teach mathematics. Although not everyone agreed and controversies arose during the four years of work it took to reach approval, math experts and organizations across the state are beginning to have conversations about what a statewide rollout could look like.
The state hasn’t provided funding for implementation, which is typical, said Mike Torres, director of curriculum frameworks and instructional resources for the Department of Education. Historically, any framework rollout isn’t funded and is implemented with outside collaborators who are experts in the topic. For the most part, district officials must find ways to fund professional development on their own.
“This situation with the mathematics framework is not different,” Torres said. “There isn’t any specific funding where we can pay experts to help us participate in webinars … or put on events.”
It’s unclear why California historically hasn’t set aside money to help districts with implementation once new guidelines are passed. But that could change.
During a press conference last month, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said he intends to introduce legislation for funding for professional development for those teaching math and reading. The funds could be up to $500 million, he said.
Torres said the California Department of Education would need to find other ways to offset costs if events will be held. It’s too early to know what kind of rollout could or will happen. Torres and his team have had three meetings with groups they work with to talk about a framework rollout, he said.
There are many organizations collaborating with the California Department of Education on implementing the math framework, including the California Mathematics Project, California County Superintendents Curricular and Improvement Support Community (CISC), California Math Council, California Teachers Association, and County Offices of Education.
During other framework rollouts, districts have sent teams of teachers and administrators to training and then had them relay information to the rest of the staff, said Kyndall Brown, one of the framework authors and executive director of the California Mathematics Project – one of the state’s partners. It’s something that could be replicated during a math framework rollout.
Even if there are conferences teachers can attend, one professor says she isn’t a huge fan.
“One day of hearing these ideas doesn’t necessarily translate into having a balanced curriculum – at all,” said Karajean Hyde, co-director of the UC Irvine Math Project. “It doesn’t necessarily create change in the classroom.”
To create changes that will increase students’ proficiency in math, teachers need trainers who will work with them in and outside of classrooms on a consistent basis, Hyde said, which is work she does with her colleguues.
School districts do have pots of funding that could be used toward professional development, Brown said, such as special education funds or funds from the Local Control Funding Formula.
However, a $50 million math, science, and computer science professional learning grant the governor allocated in the 2022 budget could help to fund professional development. Some allocations have been given to the County Offices of Education, Torres said, and the offices handle how the money is used.
The timing of the grant worked out perfectly with the beginning of a math framework rollout, said Ellen Barger, an associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction at the Santa Barbara County Office of Education. Other grant funds are being used to support rural school districts in particular and the most recent grant will help to continue building coherence across all counties and to fill gaps.
“The framework is one of the tools that’s helping us achieve a vision of high-quality
mathematics for every California student, and we are building structures to bring people together to build knowledge and skills to operationalize that vision in every county, district, and community,” Barger said.
Equity in implementation
As of this school year, there will be 939 school districts in the state that will have to find resources to support educators in teaching under the new guidelines, which align with the California Common Core State Standards for Mathematics that were passed a decade ago.
How to make that equitable will be a difficult task.
Each school district has different needs, unique populations, and different levels of resources. For example, a district with more than 50,000 students will typically have more resources and staff to support professional development. A district with less than 50 kids might just have one staffer who is taking on multiple roles.
There are some school districts that haven’t yet finished implementing the common core standards, Brown said. The common core standards detail what students in each grade level need to master.
“There was no rollout of the 2013 framework (common core standards),” Brown said. “You had county offices and math project sites doing what we could, but we’re running into teachers who still don’t know about the elements of the common core standards.”
There are also always new teachers coming into schools who will need to be trained, Brown said. “We have years and years worth of content.”
But at least some colleges of education at California universities have had many aspects of the math framework already embedded in their curricula for the last decade. Professors at UC Davis, UC Irvine, and UC Riverside all spoke about how ideas in the framework have been used in their classrooms and the long history of controversy over how to teach math.
