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CFBISD board reviews third- and fifth-grade math progress; staff cites gains for emergent bilinguals and gaps in numerical fluency
Summary
District staff told the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD board that while emergent bilingual groups showed gains this year, several district-wide measures fell short of targets; the district will lean on coaching, a pending curriculum adoption, and adaptive tools to improve numerical fluency and teacher supports.
The Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD board on April 9 reviewed third- and fifth-grade math growth progress measures and heard that the district met some subgroup targets but remains off track on several overall performance measures.
Chris Julian, executive director of assessment and accountability, told trustees the district’s first goal is to raise the percentage of third graders scoring at grade level on STAR from 49% to 65% by June 2030; the board uses a set of interim growth progress measures (GPMs) to monitor that trajectory. Julian also explained testing context: the 2025 NWEA MAP re-norming introduced an algorithm that limits adaptive item progression to the grade level and the district’s spring District Common Formative Assessments (DCFAs) align performance levels to STAR.
Why it matters: the MAP and DCFA results guide where the district assigns coaching and interventions. Julian said one emergent bilingual measure moved from 21% to 25% (meeting an internal 25% target), while other cohort or whole-population measures either improved slightly or remained flat, leaving some GPMs categorized as “off track.”
Toued Hune, executive director of multilingual and academic programs, outlined bright spots and areas for growth. He said emergent bilingual students showed consistent growth (MAP +2%, DCFA +4%), 90% of third-grade campuses were in high-growth fall-to-winter MAP quadrants, and reporting category 1 (number sense) improved by 3%. At the same time, Hune flagged a 9% decrease in the reporting category tied to problem solving and operations and noted the district has a high share of early-career teachers—about 41% of third-grade teachers and 42% of fifth-grade teachers have less than two years’ experience—which affects instructional consistency.
Board members pressed staff on causes and responses. Trustee Kim Brady asked whether the new math curriculum adoption would address the gaps; Julian and Hune said vendor materials include supports for academic language, explicit teaching and visual scaffolds, but cautioned that curriculum alone is not sufficient without aligned professional development and monitoring of on‑the‑ground implementation. "You can have great curriculum, but it still comes down to what the student action is in class," one presenter said.
Trustees and staff discussed cohort effects and assessment modality as drivers of year-to-year differences. Staff noted that MAP administration changes (younger students receive more oral support) and different cohorts can make direct year-to-year percentage comparisons misleading; fine‑grain cohort analysis, they said, shows many students do make year-over-year growth.
On interventions, staff described several strategies: targeted coaching cycles, Professional Learning Communities, lesson internalization practices, strengthened academic language supports (vocabulary visuals, sentence stems, structured turn-and-talk), and adaptive platforms. The district recently purchased a program referred to in the presentation as "magma math" and uses Moby Max for foundational fluency; staff said platform data will be used to encourage more consistent campus usage.
Trustees asked how coaching effectiveness is measured. Staff said they use classroom walkthrough observations, coach feedback, in-the-moment coaching records, coach goal setting and evidence from walkthroughs with administrators to monitor coach impact.
What the board decided or will do next: trustees praised the math and multilingual teams and encouraged staff to translate evidence of instructional gains into legislative and public‑facing narratives to support funding requests. Staff said they will continue disaggregating data to target campuses and subgroups for additional coaching and will track implementation fidelity for curriculum and interventions.
The presentation closed with trustees noting the need for ongoing monitoring: staff will return with progress updates and continue to deploy coaching and PD to address numerical fluency and lesson-level discourse.
