NYC Algebra Regents scores tank amid new ‘disaster’ math curriculum
New York City has got a math problem.
Less than half of city kids passed the state Algebra 1 Regents exam this past school year, after the Department of Education introduced a controversial new math curriculum critics have blasted as “a complete disaster.”
Just 46.8% of Big Apple high schoolers tested “proficient” on the exam — a staggering 9-point drop from the prior year’s 56.2% pass rate, according to the state Education Department.
The steep decline overlapped with the city DOE piloting a new curriculum known as “Illustrative Mathematics” in 265 of the city’s 420 high schools.
Under the new blueprint, educators follow tightly scripted and rapid-paced lesson plans where students working in groups are expected to tackle problems and “discover” answers with little input from teachers
The curriculum does not even cover everything tested for in the Regents exam.
“It’s alarming that we work for an agency that is seemingly okay mandating Illustrative Math when the data now officially shows how badly it hurts our students,” one high school educator who taught the new curriculum last year told The Post.
“Why don’t these people care about our kids?”
The Illustrative Math curriculum, which the DOE said a majority of its high schools are adopting for Algebra this year, is part of the $34 million “NYC Solves” initiative launched under former Chancellor David Banks to boost lagging scores.
Ninety-three middle schools across every borough except Staten Island also are now using the curriculum in their classrooms.
The DOE would not disclose which schools participated in the pilot program, but some educators whose students served as guinea pigs last year told The Post over the summer that their Algebra 1 exam scores tanked.
In southern Queens, where all but one of the district’s 29 high schools participated in the pilot, Superintendent Josephine Van-Ess saidstudents’ average pass rate sank from 59% to 45% on the June Regents exam.
A second high school teacher cried that the declining performance on the algebra exam highlights an urgent need for the DOE “to include educators in the process of determining new curriculum.”
The dismal scores, meanwhile, are raising a red flag for parent leaders.
“To me when you see that kind of outcome after one year, it means you’re going in the wrong direction and you should adjust,” said Deborah Kross, president of the Citywide Council on High Schools.
Bobson Wong, a teacher at Bayside HS in Queens and co-author of “Practical Algebra: A Self-Teaching Guide,” said that Illustrative Math offers a lot of “interesting problems and approaches,” but he critiqued the DOE’s mandate that teachers rigidly follow the jam-packed curriculum exactly as written out.
Even more troubling is that many concepts in the Regents exam are not included in Illustrative Math, he said.
“How did they justify using a curriculum not aligned to the standards and why are teachers not allowed to modify this curriculum?” asked Wong, who did not participate in the pilot.
The DOE noted in an instructional guide that a number of concepts tested on the Regents exam such as unit conversions, polynomial equations, and sequences are “not sufficiently” covered by Illustrative Math. This forces teachers to somehow squeeze lessons on these additional subjects into their already tight calendars.
DOE spokeswoman Nicole Brownstein blamed the poor Algebra exam scores on changes to the Regents test, noting a statewide trend in poorer performance, as well as educators having to adapt to teaching a new curriculum.
“Other municipalities that have begun this shift saw upticks in test scores after a few years of implementation, and we expect to see the same here,” she said.
Additional reporting by Deirdre Bardolf
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