Karajean Hyde, co-director of the UC Irvine Math Project, works with districts to train teachers on how to teach math and students in the credential program. For years, she said, the focus has been on student engagement, understanding motivation, including student identities in lessons, and building healthy classrooms – all included in the math framework.
Most teachers teach the way they were taught, Hyde said, and learned shortcuts to solving math problems. It results in current and future teachers not understanding the mathematics behind what they’re teaching.
During professional development training, Hyde and other Irvine professors make sure educators begin to understand the concepts behind what they are teaching, she said. They spend time co-planning lessons, observing lessons being taught, and relating what they are teaching back to the common core standards.
“We need to make sure teachers understand the math and how to teach the math first and then it’s easier to help them consider – ‘How do I make this more engaging? How do I connect this back to the kid’s prior experience?’” Hyde said.
If teachers don’t understand the content “I fear they will just have a series of super fun, engaging lessons that kids feel super good about but they’re not actually mastering mathematics,” Hyde said. “I feel in turn is going to really increase the achievement gaps that we already have that are horrible in California.”
The professional development work UC Irvine is doing has helped the two dozen districts they work with, but there are still many districts that don’t have this kind of support in place.
It will take years until every student in California is exposed to a way of learning math that follows the guidelines in the framework and Brown says, “Something needs to change.”
Only about 35% of California students met or exceeded math standards this year, only about 1% higher than the previous year. Smarter Balanced Assessment results were lower for Black and brown students.
About 17% of African-American students and nearly 23% of Hispanic students in the state
met or exceeded math standards in 2023, which was only about a 1% increase from the prior year. Brown called the results “horrendous.”
“It’s more than obvious the current system is failing too many people,” Brown said. “It’s long overdue – time to make some changes so we can see some different outcomes.”
A Long Way to Go
The final version of the framework was posted last month on the California Department of Education website. Officials are still working on a professionally edited version of the framework, which can take about a year, Torres said.
Although school districts have access to the final version of the framework, it will still take up to two more years to have math materials that are vetted and approved by the state board that align with the framework, Torres said. Some publishers have likely started to write new materials.
The earliest the State Board of Education will kick off an adoption of math instructional materials is January – when the board approves a schedule of hearings. Districts aren’t required to use the materials approved by the state board, Torres said, but it’s helpful for implementation.
School districts also don’t have deadlines for when the framework needs to be implemented, Brown said. Every district is on its own timeline.
Barger said a rollout isn’t an event, but an ongoing process of continuous improvement that could take the next six or seven years.
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Comments (16)
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LogicalParent 2 months ago2 months ago
California State Board of Education should have performed more data science studies in the state for schools that are doing extremely well when it comes the math and use them as a model. https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2024/03/12/could_singapore_math_be_a_fix_for_us_mathematics_education_1017752.html
Anonymous parent 3 months ago3 months ago
And this is why I have to teach my kid basic arithmetic myself while others outsource it to tutoring companies…
LogicalParent 3 months ago3 months ago
Need to reform your system of teaching math and this includes better reviews of the teaching materials that are used for the classroom and for homework. Also, need more peer reviews from others who have successful math teaching results. Teaching to the lowest common denominator is not the solution the problem. This hurts those who are higher performers in the area of mathematics, which is requirement for those who are STEM career orientated. Also, you … Read More
Need to reform your system of teaching math and this includes better reviews of the teaching materials that are used for the classroom and for homework. Also, need more peer reviews from others who have successful math teaching results. Teaching to the lowest common denominator is not the solution the problem. This hurts those who are higher performers in the area of mathematics, which is requirement for those who are STEM career orientated.
Also, you have factor in family culture values into this problem. Some don’t value education as something of high importance for the future. Some have family problems that affect their learning. Some students may have medical issues related to learning. The statistical results that about a little more than 1/3 meet or exceed the CA math standards is bad. This needs some internal searching, reviewing, and testing of why and what went wrong when it comes to teaching math.
