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GUSD board finds consensus with dual-math adoption

By a 5-0 vote, the Glendale Unified School school board, led by president Greg Krikorian, approved the recommendation for dual adoption per high school of the College Preparatory Mathematics system, or CPM, and the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, or HMH.
(Tim Berger/Staff Photographer)
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After multiple recommendations, months of heated debates and a near schism in the local high school mathematics community, the Glendale Unified school board voted unanimously for dual usage of competing curriculum during a school board meeting on Tuesday.

By a 5-0 vote, the board approved a recommendation by the district staff and Supt. Winfred Roberson Jr. the dual adoption of the College Preparatory Mathematics system, or CPM, and the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, or HMH on a per-high school basis.

“The fifth time is the charm … there’s the quote. That’s a good one,” quipped board president Greg Krikorian, as the information item had been a hot-button issue in four previous meetings.

“In reality, this is a serious thing, and I appreciate that the staff is diving into this. This also put the board of education in a peculiar position. It put us in a position, I said weeks ago, where we were dividing and having teacher-versus-teacher and it was a very unfortunate situation,” he added.

In March 2017, the district began the process of selecting a curriculum for its integrated math program, which blends classes and concepts of algebra I, geometry and algebra II into a three-year program rather than by separate subjects taken year by year.

The district ran a pilot program from Aug. 16 to Nov. 17 using CPM and from Nov. 27 to March 16 using HMH courses.

District officials describe CPM as “a nontraditional approach to math instruction that values student engagement in collaborative learning settings.”

In the nonconventional CPM system, there is less reliance on teachers and more of an emphasis on group work as students team up, often in groups of four, and try to solve real-world examples and problems with limited interaction from instructors.

The teacher is more of a facilitator and helps students discuss, write about and make sense of mathematical concepts using eight mathematical standards.

While promoters of CPM say students are more engaged than ever, detractors have voiced concern that pupils are not receiving basic instruction and cannot turn to parents for help.

HMH is defined by the district as a “more traditional math program that involves direct instruction from the teacher and provides examples and practice problems in a workbook format.”

HMH supporters tout the emphasis on teachers being the key part of a child’s education, while HMH opponents claim that the more standard system leaves struggling students behind.

The debate not only played out among teachers, students and parents, but also affected the board and the superintendent.

On May 1, Roberson endorsed HMH because of a teacher’s vote, 19-18, in favor of the system.

A small parent’s poll, in which 139 people or 7.4% of eligible parents of integrated math students taken from April 19 to 24, was strongly for HMH, 73% to 27%.

At the next board meeting on May 15, however, Roberson and staff flipped their recommendation and endorsed single adoption of CPM.

At the time, Roberson said he switched, “because I believe that it is closer aligned to the Common Core [standards], based upon details that I’ve gathered.”

Results from the pilot program backed CPM as high school students showed greater testing gains after CPM than HMH, 63% to 48%. EdReports.org, a nonprofit organization that reviews K-12 education, also overwhelmingly backed CPM’s methodology, coherence and rigor, while it did not endorse HMH.

District high school and middle school principals also voted in favor of CPM, 6-2, with one abstention.

On June 4, board members sent Roberson and staff back to the drawing board as it then voted, 5-0, to reject the recommendation for single adoption of CPM and asked that proposals be drawn for a dual option.

Only a few meetings earlier, dual adoption wasn’t favored by either Roberson or Kelly King, assistant superintendent for educational services.

At the meeting on Tuesday, Chris Coulter, the district’s director of teaching and learning, laid out plans for teacher-by-teacher adoption, dual adoption for every teacher and school-by-school adoption.

Teacher-by-teacher adoption, which would have allowed individual instructors to select their own curriculum, presented too many consistency challenges, according to Coulter.

“As somebody who has built many master schedules, I can tell you this is a very big con as far as schedule changes, which are very common in our high schools and middle schools where students change classes for a variety of reasons, whether it be the need of the school or the need of the student or the family,” Coulter said.

“So, sometimes it’s not possible to keep the student, if they started in HMH class, then two weeks later we have to change the schedule and their only option is to go to a CPM class. The pacing of two programs is very different, so our students would develop some gaps in their learning due to schedule changes,” he added.

Dual adoption for every teacher, which meant each instructor would teach CPM and HMH, also had many drawbacks, including the need for teachers to be trained in both systems.

Roberson and staff recommended school-by-school adoption, which by a comparative cost analysis of textbooks has a price tag of $806,060, which was less than the teacher-by-teacher adoption for $1.4 million or dual adoption for every teacher for $1.7 million.

“[The] teacher-by-teacher option, it’s a no for me. Out,” board member Armina Gharpetian said. “I’m going to stick to what I’ve been saying from the first day, school-by-school adoption.”

At board meetings dating back to April 17, backers of HMH primarily hailed from Hoover and Crescenta Valley high schools, while CPM’s biggest and vocal supporters were from Glendale High.

It is expected that Clark Magnet, Daily and Glendale high schools, along with Roosevelt and Wilson middle schools, will adopt CPM, while Crescenta Valley and Hoover high schools, along with Rosemont and Toll middle schools, will likely endorse HMH.

One of the criticisms expressed by some board members was that the one-year pilot program did not provide enough feedback to determine which system was more effective.

The board’s vote finalizes a three-year implementation of dual adoption and provides for three years’ worth of information and statistics from which the board could continue to utilize dual adoption or select another method.

“At the end the third year, we would have the 11th-graders taking the [California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress] test, and we would really have some solid data on which program was better for our students,” Coulter said.

“We can look at pre and post of where the students were over those three years and see the growth at the different school sites,” he added.

andrew.campa@latimes.com

Twitter @campadresports

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