see you remembered M I remembered without even my reminder to hit record those F you got to click on okay I didn't realize that okay um welcome to folks who are just signing in in uh we're recording this meeting this is a meeting of the academic Affairs committee um of Community Education Council District 2 we're going to give it another minute or two uh to let people have some time
to sign on thank you all for being here and um let's give it two minutes let some people come in and then we're we're going to start with some introductions I don't know if there's protesters outside of my door
why are there protesters outside of your door it's the gallery next door there I think it's an animal rights thing there was a sign about kangaroo but if it's if you guys don't hear it too much I'll I'll keep myself off mute because I can hear them a lot no we can't hear it I don't hear anything let me see if I have my volume up over way um not quite all right well I don't know it's 6:30 on the dot
maybe we should start I'll do this um let's start Allison and I will introduce ourselves we are the co-founders of this committee and we we founded it with a purpose I will let um Allison talk to about that in a minute but um we we are both elected members of the Community Education Council for district 2 as I'm sure many of you on this call know it covers the schools in our in our school district the elementary and middle schools prek through 8th grade um
and we are uh parent Representatives we're elected by the parents and we are responsive to we don't work for the Department of Education and um we are responsive to letting a few more people in the parents and we are parents ourselves um I have high schoolers and a graduate of um of New York City public schools and a third grader so um I am going to turn it over
to Allison to talk about why we founded this committee and then I'm going to introduce our speakers who I'm very happy to have here Maggie Boyd and Steven sto great thanks M hi I'm Alis and Bowen I'm uh one of the members of C CC for district 2 um serving uh the second year of my first term and I am also a parent of three students in public schools right now from middle school through prek um and like M said the reason
that we formed this committee is to focus on um accelerated and advanced academics that we felt were lacking for a lot of the students in our district at the elementary and middle school level and specifically starting with resolution 252 which some of you may have read is calling for a math path pilot program in our elementary and middle schools to offer more accelerated curriculum to students who are ready for it um one of
the things that we have found as have a lot of parents that have spoken to us is people are going outside of the school system to get Advanced instruction and math when their kids are outperforming what they're getting in their schools and whether that's Russian School of Math it's Kuman it's private tutors it's a lot of money people are paying um in order to get instruction that we feel that they should be getting during the day at school um and it's also a lot of time if you're spending after school doing stuff you should be doing
in school you're either not spending time with your family you're not spending that time on you know other extracurriculars or really anything else you could be doing to grow as a person um during those important formative years and so um personally I would like to see more rigorous instruction in ela and Science in a lot of areas but I think math is a really good one to start with and um perhaps an easier one to tackle in terms of looking at how
to incorporate some programs into our schools thank you um let me first start with introducing Maggie some of you on here may know her um Maggie Boyd is um a retired New York City public school math teacher she taught at lab Middle School she was a department chair and Dean of in in lab middle school and had
one of the um really sought-after and desired math programs in our district um that offered accelerated math instruction and and advanced math instruction for seventh and eighth graders at lab middle and also had a program that you know when we had a different uh screening method had developed program a screening method for lab Middle School in general that um helped to steer students who would be able to Avail themselves of that advanced math program um and I am
going to um Stephen hold tight for us because we're going to get to you in a minute but I want to ask Maggie to um introduce herself talk about the the program in particular at um lab Middle School how it worked and and how it started so Maggie the floor is yours thank you um I was known as Maggie Fado back in in the day when I taught at lab middle school and I have since dropped forat and just kept voy um I am a public school graduate I went to ps61 in which
is now district one um I went to Junior High School 104 and I went to Seward Park High School I also graduated from fonia state which is a State University so I did the whole public route for myself I started out by teaching in Dunkirk New York which is about 30 miles from the PA border and I was teaching fourth grade to well I was teaching fifth grade to start with then I was transferred over to fourth grade and um we started up I felt this was
relevant because of this this discussion today we started a I was teaching in 1973 I transferred to that school and we started a departmentalized program in fourth grade uh I taught the math and the other fourth grade teacher taught the uh reading then she taught the social studies and I taught the science we divvied up the things like health and you know that sort of thing but we were able to do that we did that for about five years and we had it it was wonderful I can't say it enough um
I taught two classes of math and then within the class I was able to break them down into uh different groups of students based on where they were in math and I was able to tackle the math at their level it wasn't fourth grade level that's not what it was and I was more or less at the time because it was in the 70s it was free reign and I was able to do what I wanted to do with these kids and I was the one making
the decisions there was total autonomy on my part uh I could I could just determine and of course I based it on the state tests you know what the curriculum was but it wasn't it wasn't written the way it was now we had all of these uh objectives and that you you covered the material you knew the kinds of questions they'd ask on the test so you made sure you Incorporated those into your lessons as well as a whole lot of other things then I I moved to Youngstown Ohio
where I started teaching middle school and um I then I taught there for 20 years and then I came here and I taught at lab middle school for about 17 a little over 17 years and uh Evans and I developed the uh accelerated program there because we realized very quickly we were the coaches of the math counts team and we felt that it was it was important that these children in addition to coming to math counts got the exactly what um
M and Allison said got the uh instruction that they were capable of accessing during the day it wasn't after school it was during the day and we were very competitive it you know with our material we were able to uh afford them opportunities to compete on things like the Continental Math League the New York Math League the amca math counts they did a lot of different and then at the end of the year purple Comet which
is really a fabulous contest for the kids and it's accessible at many points the questions get harder as you go along um now the one thing I do want to say about that is we used a a in order to get the children into the class we experimented with different ways but we pretty muchly eventually decided on just giving a test we gave a test of like 30 questions in a period for the children to take and we decided on their placement based on that now either they were in accelerated or
