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District 21 updates board on first-year rollout of Amplified/Desmos elementary math curriculum
Summary
Director of teaching and learning Carolyn Drove told the board Dec. 11 that the district has completed initial training and classroom support for the new Amplified/Desmos elementary math curriculum, reporting a teacher survey average of 6.8 and identifying language supports and early grades on-ramping as key challenges.
Carolyn Drove, District 21’s director of teaching and learning for math, gave a detailed update Dec. 11 on the first full-year implementation of the Amplified/Desmos elementary math curriculum.
Drove described classroom practices such as daily number talks intended to build number sense and explained that the district ran an extensive summer and fall professional-development program. “We offered altogether about 13 different sessions, grade level specific sessions, in June, July, and August,” she said, and reported that “about 170 teachers” participated in the summer sessions. Staff have also modeled or co-taught roughly “about a 125 lessons” in classrooms, she added, to support teachers during the transition.
The district ran a mid-November teacher survey to collect early feedback. “The overall average score…was 6.8,” Drove told the board, noting that roughly one third of teachers responded to that instrument. She said the highest ratings were for rigor, ease of use and assessment effectiveness; lower ratings appeared for the curriculum’s language supports. “The lowest rating went to how useful they found the language supports,” she said.
Drove highlighted differences by grade band: third through fifth grades reported greater comfort with the curriculum than kindergarten through second grade, which she called a “hotspot” requiring extra supports. To address that, the district is prioritizing half-day grade-level professional-development sessions, continued co-planning and co-teaching, and a concentrated summer work plan to dig into the mathematics of each grade.
Board members and parents asked about measuring outcomes and who is leading PD. Drove said the district is leading PD in-house, delivered by math specialists and language-service specialists, and that robust measures may take up to two years given recent changes in state and benchmark assessments. “I would expect certainly within 2 years…this is our year of kind of getting our benchmark data,” she said.
The presentation also referenced the Illinois draft comprehensive numeracy plan and noted alignment with District 21’s balanced math proficiency framework. Drove recommended continued parent communications — slides for curriculum night and parent-teacher conferences were distributed — and said another update will be provided after the district collects more benchmark data and completes forthcoming PD cycles.
The board took no formal action on the curriculum at the meeting; the presentation was informational and followed by a question-and-answer period.
