West Bend schools recommend Illustrative Math for grades 6–12; board to vote at next meeting

The West Bend Joint School District No. 1 curriculum team recommended adopting Illustrative Math as the primary math resource for grades 6–12 and proposed bringing the recommendation to the board for action at the district’s next regular meeting.

The district’s curriculum coordinator, Kelly Downs, told the board the team spent nearly a year vetting materials, conducting site visits and scoring candidates with an educator-developed rubric. “Once we had those rubrics, we then were tasked to take a look at a lot of curriculum,” Downs said. The recommended resource would use two different publishers (Imagine Learning for middle school and Kendall Hunt for high school) while keeping course content and pacing aligned across grade bands.

District staff described the evaluation process as multi-step: the team limited candidates to publishers that “met expectations” on EdReports, whittled options through rubric scoring and observed live implementations in other districts. Downs said the district eliminated the current resource, CPM, because it no longer met the team’s expectations for alignment to Wisconsin standards and to updated instructional models.

The presenters emphasized the implementation plan: four days of initial training in August, three release days per grade level during the year for planning, three personalized coaching sessions with external math coaches, embedded instructional coaching from Kurt Marquardt, and PLC leadership training. “All of these pieces are very critical,” Downs said. The district said it expects to place orders after board approval so teachers can access materials and professional development over the summer.

Budget figures presented were preliminary. Staff said the final purchase order and PD costs will be negotiated with the vendor and the district’s budget office; they described the numbers shown as initial estimates rather than final contract amounts. The administration asked the board to place the recommendation on a future agenda as an action item so the district could move forward with purchasing and summer training if approved.

The board asked about the decision to use two different publishers; Downs and other math staff explained that the middle-school team preferred Imagine Learning’s digital platform and teacher supports while the high-school team favored Kendall Hunt’s approach to complex equations. Both teams said the core Illustrative Math curriculum is the same across vendors.

If approved at a future meeting, staff said they would track student outcomes with STAR, PreACT/ACT and formative assessments and build dashboards for progress monitoring.

The board did not vote on adoption at the May 12 meeting; the presentation concluded with the administration requesting to bring the item back as an action item at the next meeting.