NYS makes math education even harder

Mathematics is a difficult subject for many students. But the New York State Department of Education made it even tougher this year when it adopted yet another high school mathematics curriculum — its third curriculum in the past six years.

After more than five decades in the trenches as a math teacher and school district superintendent, I know how hard it is for students and educators to meet the demands of unfamiliar standards. I once attended a conference at which the featured speaker addressed the difficulties associated with implementing changes in education as being “like asking an ant to push a boulder up the side of a hill.”

Getting the teaching of math right is critical, not only for students who will pursue a STEM-related field but for anyone who tries to secure a mortgage, prepare a family budget, deal with price increases in times of inflation, or face difficult decisions related to life-or-death probabilities.

State education officials have not made this any easier. In 2017, students in Algebra 1, the foundation for the study of math in high school and beyond, were taught the Algebra 1 (Common Core) curriculum. In 2018, SED adopted a new Algebra 1 curriculum that prepared for a new culminating Regents exam. This year, SED introduced the Next Generation Learning Standards Algebra 1 Curriculum. These new curricula responded to valid, age-old criticisms of mathematics as divorced from real-world applications. Students use mathematics in finance, the sciences, and computer simulations.

That's all for the good, but most educators deemed the changes to be rushed, inconsistent, and often not reflective of what students need to learn and teachers need to teach in order for students to demonstrate minimum proficiency on Regents exams. New curricula must always be rolled out in a timely fashion that allows teachers and students to know what is expected of them. Some questions on Regents exams reflected topics that supposedly had been removed from the curriculum.

Districts could not find textbooks that aligned with topics covered in any of the three recent curricula, forcing them to purchase online materials. With each new curriculum, districts had to purchase new site licenses, which is cumbersome and expensive. Many teachers spent countless hours developing their own materials, which became obsolete within two years. Districts also had to pay for staff development to prepare teachers to teach new topics and to assist them in incorporating graphing calculator technology into their lessons plans, which students need to be successful on Regents exams. In addition, districts must provide students who do not demonstrate minimum competency on the Algebra 1 Regents with costly extra-help services.

Those who will teach the new Algebra 1 curriculum this year do not get much help from the NYSED website, which provides a total of five sample questions for the new Regents exam — clearly inadequate. Teachers need to see both the content and style of questions, so they can incorporate them in classroom instruction and tests.

Mathematics educators need stability as they develop long- and short-range plans for instruction and assessment. We can't keep asking teachers to feel like ants rolling boulders up a mountain. I propose a 10-year moratorium on curricular changes in high school mathematics as a blue-ribbon committee of stakeholders determines whether further changes are needed, beyond minor tweaks.

Math provides an understanding of so many forces that affect our daily lives. Let's make sure our kids are learning this essential subject and graduating on time, prepared to meet the needs of a digital world.

This guest essay reflects the views of Michael Cohen, retired superintendent of Brentwood schools and a mathematics consultant.