SFUSD from the fall of 2014 to the fall of 2024 has been using a internal pre k to 11 math curriculum. The audit last year was miserable. They are piloting a new one this year and the findings seem promising. Anything is better than what they were using.
We were very fortunate that my son was in 9th and my daughter in 7th when this all began. I had to scramble to get her Algebra I in eighth but all in all we were very lucky.
SFUSD is behind in math compared to many districts because of the stupid decisions made by Superintendent Carranza and his merry men (board of education).
I hope things improve as the district works to rid itself of those idiotic choices. (paging Matt Haney, Rachel Norton et al to the courtesy phone)
Unfortunately, there are math curriculums worse than the one mentioned by Maya. SFUSD just adopted not one but two. Each with a licensing fee in the millions. Illustrative Math for grades K-5 and Amplify Math for middle school. Both curriculums suffer from three major flaws: Lack of explicit instruction, insufficient HW practice usually 5-6 problems three times a week and time consuming chromebook activities.
I predict in 5 years SFUSD parents will look back at Illustrative Math and Amplify Math with the same disdain that was recently directed at the reading and writing curriculum peddled by Lucy Calkins. Below are youtube videos showing each math program in action. Prepare to be astonished.
I'm not denying that curriculum has an impact, just that the size of the impact couldn't possibly be large enough to explain the Fremont-San Francisco differences. Demographics is more important.
I tend not to write about curriculum stuff because there's no data available for me to examine and, never having been a teacher, I'm wary of spouting off uninformed opinions. However, your comment gives me an excuse to give you that uninformed opinion.
A district the size of San Francisco is likely to have average quality teachers. If you want better than average results, you need to do something to make average quality teachers more effective. The most obvious "something" is to arm them a high quality curriculum and support them with systems that monitor student progress (e.g. formative assessments) and can trigger an early intervention if something is off kilter.
Per Maya's comment above, that curriculum is going to be off-the-shelf. Developing your own curriculum, as SFUSD did, is a waste of money. The off-the-shelf curriculum should be as detailed as possible, down to the level of giving instructions of what should be covered in every lesson during the entire school year, and what formative assessments should be given at what times. There are multiple reasons for this:
- I was persuaded by research showing that many students in weaker schools were simply never shown or assigned grade-level material. We can't expect students to master material they are never taught. A prescriptive curriculum ensures that students at least have a chance to learn.
- it makes it possible to identify early on students who are falling behind and need help
- it would make it easier for the district to integrate new hires and for substitutes to teach instead of just babysitting because they would know what they were expected to do;
In short, Demographics > Curriculum and Systems > Teaching
I agree with all of that except that I do think it’s important to give teachers some flexibility for several reasons one of which is that if you’re overly prescriptive you’ll never get great teachers - they will all leave.
I was trying to establish what it takes to have a 65% proficiency rate (San Francisco's target) and I picked Fremont because it's a large district whose proficiency rate sits just above 65%. And the conclusion of the comparison is that, although Fremont's students do score better than their peers in San Francisco, the biggest reason Fremont's proficiency rate is over 65% is precisely because they have very different demographics.
There are no districts that are very similar to San Francisco demographically (I did a post a year or so ago identifying the closest) but, if there were any, they wouldn't be at 65% proficiency.
Thanks for this analysis! My bet is that you would get the same results if you tracked the impact of chronic absences. Kids don't learn if they don't show up. Asians have the lowest rates of chronic absences. Viola! Asians have the highest performance rates.
Expectations was the wrong word. I should have written "standards".
They gathered together panels of educators, parents, and other interested parties. They presented the panelists with lists of test items ordered by difficulty (they knew the difficulty because they had tested them on students and knew how many had answered each question correctly). The panelists "independently reviewed test questions and recommended the level of performance required for students to be considered on-track toward college and career readiness".
That very brief summary is drawn from this technical report:
SFUSD from the fall of 2014 to the fall of 2024 has been using a internal pre k to 11 math curriculum. The audit last year was miserable. They are piloting a new one this year and the findings seem promising. Anything is better than what they were using.
We were very fortunate that my son was in 9th and my daughter in 7th when this all began. I had to scramble to get her Algebra I in eighth but all in all we were very lucky.