they were not there was no other differentiation other than an accelerated class was separate and we went from one class and then we went to two and then um now as I understand it it's back to one they have now used um they use the I ready test they use the Continental Math League and they use the GPA for math uh to determine the um entrance to what they call the honors class in math now and they only have
one honors class but all of the children have to test in with the same criteria and that's different than it used to be when there were two classes there a couple years ago they due to um ratio problems they had to put inclusion children who did not test uh into the class they put them in the class which to me is really a recipe for disaster for those children as well as a recipe for disaster for the rest of
the children as well but um the the I believe my my personal opinion is that and I don't know if and mud stop me if you don't want me to talk about this uh I believe that the teacher need more autonomy and need to be empowered to make the decisions educationally I believe that throwing an IM curriculum out and saying here this is what you're going to do is not meeting the needs of those children and those teachers know better than that book does Magie I'm let me
just say one um I want to say two things one I'm always happy to hear from teachers who have lots of experience in the classroom and can share that experience with parents I think it's a wonderful thing um and I talking about the it's the illustrative math curriculum that's new to our district I also just want to take a moment and welcome District 2 superintendent Kelly Maguire who has joined us I'm appreciative Kelly that you um found time to join us as we have this conversation um Magie there's a whole bunch of follow-ups I have for you to
get back to about the how that program worked but I want to turn to Steve stow and I'm actually Kelly's here um stepen Stow is also like Allison and I a Community Education Council District Parent but he is in Brooklyn in District 20 um and he has been working with the superintendent in his district to address what are the parent needs and the articulated parent needs of how they want to improve um math offerings in that district and so I'd like I thought it would be great for US District
2 parents and folks who are focused on District 2 um to hear from another District that's having um similar conversations and see how they're able to address them so Stephen thank you for joining us and um take it away sure yeah thanks mod and um thank you for having me here and U Allison and um and also superintendent Maguire nice to see you I I know you're friendly with superintendent prto so I'm um I like the full circle of information here um yeah I
mean what started was um W with us was um I don't know how far back to go and I'm also going to give kind of a a shortish summary and then as needed can elaborate but um you know our district some others in the city prior to the pandemic had a number of um screened academic programs um obviously during the Pandemic those those went away and then when Chancellor Banks came in um in the fall of 2022 he reinstate
he he sort of put it back to the superintendence as everyone knows okay you know it can be your decision a district decision to reinstitute screen programs at the Middle School level um in rce you historically District 20 for for many years had had a program called the superintendent program which was a districtwide um academic screened um middle school program um I wasn't part of
the CC then um I wasn't even in the district then um you know I learned a lot about how it worked and it wasn't terribly standardized um and I I you know I know that was a an issue that superintendent prto had with it um is you know you know inconsistency among schools in terms of how they admitted students and what you call a superintendent program should in theory be you know something that the superintendent has put put his or her
stamp of approval on so anyway when when when CH former Chancellor Banks opened up clarifying question just the superintendent program was generally understood by parents and functioned as like an honors program right exactly mod and it was across all the middle schools and you know quite frankly there were three middle schools that everyone wanted to get into and one of them was you know the the the Top Choice and then there were two others that kind of um were were sort of considered on on par
for second place and um so anyway um so anyway Chancellor Banks okay you guys can do this again and you know the city put out the standards for admission 90 and above for grade point average um but otherwise superintendant could decide how they wanted to do it and so we had a a feedback process during the fall our C put out a resolution October of 2022 um requesting you know reinstitution of some kind of districtwide middle school program we had some some detail a good amount of detail in there um we did a
bunch of the feedback sessions at different schools um and sort of long story short we put in place um there was at at the three traditional at the three middle schools that were traditionally the most sought of um superintendent prto allowed them to restart the the screen program okay so that was like the winter 20122 2023 um I was still you know myself and some others um mod you know veto obviously very well you know veto and I
were really sort of pushing for um um a little more um we wanted you know in addition to the um the scope of the program we were really interested in sort of broadening the scope broadening the access and also the criteria for admission we weren't thrilled with just having um it rely on grades solely we think there's a role for testing to play there um and so we we started
talking to superintendent frto about um you know enhancements to the program um with an eye toward the following school year um what happened sort of our process was um we had the resolution okay and everyone here knows about C resolutions they're um they they can be useful um and um but you know by itself it wasn't going to make anything happen and so we
we finally set up a meeting with um with superintendent prto um at the district office and there was four of us four or five of us that went in on a Friday afternoon and probably spent three hours with him and some of his team just really drilling into the details and um I can just I'm just looking at the email summary I sent out after that and I don't want to I don't want to get too deep into the weeds right now but you know we talked about things like how many kids would be you know how many kids would be in
the program the definition of acceleration um the curriculum and how how you choose a curriculum um and how you accelerate curriculum and by the way the point is super valid everything I've read Ma and and others about math being the easiest to accelerate we were talking at that time about accelerating all four core subjects and I can tell you it was a lot more challenging when I was sort of thinking about the other um the the humanity subjects um especially um we talked a lot about
with superintendent about the high school credit that could or could not be obtained from this program um and and um the program was always a ined to include the re taking Regent exam in middle school so we would have this accelerated middle school program culminating in the the Regent exam and so we talked about whether high schools would look at that as sufficient for credit or not um we talked about when kids should
be accelerated what's age appropriate um had a lot of back and forth about that um talked about getting some student input um we talked about the class size uh the class siiz law was already starting to um um sort of rear its ugly head then and so we chatted about how that would affect the ability to broaden access to the program um uh we talked about single subject acceleration versus accelerating a kid in a kid in just
