More Than a Swap: Developing Teachers, Assessments, and Planning with New HQIM in Mathematics

• In Event: What Does it Take to Maximize HQIM's Potential to Support Math Instruction and Student Flourishing?

Abstract

This presentation describes one large urban school district’s experience replacing one set of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) with another. It highlights the benefits of a phased-in approach for introducing a new HQIM, the importance of coordinating with school leaders, teachers, students and other district offices, and ways to make time for training and adjusting to new materials.

DISTRICT is the fourth largest school district in STATE serving diverse students, teachers, schools and communities. For ten years, DISTRICT used a common curriculum across schools that was considered “high-quality” based on its alignment to math standards. However, in 2020, we saw a sharp decline in student performance and the need for teacher support increased. By 2023, more than half of DISTRICT educators had less than three years teaching experience. Over time teachers began to use various resources and platforms to aid classroom instruction, making it difficult to align student performance across the platforms. These challenges led us to needing something more out of HQIM than standards-alignment to improve instructional strategies.

To confront this issue, we adopted a new HQIM. The hope was to provide teachers with better resources to support student learning, including those for personalized instruction, in the same platform. Another hope for this new high-quality series was to support intentional planning by enhancing questioning strategies, differentiating instruction for struggling, advanced, and multilingual learners, and providing targeted resources to effectively engage students in small group instruction. Having all curricular resources, student performance data, and differentiated supports in a central location was critical for educators.

We used a phased-in approach to implement the new HQIM, where we identified 32 schools ranging from kindergarten to high school to act as a sample of schools in our district in relation to population, demographics, in-house support, and principal interest. These schools agreed to open their doors for observation, video recording, focus groups and were offered a separate professional learning trajectory than other schools.

While this HQIM has many useful resources, Phase 1 schools faced obstacles such as teacher training around how to effectively use the resources, and supporting teachers to relinquish outdated materials. In response, the math department developed a unit and lesson protocol to guide teachers through the materials’ components. This tool helped teachers dive deeper into a unit/lesson to determine the best decisions for their classroom.

Lastly, we found students were being overtested, as there were multiple assessment options within the new materials. The math department collaborated with teachers to provide more lesson guidance for each unit and to help them select appropriate items for common assessments. To prepare for full implementation, we extended the time line for professional development for the remaining schools, collaborated on assessment guidance, and incorporated the DISTRICT planning tools.

As we continue to support our teachers with this new curriculum, our hope is they will find confidence in the HQIM, utilize the tools for planning, and support student learning in new ways.

Author

• Chris Franklin, Baltimore City Public Schools