SFUSD is behind in math compared to many districts because of the stupid decisions made by Superintendent Carranza and his merry men (board of education).
I hope things improve as the district works to rid itself of those idiotic choices. (paging Matt Haney, Rachel Norton et al to the courtesy phone)
Unfortunately, there are math curriculums worse than the one mentioned by Maya. SFUSD just adopted not one but two. Each with a licensing fee in the millions. Illustrative Math for grades K-5 and Amplify Math for middle school. Both curriculums suffer from three major flaws: Lack of explicit instruction, insufficient HW practice usually 5-6 problems three times a week and time consuming chromebook activities.
I predict in 5 years SFUSD parents will look back at Illustrative Math and Amplify Math with the same disdain that was recently directed at the reading and writing curriculum peddled by Lucy Calkins. Below are youtube videos showing each math program in action. Prepare to be astonished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEQE-XAfAdg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2U2v-_NHNU&list=PLm_xeUJV-0tTE5zv744aPAAJNWJUXkTMT
Lee
I think curriculum has more of an impact than you suppose.
I'm not denying that curriculum has an impact, just that the size of the impact couldn't possibly be large enough to explain the Fremont-San Francisco differences. Demographics is more important.
I tend not to write about curriculum stuff because there's no data available for me to examine and, never having been a teacher, I'm wary of spouting off uninformed opinions. However, your comment gives me an excuse to give you that uninformed opinion.
A district the size of San Francisco is likely to have average quality teachers. If you want better than average results, you need to do something to make average quality teachers more effective. The most obvious "something" is to arm them a high quality curriculum and support them with systems that monitor student progress (e.g. formative assessments) and can trigger an early intervention if something is off kilter.
Per Maya's comment above, that curriculum is going to be off-the-shelf. Developing your own curriculum, as SFUSD did, is a waste of money. The off-the-shelf curriculum should be as detailed as possible, down to the level of giving instructions of what should be covered in every lesson during the entire school year, and what formative assessments should be given at what times. There are multiple reasons for this:
- I was persuaded by research showing that many students in weaker schools were simply never shown or assigned grade-level material. We can't expect students to master material they are never taught. A prescriptive curriculum ensures that students at least have a chance to learn.
- it makes it possible to identify early on students who are falling behind and need help
- it would make it easier for the district to integrate new hires and for substitutes to teach instead of just babysitting because they would know what they were expected to do;
In short, Demographics > Curriculum and Systems > Teaching
I agree with all of that except that I do think it’s important to give teachers some flexibility for several reasons one of which is that if you’re overly prescriptive you’ll never get great teachers - they will all leave.
Comparing SF with Fremont (which I assume has very different demographics) - why?
I was trying to establish what it takes to have a 65% proficiency rate (San Francisco's target) and I picked Fremont because it's a large district whose proficiency rate sits just above 65%. And the conclusion of the comparison is that, although Fremont's students do score better than their peers in San Francisco, the biggest reason Fremont's proficiency rate is over 65% is precisely because they have very different demographics.
There are no districts that are very similar to San Francisco demographically (I did a post a year or so ago identifying the closest) but, if there were any, they wouldn't be at 65% proficiency.
Thanks for this analysis! My bet is that you would get the same results if you tracked the impact of chronic absences. Kids don't learn if they don't show up. Asians have the lowest rates of chronic absences. Viola! Asians have the highest performance rates.
“Instead, 33% exceeded expectations, 17% met expectations, 17% nearly met expectations, and 33% did not meet expectations.”
How were expectations established? Would exceed be similar to above average.
Expectations was the wrong word. I should have written "standards".
They gathered together panels of educators, parents, and other interested parties. They presented the panelists with lists of test items ordered by difficulty (they knew the difficulty because they had tested them on students and knew how many had answered each question correctly). The panelists "independently reviewed test questions and recommended the level of performance required for students to be considered on-track toward college and career readiness".
That very brief summary is drawn from this technical report:
https://portal.smarterbalanced.org/library/en/2014-15-technical-report.pdf.
If you're curious to learn more, jump to page 5-6 (i.e. the 6th page of chapter 5).