math or or the humanities as well um we talked about whether it's appropriate to mix ages or not kids from pushing pushing in younger kids um and then we walked away from that meeting we had a bunch of next steps and um um and superintendent indicated he was going to reach out to some principles um which which made a lot of sense so then so that was March of 23 um and we we went back and forth
um for a few months um and our C passed another resolution in March of 23 um and um and we also a small group of us wrote up a very detailed proposal it's a 12 page proposal I'm more than happy to share it with anyone and it's got a ton of data behind it um and and it has a curriculum map um sort of showing the proposal for um accelerated programming and we had two tracks we had sort of a track B which is kind of the traditional New York City kids in e8th
grade take algebra one regions and then we had our second track what we call track a or I might have that backwards but um which would be more accelerated which would have kids in seventh grade taking Algebra 1 and kids in e8th grade taking geometry and um so that's where we left it we had that whole proposal Etc went back and forth for a few months um and I'll admit at the time I was getting a little frustrated um and you know superintendent told me he was working on it and there was other things going on at the time there was also the roll out of New York City reads
the literacy curriculum so he was super busy with that he was getting a lot of um at the same time as a group of us were pushing for the math acceleration there was a group in our district pushing for exemp from New York City reads um so there was a lot going on at the time came to around June and we um a couple things happened um and this is sort of where the politics comes in um we we had a petition going from parents and then
we scheduled a uh we sort of notified politicians um and most of the politicians in our district do support this um and we it also just so happened to be an election year um that was two years ago and it was a very big city council election cycle and so when what happened was we had a rally at one of our meetings and we had and this is in the spring right before the primaries and
um this is obviously anyway um and so the meeting suddenly one by one every single candidate was texting or calling me and saying they wanted to be there and make a statement um and so it was really kind of a confluence of these things um and I think that's the reality in CCS we know ccs are political I mean it's a little bit of a local level politics but um ultimately that stuff does kind of play in and so I just encourage anyone that's that's my point now even when I'm talking to people about thinking about running is CCS don't
have hard power but we have the soft power and we have these little meetings and um you know I know that anyway so anyway so 2023 the June I believe it was the June meeting or the May meeting I might be forgetting I think it was the June meeting had the meeting a bunch of people spoke in support of it um and I think it had an impact with with superintendent I think um you know it's a matter of trying to get the priority get it first thing on his plate as opposed to third or fourth
thing I think is my impression um and then shortly thereafter at that I can't remember when exactly um you know he he put out a proposal for Accelerated learning structure in for middle schools in district 20 kind of an expanded version um from what was initially put in place um at every every Middle School um it would be based on and I have it right here and I'm also happy to share it because at this point it's um it's our policy um you know it
would be standards based that was always something that that superintendent really felt strongly about would be aligned to the nextg learning standards um aligned curriculum in four core content areas curriculum the use of curriculum compacting in the four core subjects um he he he has some um additional add-ons for his his program he he likes foreign language dual language interdisciplinary Project based learning um steam projects at the time we had a math Olympiad and
a Science Olympiad going on and um um and then for the and and so for the admissions screened admissions criteria above grade level in reading and math um he put out some projected numbers which is something we had talked a lot about um and he laid out the programming pathway um and I'm just looking this over see if there's any highlights here um and Stephen may I ask you in general this is something that did the parents who had supported the C
request and who had helped to bring in the political support um I don't want to ask the most ridiculously leading question but were the parents generally happy with how yeah this way no absolutely I mean you know the the you know in addition to people just telling you um you know thank you for doing this you you just have to look at the numbers in the district I mean the admissions numbers you know our our weight lists for the for the three schools when we just had the three schools it was like six 700
800 person weit lists um and um and and by the way we're still waiting this is one of my things for superintendent I've asked him a couple times and I I I want the numbers for this new program um because you know I think it's really cool that we try to do it at all of our middle schools but I am worried that you know how parents are they you know there's certain schools that parents love and it's the only one that they want to do so anyway we're still waiting on the raw data the numbers of students who applied one other thing he did that I really appreciated was he put
in place a accelerated programming for all four um courses and then a separate one for just algebra um because we have a lot of students in our district who are very strong math um but are English language Learners and so um that was I thought a really really good addition to have so anyway yeah so here we are I think that's the end of the story and kind of how it came to be maybe that's a good place to stop yeah thank you very much and I actually think that the color of the politics that come into it is
super important I want to um and and by the way for the parents who areen here I'm going to go back to Maggie for a moment but then I also like to open it up to some questions um and inform you know if parents have um specific questions and we're going to focus on District 2 because this is a district 2 meeting um but uh Maggie I wanted to say to you one two things and Elison you can chime in here is that um focusing on the middle school stuff as Stephen did
is obviously super important and I will just say I'll give the parent perspective of having three kids who have gone through Elementary and Middle School in District 2 is that depending on what high school you go to you know parents when you're when your kids's in fourth grade and you're worrying about this you know the back when it used to be worrying about your state test in fourth grade so they could apply into Middle School you're not really thinking about 10th and 11th grade math but of course math is this sequential progression such that where your kid
winds up in eth grade impacts greatly what their high school math journey and experience is going to be because if you're in a large school like one of the specialized high schools that many district 2 kids go to um kids test into those schools to test into those math classes at very different levels starting in nth grade and if your kid has just gone through the standard District 2 course you'll be at sort of that lowest level of math class and you won't be able to access you don't have enough years to get to the higher level math classes that are offered you have
