Brian Lerer on WNYC, now WNYC's education reporter Jessica Gould, who's been doing some really

interesting stories lately, like on backlash over a new way of teaching math and why Trump's mass deportation

plan is now an obstacle to one of Governor Hokel's education priorities in New York State,

the in-school cell phone ban. Just thanks for what you do every day and welcome back to the show.

Thanks for having me. So for people who haven't heard of

this newest version of new math called illustrative math, how does it differ from conventional math?

So I think it's about the sequence and the balance. So this way of doing math, according to the

curriculum developer who I spoke to, they want kids to kind of work out problems, struggle with it a little bit, a productive struggle, and then the teachers, you know, they work out the problems, and then the teachers instruct them with sort of how to do it after they've given it a try. I think the controversy is

whether the balance between the struggle and the explicit teaching is the right balance.

Some of the teachers I spoke to felt like it's not the right balance and also that it maybe is backwards. I mean,

this is the innovative thing about it is this emphasis on discovery at the beginning, which the

curriculum developer talks about as making the process of math and the lessons stickier

and more durable with kids as they are working it

out themselves. But it can also be really frustrating. And if it causes kids to shut down,

then the instruction that comes afterwards isn't as meaningful. And so that's what I'm hearing.

The other thing is that this is part of a move towards more standardization in curriculum across the city.

So while illustrative math is used in, you know, various grades and at various schools across the city for some elementary, some middle school, some high school. For the first time

this year, the city required it for algebra one. And that's part of an ongoing emphasis under

the Adams administration to standardize curricula for sort of quality control. But what I'm hearing

from teachers is that they are being asked to follow a script and the script moves too fast.

Kids fall behind.

They get even more frustrated.

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