The School Board approved a $4.9 million purchase of new math curriculum for kindergarten through eighth grade Monday after a task force concluded some of the district’s current instructional materials are “outdated.”
School district administrators say the curriculum from Arizona-based Illustrative Mathematics checked many of their boxes after a thorough selection process, and a nonprofit that reviews instructional materials gives it strong ratings.
However, Illustrative’s curriculum has prompted backlash in New York public schools in recent years, becoming tangled in “math wars” debates about the best way to approach teaching the subject.
The Madison Metropolitan School District declined to comment on the curriculum or the criticisms of Illustrative before the School Board voted to approve it Monday.
The proposal followed a recommendation from the district’s Math Task Force to replace elementary and middle schools’ math instructional materials in November. Some of the curriculum in middle schools hasn’t fully met national standards for what students should learn at their grade level, requiring schools to fill in the gaps with other materials, the task force found.
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