to start um further down that math path in order to get there and for kids that are interested in applying to engineering schools for college or kids that are interested interested in really applying aggressively to stem programs you're starting behind the eightball in high school if you haven't had the ability to supplement your math instruction in K through 8 outside of our district 2 schools as they currently exist so that's the sort of looking down the future problem I want to back up
now and go to elementary school because a lot of parents I certainly that I've talked to would like to see some acceleration opportunities in elementary school and when I talk to my own principle and some of the principles I've worked with over the years they use this word departmentalize and I wanted to ask Maggie to explain what that is and I'm trying Kelly I'm hopefully not giving you a heart attack but I'm going to ask Maggie to uh talk about departmentalizing uh instruction in
elementary school and superintendent Maguire if you have anything at any time that you want to interrupt or correct me on please do so please feel free to do so I can only tell you what was in my experience I cannot tell you what happens in the elementary schools here because I have not taught in them uh departmentalization for us was we took the other teacher in fourth grade took social studies and reading I took the science and the math and I taught two classes a day of social study or
of Science and Math and she taught two classes of social studies and reading that enabled us within our our groups to break the kids down further so I had three math groups in each each class I had a total of six Math groups and there was a for lack of a better term high medium and low you can call them the song birds or whatever you want but that's what they really were and they were in the classrooms together and I would give them independent work to do while then I would work with one group and
then I would I would make sure I hit one group or all three groups once during each Peri each session it wasn't a period because it wasn't 45 minutes we had more like uh I would say it was probably an hour to an hour and five minutes and I would break it down and I would give them assignments to do and I worked uh when I took the lower kids I generally took them in the middle because I knew they had a shorter attention span and I knew they needed me in the middle of the
two times when they were going to be working on their own uh when I took the accelerated a lot of times I would end with them because I knew they were self-starters in many cases and they could work independently on work until I got to them so and I also varied the lessons um I I used different approaches I had um board games and stuff set up for the the lower Learners whereas I might use a transparency in an interesting way but a transparency for the Upper Grade kids or the upper level
kids I varied my Approach as well as the material was completely different they were all on completely different topics and it didn't matter and my friend metime was is doing the same thing in her subjects sorry M no no no that's perfect and it's super helpful and that's obviously we have various you know the Class siiz Matter law has passed and there are different schools approaching it in different ways but one of the things for elementary students and Kelly again and I'll make the same invitation Maggie did you can weigh in here
if you want is in most of our schools I think not all of them but in most of them in elementary school your kids have the Sayer in third or fourth grade your kids have the same teacher in the classroom for all their cour subjects sometimes it's a different for science but the same teacher is teaching them to read doing their reading and writing their math um and sort of their you know Core Curriculum if you will subjects in order to have an accelerated math program or an honors math program in third fourth or fifth grade we
we you'd have to either design you know divvy up the class the entire class by that grouping or have the kids switch have a kids that go to a different section for math where you might be mixed in with kids from other class you know in different Home Room classes so that's a choice that would have to be made and that's one of the things that Allison and I when we spoke with superintendent Maguire and Deputy uh
superintendent Shannon at the start of last year we talked about doing a pilot program and it's one of the things you'd have to do and as Allison mentioned earlier math is one of those areas where it's more straightforward to test you have kids who are struggling with grade level material and kids who have fully mastered grade level material and it's not that hard and it's not that expensive and it's not that time consuming to do that test as Maggie mentioned they did a 30 question test for sixth graders to figure out who was going to be in their accelerated seventh
grade class so many of the other reasons that you wouldn't be able to that it's harder to test for other subjects uh it's easier to test in math so it would that why we were very keen to explore the idea of a pilot program um because we could start it earlier and then um and to that point by the way some that's why some folks have felt frustrated that kids who have been in a g&t program up till fifth grade are better at testing into the limited number of accelerated programs
we have like the one class that now exists at lab Middle School um because they've been exposed to more material um M let me jump in here for a sec because I think something you you hit on right there about starting this in fourth and fifth grade is really important um because at that point we see a real differentiation in the students and the student abilities and the other thing it allows because I I've talked to people about this who've been kind of critical about separating kids or differentiating them by ability and I think that by exposing them earlier you give
more on and off ramps to a program like this and that's what I think is really important so you're not you know using the old term definition of track in kids you're giving them the opportunity and then seeing how they do at it if it's not right for them they can go back with one of the b or c groups or whatever you were calling them them Maggie and other kids who are doing really well that have an onramp whether it's in the middle of the year or in the next year so you haven't um you
haven't destined people for One path or another by waiting until later and it's much harder to get people on and off well if I can just add to that there was one year which uh there was uh the fourth grade was only one class so there was just going to be one teacher so I that year I taught third fourth and fifth grade math to at a time I didn't teach all of them but I had like three and I'll never forget it I had three fifth graders that
I had had the previous year who were struggling they were struggling really really struggling and then I had um the fourth graders and I had some third graders who were very very bright in the room and we all had the same type of situation where I would work with the three fifth graders and I would work and some of the third graders were in the fourth grade group and some of the fourth graders were in the third grade group now the fifth graders were they were lower than the other two groups so they had to be but they learned at
their level and they learned I would say probably they learned a lot more than they would have learned sitting just in a regular fifth grade curriculum that they couldn't actually the material for because they did not know of they didn't have a good enough Foundation it just took longer for them great great Point Maggie because I don't think we've said that enough on this call is that this def differentiation benefits kids at all levels because they're learning the material at at their speed and at their ability yes now
