At the Riverside County Office of Education, we serve approximately 430,000 students in 23 districts, providing instructional support and other direct services across all content areas. Over the past few years, our state math assessment data has shown a need for improvement in the way our students learn math. As a state and county, we have strived to demonstrate the hoped-for growth in math in our statewide Smarter Balanced Assessments.
We do not believe that recommending that all of our districts adopt new textbooks or curricula would solve the problem, because we would still be teaching math the same way. Instead, we have chosen to align with evidence-based practices to change our math culture statewide.
In this way, we work in collaboration with our districts to provide a better math learning experience for our students.
Our new focus on mathematics culture aligns with national organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics. Our work also aligns very well with California’s newly revised mathematics framework. Some of the goals of the focus on culture are to increase student access, build positive identity, and develop student agency. These align directly with ideas in Chapters 1 and 2 of the new framework. Our approach to teaching and learning mathematics, based on national reports such as Adding It Up and instructional models such as cognitively guided instruction (CGI), honors and builds on what students bring to the classroom while focusing on a balance of procedural skills, conceptual understanding, and application.
Due to a number of factors, much time in math classes is spent on skills and procedures such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to get answers. In elementary school math, the emphasis continues to be on procedural skills. But instead of drilling these processes into students over and over again, we could spend time helping them understand the math behind the processes by encouraging them to share their thoughts.
We have also observed an interplay between improvements in math culture and equity. When we change people’s hearts and minds, doors open to more equitable access for students because educators realize that there are not weak, mediocre, and strong students. Rather, there are students who have had different opportunities to learn math, and we should listen to them about what they know and how they learn.
Ultimately, this culture shift is about student engagement. If students aren’t participating in a classroom, we can choose to maintain the status quo, or we can help them see the beauty of math and how it connects to their lives and the things they care about.
Much of our work is also based on the Teaching for Robust Understanding framework, the book Street Data by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan, and the Universal Design for Learning framework. These ideas form the foundation for the three main aspects of our ministry: direct contracting with districts, statewide professional development, and the District Math Collaborative.
We bring ideas for reforming mathematics culture into our professional development contract work with districts. Districts turn to us when they want to implement customized professional development efforts to improve mathematics teaching and learning.
The District Math Collaborative began with seven districts in spring 2022 and has grown steadily since then. The collaboration focused on reflecting on teaching and learning systems, their impact on students, and how they can be continually improved.
In addition, we host our Math Week every year. This event is designed to give educators, students, and families the opportunity to experience math in a different way—finding joy in math. We partner with MIND Education to offer many of the games, stories, and experiences in the MathMINDs program. We chose this program because it encourages exploration, problem-solving, and pattern-finding, which are the foundation of the math instruction we want to see in our classrooms. Students and their families enjoy solving problems together, which builds community and reinforces the idea that anyone can be a “math person.”
Feedback from participants has been great. We’ve visited schools to measure implementation and conducted surveys on how students perceive the changes. In classrooms with high implementation, we hear that students are more engaged and that students who were labeled as low-involvement or who struggled with low participation are now speaking and participating in meaningful ways.
One of the schools that took the initiative to partner with us about five years ago – Quail Valley Elementary in the Menifee Union School District – has exceeded state, county and district averages on assessments in the high-implementation grade levels for the past two years. We make sure that all of our districts experience this type of success because an important characteristic of a culture is that it is shared by an entire community.
Our advice to anyone who wants to improve the culture of mathematics: Find people who are enthusiastic about your ideas and support them. Over time, they will motivate others too.
Dennis Regus, Karon Akins, Diana Ceja, and Susan Jagger are the mathematics administrators for the Riverside County Office of Education in California. They wrote this for EdSource.
