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Brian Lairr 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. Jess, 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

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