I my friend and I chose to do this because I love the math and she loved the reading so and she loved the social studies so it worked out very well for us but in order for this to do well you have to have someone who wants to teach math who is excited and and and enthusiastic about you can't just say oh Miss Miss Smith is gonna teach math because Miss Smith might not like math a lot of ele I I hate to say this but it's true a lot of elementary school teachers do not like math they don't know where it
goes you have to be able to teach the subject and you have to know where it's going so you know the pitfalls and what you shouldn't say and and you're thinking ahead you might not be teaching ahead for certain things but you're thinking ahead you know the importance of certain things and teachers who know math and enjoy meth know that automatically um I think that's a point well taken and I'm gonna uh Kelly you have something you want to add sure
and um thanks so much for uh having me for let me share a couple of things um we do have some family over tonight so I'll just share a comment and then I'll go back to the recording make sure to listen into the rest of it um so you know we're actually in a few of our elementary schools we are um beginning to talk about some uh departmentalization um and enabling teachers to specialize in math that's happening in a few different places and it's one of those um local decisions that's really going to have to be
made by both the principal and the school leadership team um so there are different opportunities that open up in that way um and and you know I do want to just add and I appreciated hearing I talked with uh superintendent Dave prto and District 20 a bunch um over the past couple of years as we've been working through this um uh issue about Middle School admissions and so really appreciated hearing U Mr stow's um uh story
of how a lot of the decisions were made um I can relate to a lot of those um and um definitely relate to the pathway of algebra in 8th grade um you know in each of our middle schools we have Pathways to algebra um in uh lab middle school and sulk Middle School in our four zoned schools there are screened programs in which kids can
complete uh algebra in 8th grade and they will then be on the pathway to taking calculus before they finish High School um I uh think that there is like a bit of a challenge just from talking with some principles of smaller high schools um when kids come in with different math backgrounds and they're trying to program and accommodate everybody's um history that they've had uh course history that they've had in middle school that does make it uh a little tricky in some of the smaller middle
uh high schools um but um that is something that we wanted to commit to was to putting kids on this Pathway to accelerated math we started in sixth grade um we make sure that um those kids who are ready for six go to seven go to eight um and you know we're continuing to work on it we've only been in return to the accelerated programs um in these
Zone schools for um a couple of cycles and um lab Middle School never uh change from uh the honors programs that they're having so we're continuing to look at that continuing to support elementary schools with their local decisions that they're making around programming and um yeah I just thanks again for giving me a chance to share I did want to make sure that people were aware of some of the things that were going on with accelerated academics um because it has changed
so much from uh uh prior to the pandemic through the pandemic so um just wanted to make sure to share that Kelly thank you very much I appreciate it I have just a question coming in from a parent asking about um specifically about elementary school that there's already that a lot of parents feel like there's a big differentiation having like a third a kid in third grade or fourth grade or fifth grade who is really already mastered the material that's being
taught throughout the entirety of the year and the sort of deep frustration that comes from having a board kid in class um and I'll say that as Stephen mentioned that there's long wait lists at um the desired school middle schools in his district there's also weight lists at program that programs that cost thousands and thousands of dollars like there's weight list to get into Russian School of Math programs for second graders you know so there are people who are really looking for more than they're getting or that they just perceive a need
right like if you want your kid to be a great uh you know fencer you're going to have to go do that outside of public school you're not going to get but for math instruction you should be able to get math instruction that teaches your kids something they don't know some at some point throughout the course of the year so I know Kelly I'm putting you on the spot because you weren't you know you're you're coming here and I appreciate it but can you just address whether or not that departmentalization and differentiation would be possible in
elementary schools in our district so yes we're looking at some schools and some schools that a lot of these decisions I think are going to be need to need to be made locally at the elementary school level with the principal and the school leadership team um and then when kids you know leave Elementary School uh and if they participate in the accelerated um illustrative math curriculum you know we are taking eighth grade standards and
content and spreading it to sixth and seventh grade so that they are ready for a full elgebaly in schools that are beginning to look at some of that and and consider that um can I just say something there superintendent McGuire there I'm not sure how I feel about the accelerated program and the IM program and it's simply because those children that come into sixth grade who are put in
an accelerated IM program never get sixth grade math and all of some of those children need sixth grade math and they're putting and and I don't understand how somebody can arbitrarily skip a grade in math that doesn't make any sense to me at all and many children are not ready for that yes and we're not doing accelerated uh math for all kids in sixth grade um but thank you again and I'll make sure to listen in on the recording and um I know we'll continue to have this conversation so thanks everybody
thank you Kelly um what I do want to do is um if any if folks can raise their hand if they want to ask a question I can't it's very hard for me to listen to people and read the chat at the same time so if there are um so pardon me if you've put the question in there but if anybody wanted to ask Stephen or Maggie or Allison or myself a question or offer an idea happy to hear from people I know it's dinner hour so people might have um kids in the background Stephen do you want to add can I just make a comment yeah
and there's there's a question in the chat and I think this is kind of where the this is kind of where the issue is is at now it's certainly where where um it's about a pathway to Algebra 1 in seventh grade and I I'm I'm not going to speak for district 2 I but I believe based on what I know and from what superintendent Maguire was saying that there currently isn't and there's also currently not in District 20 and and that's sort of the next that's the current discussion we're having with superintendent prto in in
two two days um we have another resolution on getting a pathway for geometry in 8th grade and we've started having conversations with him and I understand that that's sort of a more challenging um ask than than um than algebra in in 8th grade um but we at least wanted to have the conversation we know that there's a handful of schools around the city that do offer geometry regents in eth grade um and so we just wanted to open up