Timothy Eric Widmann 5 months ago5 months ago
Perhaps stop trying to parent students and start teaching them again. Teachers shouldn’t be bothered with political agenda like CRT and DEI. That is the parents’ job. Teaching is not being a babysitter or telling a girl she is a boy. That is politics, and actually communism.
Eileen 5 months ago5 months ago
Another absurdity comes into play in the California education system. And at the expense of our children and their future. What a travesty.
Thomas Johnson 5 months ago5 months ago
I graduated from a public high school in Ohio in 1966. Our schools had a decent math program, relying primarily on textbooks from that era. Without any tutoring or special preparation I was able to score 792 (out of 800) on the math part of the SAT. That was back before cheap calculators were available, with all SAT calculations performed with a #2 pencil and paper. Clearly we had public schools with effective math … Read More
I graduated from a public high school in Ohio in 1966. Our schools had a decent math program, relying primarily on textbooks from that era. Without any tutoring or special preparation I was able to score 792 (out of 800) on the math part of the SAT. That was back before cheap calculators were available, with all SAT calculations performed with a #2 pencil and paper.
Clearly we had public schools with effective math programs in past decades. How have we lost the ability to teach this subject? Euclid’s Elements and the Pythagorean Theorem have remained the same for centuries. How is it that California schools have teachers who seem mystified by such things?
Sky and Sol 5 months ago5 months ago
Please just stop with the Eureka Math. Even the teachers don’t really understand it, how will they teach the kids?! Better options are Spectrum and Saxon.
FG 5 months ago5 months ago
The new Math framework will increase the differences and not close gap. The framework had horrible citation issues and one of the author cited said there was a misrepresentation of what he said. Wealthy families will look for alternatives and pay for private instruction to fill the gap (or move to private schools); low income families will be stuck with snake oil. Then years later they will realize this was a mistake and will blame … Read More
The new Math framework will increase the differences and not close gap. The framework had horrible citation issues and one of the author cited said there was a misrepresentation of what he said. Wealthy families will look for alternatives and pay for private instruction to fill the gap (or move to private schools); low income families will be stuck with snake oil. Then years later they will realize this was a mistake and will blame on everything but themselves, there is no accountability.
Dan Patriot 5 months ago5 months ago
Until the CA Idiotcrats stop teaching that 9+4=12, or any other number of the day, and return to learning the multiplication tables, basic math operations, counting back change on sales items and getting the correct answers, the CA math system will remain broken.
It would also be beneficial if the CA Idiotcrats stopped inventing catchwords like “operationalize”!
Todd Maddison 5 months ago5 months ago
Once upon a time our education system chafed mightily at funding attached to specific purposes and goals. “Local control” was what everyone wanted. Then they got it, with the Local Control Funding Formula. And now, every time we see something new needing to be done, we hear about how our legislature hasn’t provided specific funding for that. Whether it’s arts education, math development, busing, etc – “we don’t get money for that.” In the last decade, … Read More
Once upon a time our education system chafed mightily at funding attached to specific purposes and goals. “Local control” was what everyone wanted.
Then they got it, with the Local Control Funding Formula. And now, every time we see something new needing to be done, we hear about how our legislature hasn’t provided specific funding for that.
Whether it’s arts education, math development, busing, etc – “we don’t get money for that.”
In the last decade, per student spending has increased at a rate of 7.5% per year – over 2 ½ times the rate of inflation. But there’s no funding specifically for Math, so we can’t do that, can we?
We “don’t have the money” for whatever good thing needs to happen for education because the first priority for most school districts is their own pay and benefits – which have also (coincidentally!) gone up at rates higher than inflation.
Imagine a store that needs to implement a new merchandising program for a new product type (say “TVs stop being big tubes and become flat panels that need all new display methods”) Imagine a store saying “we don’t have the money to revamp to sell flat panels because no customers have designated a part of the last purchase they made for that purpose”.
Ridiculous, right? Yup, it is.