a conversation and sort of talk about the the pros and cons of that and and what that would look like um in terms of curriculum and I sketched something out back you know a couple years ago when I did that that proposal and you you know you you'd basically have to have um in in grade six um you know half of half of you know an intro to sort of um you know algebra and sort of half of pre-algebra and then You' have to finish things up
in grade seven and then do all of algebra one and grade seven to get to Geometry a full geometry course in grade8 so um anyway I think that that in you maybe you guys can confirm if there's a pathway to Geometry yet in District 2 but I'm that's currently what I'm working on here I don't know of any um cor we were talking about it when I was still at lab middle school and in order to do that you really have to have somebody who
is accelerating in fourth and fifth grade you can't really get all of that information in properly in grades just six seven and eight and if you're going to have somebody take the algebra uh one region in seventh grade you have to get some type of special permission for that you can't just give the region and the region it's see using the region isn't a good uh what do I want to say marker anyway because you want the full course I
mean you could probably teach a lot of kids to pass that regions because all you need is 35 points like 13 or 14 multiple choice questions right to pass the test but that's not the goal the goal is to learn math to enjoy math to like math we have a lot of kids that don't like math and that's unfortunate it shouldn't be that way we should be presenting uh curricula that feeds into the
interests of kids and to me projects are the way to go I mean and I'm not opposed to testing at all so I don't want you to think that but I tried to have projects in every single uh unit I had a a an election project for ratio and proportion which was really uh an incredible project and it taught the kids a lot um I had different projects that I used and to me it's the glue that that kind of cements the learning
of that whatever the concepts and skills were together because they're using it they're applying it in a real world situation I had Olympic activities that I did with the kids uh and had them figure out you know what the miles per hour was and all that sort of thing based on real data and none of that is being done right now Magie can I ask you two follow-ups to what you just said absolutely do you think number one is uh do you think it's it's feasible to take the algebra
regions and the geometry regions both in 8th grade and how comparable are the and we've had discussions about this so that's I'm i' love to get your view on it but how comparable Regents and the state tests how comparable are those two the information um tested on the Regions exam versus the state math exam not no no the the state test only goes through eighth grade meth um that's not that doesn't include algebra it doesn't
include the course algebra it includes solving equations it includes writing equations you know writing Expressions um evaluating includes all of that but it's not a region exam it's not limited to only region questions it's not limited to only algebra how do I feel about seventh and eighth grade it's funny you said that Steve because um I was going to say to superintendent Maguire that um there's another point at which children can catch up if they want
to uh uh if they're interested in taking calculus in in high school and they feel like they missed the boat in middle school they screwed around maybe they played off around maybe they were or whatever and they can double up after algebra 1 in ninth grade they can double up and they can take geometry and algebra two in the same year and that will afford them the time taken in senior year to take calculus when I was at I I taught it Li high school for about five years too and that's what we
would do we would take the kids who really did well in algebra and wanted it okay you take the algebra 2 and geometry and they did it and it was successful I don't know how I feel about taking the seventh and eighth grade I don't know that would be a lot to do you know what I mean because it's two completely different topics they're not related at all yeah sure I mean the kid would have geometry class and then the kid would have algebra class like right yeah it would totally I agree with
that but then where would they get the time to do that too because then you're talking about two 45 minute periods and and you know you don't want to short shrift it that's the thing I wor about when people talk about acceleration I still want the curriculum to be a rich curriculum I want them to have time to explore and discover I don't want it just to be wrote here's the formula do it here's the formula do it that's boring and bright kids don't like that yeah and and to be clear you know
this is not you know what I'm when we're talking here about geometry in 8th grade this is definitely a a very small slice of kids and um presumably you know one of the things in our proposal is teacher you know teacher recommendations you know parents sort of consent to this given the the rigor that it would involved but we do think that in our district there's there are kids who this is the appropriate educational path for them and one thing I wanted to I was
just curious to ask you about is um you know for some kids calculus in high school might not be the end right like for some kids they could take calculus junior year questions and exactly and so that was that was a little bit that's a little bit part of The Proposal as well that's some of the thinking there well that again would be for a very very small category of students you know it would wouldn't be for everybody right I have two hands up so I'm going to go to the questions but I want to say that's one of the points that I don't
want to get us off onto the high school tangent but that um in order to we have high schools in our district or Citywide high schools like the specialized high schools and some others that offer math instruction Beyond calculus but the only way to get there is to pay for instruction or to have a parent you know with more math knowledge than me who can help you get to through material um to get to the the post Calculus class instructions in high school we have kids
taking you know calculus in junior year in lots of different schools throughout the city um but they didn't get there by relying on public school education they had to get math and instruction from outside of school to get it and for me the equities there just don't line up and aren't don't seem fair we should have paths way Pathways to get to the highest level of math offered in public school that you can reach while in public school I'm going to go to Liz and Cynthia next Liz do I have to ask you
to unmute there you go Liz go ahead hi uh I'm Liz storm I'm uh a member of the SLT at lab and I also teach in the math Club at ps11 and I you uh you you stated a lot of the points I wanted to say m um I think that uh to me uh uh Maggie's uh statement
about kids having to double up that is happening at high schools across the city and I I I don't think it's a it's a point to push aside to think about high school when we're talking about elementary school math I I just don't understand why a a a student who is capable um we are we're throttling them at the elementary school and middle
school levels and then asking them to step up and double or to to double and in coursework and to double at their level in high school that doesn't make any sense to me at all I I uh I I I really think that there's there's a way to approach it holistically where we could start and I love
the idea that we could take it as a district even as a city to uh to help kids uh to help kids move a little quicker and I don't think that it's something that needs to be um said like oh only certain kids can handle this I think a lot of kids can handle this I think we're underestimating what our students can learn and
the only way that I I think it's yesterday's um yesterday's um approach to say that algebra one in eth grade is accelerated um kids who who want to go on to stem careers science careers computer science Finance whatever they want to do they're not going to be able to do that if they're taking Algebra 1 in 8th grade
and New York City is not helping children of today if they are uh if if they if we still keep thinking that Algebra 1 in 8th grade is is the accelerated way way to go um so I I hope that together we can all solve this problem because Liz thank you so much and I'm gonna very distressing Liz you have thank you so much and thank you for speaking and bringing your perspective and what what Allison and I
started at the beginning of this term was an effort to get this pilot program our C term um had some distractions throughout the year but we are two women um who are can keep the eyes on the process of getting math pilot programs can start in third grade and that's what we've been trying to focus on um underscoring everything you've just said I just I'm going to go to Cynthia in a second but I want to say they did this exactly in San Francisco they took away algebra from all eth graders and then
you had to double up on algebra and geometry in middle school and it hurt all kids math performance but it particularly hurt minority students and because the reason of taking algebra out of eighth grade was offered with an equity rationale um if that if you're really trying to help a certain group of students and you see that your proposed solution actually it hurts all kids and it's bad for that reason but it particularly hurt the kids that they were supposedly trying to help in San Francisco um I think it's time to go back to the drawing board and we can
learn from you know what didn't work in San Francisco and and and I think feel very strongly that we should start that differentiation in elementary school for the very reasons you're saying because it impacts what kids wind up studying in high school and just there's no point in wasting hours of of the day of kids being taught material that they already know so Cynthia I'm going to I don't you're unmuted awesome hi um so apologies for the screen I have security
measures on my work computer and we don't allow Zoom so I would like to say I currently have a second grader and I'm becoming aware of the fact that algebra isn't offered in seventh grade that was not something I was aware of I mean I don't want to exactly say how old I am but I am north of 40 and when I was a kid algebra was already starting to be offered in seventh and eth grade so I'm a little bit shocked that there isn't an easy pathway for the majority of the
kids who are capable to be taking algebra by 7th grade and we already see it the reality is is that different kids have the ability to learn math at certain points and they're ready for the more advanced math and by limiting them they become bored they become a problem for the class the other kids they maybe don't want to speak up as much because there are always kids that know the answers I
think it's to everyone's best interest to be able to I guess you guys called it departmentalize but to be able to give kids that more individualized attention that is required because math is just one of those things that very easily kind of falls into having different capabilities at different times and like you guys said you do it earlier you do it in like fourth or fifth gr you know you do it by fourth grade you allow kids to start moving around
for maybe one class a day or two classes a day and when they get to Middle School the fact that they move around every period is something that they're more used to so it actually kind of gets them ready to Middle School in that sort of way It prepares them for that and if a kid isn't ready for advanced math more advanced math in fourth grade they can wait a while it's not the end of the world everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and a lot of kids
have very mathematical brains and I noticed Stephen one of the things you brought up which I thought was really important is that a lot of the kids that are really strong in math maybe don't have the best Ela and that's why you were able you know to offer a specific regiment for kids that were able to accelerate in just that one program and I think that's fantastic I I really feel like it would be to a lot of kids benefit to try this earlier than waiting until sixth or seventh grade to really differentiate to
any degree and the idea that there wouldn't be algebra by seventh grade I'm just sort of floored because if you look at the suburbs or you look at the private schools they're all doing algebra by seventh grade so if we want public education to be able to compete on a Level Playing Field for everyone we need to offer these within the school within the school day because like ma mentioned the waiting lists for Russian math and math nesium and all Kuman
and all this stuff is outrageous and that's for the parents afford to pay these outrageous fees and the kids that have the stamina after you know a long day at school to continue doing more math and I think it's a real disservice to everyone and I really hope that you know we at least try it at a couple schools see how it works get the feedback from the teachers get the oh thank you thank you for saying that cnia because it reminds me before folks sign off because we're getting 7:30 I haven't asked sorry to jump
in Cynthia but I have ask of the parents that are here I'm not sure how many people are D2 or not but I want to go to Stephen and then I'm going to do my ask okay I just want to say you know I hope that we can pilot it get feedback from the students get feedback from the parents get feedback from Administration get feedback from the teachers and you know adjust as necessary things don't have to be perfect when you first pilot it that's exactly what we want to do but Stephen you go super quick can I share my screen mod I just one really interesting hold on one second um in
the process of writing our latest resolution for geometry this is a Rand Rand Corporation did a study um about mathematics Nationwide and you can see here percentage of principles in schools serving grades 6 through eight reporting each course offered in their school geometry Nationwide 24% of principles offer it only 6% in New York
state reported offering geometry you can see in Florida it's widely available um so anyway I just thought that was a really interesting data point um to compare and just to um again put it in context this is this is it's not unheard of it's it's it's quite common across the country and perhaps it's something that New York State could Implement more widely and one of the things that we that the conversation we had in the last academic Affairs meeting is that actually dividing
kids into the groups and giving the specialized instruction as Maggie was talking about having done um actually helps all of the kids rise faster the kid kids who it's the kids in all the different levels do better which is some of the research that um the the professor that we had speak at our last meeting was talking about so not only are there other states offering it more the kids across the the kids that are taking it and the kids aren't who are taking it stand to benefit from math that is meeting them sort of where they
are to use the to that particular lingo um what I wanted to say is this and Alison then I want you to jump into is um I love the fact actually Stephen I kind of for I remember that you did that by having all the all the politicians who wanted people's votes and they knew the parents really wanted these accelerated programs and the politician showed up and Stephen was out there with his homemade signs and I love it like it's just something that makes my heart happy but um I'd love to skip that step I'd love to skip that step here in