Our K-12 schools get over $500,000 per classroom to educate our kids. Maybe they should figure out how to do that.
What we really need is true school choice, which would force them to make “improving education” (instead of “improving their own pay”) their first priority.
Wayne Bishop 5 months ago5 months ago
The problem is fundamental but standard education “research.” Once upon a time education research was statistically based on carefully studied standardized tests such as the ITBS (I think it was) and educational statistics were respected. Now it’s confirmation “research” that isn’t research at all. People write their own assessment tools and ignore the performance on state-mandated ones unless they are giving consistent results. If California is interested in improving its actual math performance, it should … Read More
The problem is fundamental but standard education “research.” Once upon a time education research was statistically based on carefully studied standardized tests such as the ITBS (I think it was) and educational statistics were respected. Now it’s confirmation “research” that isn’t research at all. People write their own assessment tools and ignore the performance on state-mandated ones unless they are giving consistent results.
If California is interested in improving its actual math performance, it should return to the CA Math Standards approved in December 1997 so essentially 1998. It was written by a subset of their distinguished mathematics department rather than their distinguished mathematics education department and these two are not on speaking terms. The resulting Framework of 2000 (2001 maybe) built around it was the best California ever had but it was too good to last.
Wbishop@calstatela.edu
Smalley, Judith 5 months ago5 months ago
What people don't seem to understand is that intelligence predicts achievement. The standards are measurements of achievement. Well-developed standards will always have half of the population scoring above average and half scoring below average. The statistical normal curve demonstrates this reality. Psychologists have discussed the reality of the normal curve for a long time, yet many educators seem to think with the right instruction everyone will score above average. This is not … Read More
What people don’t seem to understand is that intelligence predicts achievement. The standards are measurements of achievement. Well-developed standards will always have half of the population scoring above average and half scoring below average. The statistical normal curve demonstrates this reality. Psychologists have discussed the reality of the normal curve for a long time, yet many educators seem to think with the right instruction everyone will score above average. This is not going to happen.
There are numerous intelligence tests that are not culturally biased. Even on these tests, when accurately selecting the population at large, that is, including Black and brown individuals, the normal curve prevails. People are not born with “blank slates” for a brain waiting to be written upon. The right stimulation (instruction) is needed but for some individuals the right instruction is not going to change their thinking.
W. M. 5 months ago5 months ago
What an obscene waste of money…$500 million for “professional development”? Here is a novel idea: use that money instead to fund additional teachers, specialists, tutors and study groups to assist struggling learners. Put some of that money into introducing math and expounding on it at pre-K and kindergarten levels. You are trying to “close the gap” at the wrong end.
Jim 5 months ago5 months ago
Districts with better math scores will completely ignore this and continue to do what they are already doing. Districts with poor math scores will use implementation challenges as a new justification for poor results. As Vonnegut wrote, “So it goes.”
Kathy Jordan 5 months ago5 months ago
The CMF Oct. 2023 version claims it is based on research, yet it still contains numerous citation misrepresentations (see Brian Conrad public comment #11 for example). Will SBE President Linda Darling-Hammond and the SBE commit to clean up the CMF and clear out citation misrepresentations, and claims which lack any evidentiary support? What credibility does the CMF have, and who can benefit from such a document when it is full of misstatements? … Read More
The CMF Oct. 2023 version claims it is based on research, yet it still contains numerous citation misrepresentations (see Brian Conrad public comment #11 for example). Will SBE President Linda Darling-Hammond and the SBE commit to clean up the CMF and clear out citation misrepresentations, and claims which lack any evidentiary support? What credibility does the CMF have, and who can benefit from such a document when it is full of misstatements? Will EdSource follow up on this issue?
Millie O'Donnell 5 months ago5 months ago
This new math framework will make math proficiency in CA worse and increase gaps in achievement. It is based on shoddy ‘research’ and serves certain groups’ leftist political agendas, and to cover up the failure of unionized government run schools. Students’ math education is an afterthought.