New York um I'm perfectly happy to stand outside of buildings with signs and and rally for things but what I'd really like to do is get because I think Allison and I been meeting for two years with Kelly Maguire and and started meeting with him two years ago I mean we only met a handful of times but we're we're getting closer but without parent pressure this won't happen it will it takes some parent pressure to make it happen and what I'd love to do is put together a meeting I would love Cynthia and Liz who spoke up to join us and
to get some other parents who want to um you know to advocate for this to um meet with Kell McGuire and I was ideally thinking it'd be great to have some representatives from different schools so you could come from lab or or from you know whatever School uh you know and ideally that would mean maybe having a conversation with your principal at your school and saying I'm I'm curious about this Keen to participate want to see if this is something you'd be interested in because I do understand Kelly's point that
prin you you need a principal who's interested um but I know there are some principles who are open to the idea um and I've had some conversations with some so I think that we um you know had some conversations with the administration so I think that we um I'd like to go a step further than what you said about just having a few parents we have 50 middle schools and elementary schools in our district and I think what ideally we'd like to see is to have a math liaison at each school
and you may or may not be actively involved or say you have the time to meet with Kelly or or Kell um one of the assistant superintendents but you say I really care about this in my school and I want to show that you know heex lip or Spruce Street it can tell a downtown mom here is really on board with this project so even if you're feeling like I don't have much time to do this I've got you know however many kids and a job and whatever even if you want to be involved and just say I'll be a liaison to our
school um we'd love it if you stepped up that's yes that is I underscore everything Maggie um okay uh I I wanted to say I I'm reading the chat I didn't catch everything because it went was going by so fast but I want to emphasize the idea that accelerated isn't harder and faster it's also deeper and broader okay you can cover I mean we had a whole
separate curriculum uh of a curriculum guide that showed topics that we wanted to go into great depth on that were never really really covered anywhere else and we did that intentionally now an an example of harder and faster I guess would be we put uh learning of integers in sixth grade we did that years ago because we knew that the algebra was going to be in eighth grade and they needed that extra year of that information they needed to work on adding subtracting multiplying dividing
integers and that was all put into sixth grade uh in spite of the fact that it isn't on the state test and all that um and so we we did we did develop our curriculum with an idea of breadth and in terms of the uh algebra we had and they still have an accelerated algebra class in um at lab middle school and that was in addition to just everybody taking algebra regardless of you
know your math ability we had the accelerated class where they went into a lot more detail they covered far more than what was on the regions which I can consider I mean that's really a skeleton of what the course should be and there were uh there were several books that I would recommend the uh art of problem solving book prealgebra is an excellent reference material for kids and that can be used as a textbook I know at lab Middle School they have a whole set of those books because I saw to it that they were purchased and they also have
uh art of problem solving algebra and it goes all the way through they have geometry and so on and so forth and the Art of problem solving company puts out something called Beast Academy for elementary school which believe it or not and I am familiar with this to some degree uh they introduce adding and subtracting of integers in fourth grade and they do it in a way that can be done it's all about accessing the material and how you approach it it's not about uh the degree of difficulty of it
because I wanted to address that based on what the people in the chat room said because I don't just want it harder and faster that's not my goal at all thank you I thank you Maggie for taking a look at that I'm gonna I'm going to wrap it up but I want to say two things there's some discussion I I haven't seen all of it so if I haven't got into some comments in the chat I apologize but in terms of gauging interest I'll say this I like I said I have a child who's graduated this school system I've was on my community board schools and education committee for five years I this is my
third term of serving on the CC so I have a kind of good perspective of our district and some of the involvement and the thing that has turned out our parents the most both at in-person meetings back in 2018 and 2019 when they were going to get rid of the specialized high schools and more recently in this term when parents are um sending us hundreds and hundreds of emails it's really always about um academic issues that's where we get we have you know people turning up at our meetings for non-academic issues but the thing that turns
up parents the most and the things that activates our parent body is almost always the demand for better and stronger academics um and and academic issues you know it can be around screening and admissions methods but academic improving the academics is something that we hear from with parents all the time um and it judging by particularly like the number of emails that will come in when there's an issue that is being voted on pep or that is a resolution that we have on our calendar
um it's an academic issue that goes forth we are going what we will do is for everybody that was here I'm going to Allison and I can send send around a sort of signup sheet to move towards a liaison model um and if we can um you know get that going that would be fantastic and we can have we can you know create some some communication methods to to to put on the pressure that we need to put on I think to nudge in a direction that they might be
somewhat willing to go in this isn't an uphill battle where we're trying to convince them to do something that they're completely opposed to that's very hard this is something where they've indicated a lot of interest or a lot of willingness to discuss it but it's not happening unless it gets that parent push is what my my experience tells me um I just want to say huge thank you to Maggie and Stephen for sharing your time with us I think it's super helpful um to hear from different districts and to hear from a teacher perspective um and I'm really grateful for
you guys for being here to do that Allison do you want to um wrap us up yes I will I will thank you um as well on behalf of all of our C and I will also say to the people who are on this call this isn't the only academic issue that we're focused on and to the extent there are other things that you want to talk about that you might like to have speakers on or that you might like to raise um to mod to myself and to the rest of the CC reach out anytime this is why we're here this is why we
ran and this is why we're on the council yes and thank you I saw Rhonda just said we don't have a signning sheet here but I have everyone's email who registered for the C so we are going to send information and we can send a link to this uh meeting to everybody who signed in uh with the email that they signed in on so thank you all for coming um and if you have to go feed your kids as I do I hope it's painless and enjoyable um okay thank you everybody bye- bye