Accelerating Growth Through Equitable Math Instruction at Seattle Public Schools

Every fall, students across Seattle Public Schools go back to school and begin the process of adapting to new classmates, new teachers, new routines, and new classroom environments. But there’s one thing now that they don’t need to adapt to every year, and that’s how they are taught math.

That wasn’t always the case. Before adopting enVision® Mathematics in 2022, teachers from classroom to classroom, grade to grade, and school to school within the district used to create their own math lessons using different strategies and pacing from their colleagues. This proved to be problematic.

“Everybody was sort of just piecing together what worked for them in their classroom,” said Rachel Pitts, a math interventionist and former classroom teacher at Seattle Public Schools (SPS). “And while that can work for some teachers in some buildings, it's just really not equitable for kids.”

In an effort to build more coherence and equity in math instruction, Elissa Farmer, math program manager, along with Cashel Toner, the district's executive director of curriculum, assessment, and instruction, and their team came up with a strategy in 2019 that involved revamping their existing math instructional framework, adopting a high-quality core math curriculum, and then implementing that curriculum with an intentional approach and meaningful professional learning.

A New Strategic Plan for Math Instruction

Among the key goals of the new strategic plan was to improve academic outcomes through more coherent instruction, specifically among fifth-grade and seventh-grade students. In order to improve the outcomes in those grades, they needed to start at the K-5 level, and they needed the right materials to reach their goal.

“We weren't going to be able to change student outcomes unless we had some kind of foundational expectations and standards-aligned, rigorous instructional materials” across all grade levels, Elissa said. “We didn't have that.”

In order to create and communicate those foundational expectations, the team revised a framework that they already had in place, called the Comprehensive Math Framework, in an effort to make it clearer what the district expected to see in math instruction across the district.

The Comprehensive Math Framework

Elissa, Cashel, and their team had long recognized the need for more coherence in math instruction well before the initiation of the 2019 strategic plan. They, along with other departments throughout the district, designed the Comprehensive Math Framework in 2016 — a grade-level, standards-based structure for math instruction — in order to make up for the lack of common instructional materials.

“Because we couldn't provide common materials to teachers at the time, we wanted to provide a common framework for what we thought math instruction should look like,” said Elissa, referring to the 2016 plan. “Even if people were using different materials, students would still have similar experiences across our district.”

Using this existing framework as their foundation, the team in 2019 set out to update it as part of their new strategic plan to include elements the district would expect to see in math instruction and believed would better meet the needs of their students. Those elements included math routines, whole-group instruction, formative assessments, differentiated small-group instruction, independent work, partner work, and a lesson wrap-up.

This revised list of expectations would guide the district in implementing coherent and equitable math instruction across its elementary and middle schools. Now, they just needed the right materials that would allow them to fulfill those expectations.

Adopting Standards-Aligned, Rigorous Instructional Materials

In 2021, after nearly a decade without a district-wide core math curriculum, Seattle Public Schools began the search to find one.

During the adoption process, the district prioritized community and family engagement. They began with a needs assessment that gathered around 2,500 responses from families, which provided valuable input into what parents and caregivers would need from a math curriculum at home to support their children.

“Family engagement is really important to us as we believe parents are the first teachers and all parents are supporting their students' academics,” said Elissa, SPS’s math program manager.

The district held three community sessions throughout the city, at which it provided translation services to support multilingual families. During these sessions, families reviewed and gave feedback on three curriculum options. With input from families as well as teachers helping inform its decision and its framework serving as a guide, the district ultimately selected enVision as its core math curriculum.

“There are so many things within enVision,” said Rachel, the former fourth-grade classroom teacher now serving as the math interventionist. “I don't have to go searching for something to use for these students who are struggling with X, Y, and Z because it's there and it's great.”

Additionally, to ensure comprehensive support, the district also adopted SuccessMaker® Math, an adaptive personalized-learning program, and Momentum Math for its screener and diagnostic assessment tools, which integrate seamlessly with enVision.

Intentional Curriculum Implementation

In order to ensure the success of these programs, the district invested in meaningful professional learning experiences, not just for teachers but for school leaders as well.

“We actually spent a lot of time with our school leaders preparing them to lead the implementation, knowing that the school leader is the lever of instruction in the building and the instructional leader,” said Elissa. “They have the ability to make a difference in how the implementation went.”

For an entire year before the curriculum rollout, the district held multiple sessions with school leaders, with support from Savvas in helping co-design the training to align with the district’s strategic goals.

When it came to training teachers on the new enVision math programs, it was crucial to the math team that teachers first understood the reasoning behind the curriculum choice, as well as the importance of having a unified, grade-level content approach across all classrooms.

“We felt like it was so important for every teacher first to know why,” said Tara Hofmann, an SPS math curriculum specialist. “Why is everyone using the same curriculum? Why are all students being taught grade-level content? Why is that important?”

Then, in the first year, the focus of the professional learning was on familiarizing students with enVision’s problem-based lesson structure, while in the second year, the emphasis shifted to enhancing teachers' use of instructional tools. Now, in the third year, the team feels that the educators are better prepared to deepen their engagement with the curriculum.

"Teachers feel supported,” said Elissa. “They have the resources that they need to do good instruction. They can spend their time thinking about how they want to facilitate the lesson and how they want to support different students in their classroom rather than spending time making stuff.”

Bringing Joy and Equity to the Math Classroom

After two full years of implementing their new strategic plan along with their new enVision, Successmaker Math, and Momentum Math solutions, educators are seeing increased student participation and collaboration. They see students feeling more empowered to share their ideas, engage in problem-solving, and view themselves as mathematicians.

“Our team's goal was to get more student voice into the math classroom,” said Tara. “And I feel like that was really successful because when we go and visit classrooms, we see kids talking, we see them up at the board describing their thinking. So that's really exciting.”

Rachel noticed that students who started using the curriculum in third grade, and who are now in fifth grade, are showing more confidence in mathematical discussions, with the ability to agree, disagree, and dig deeper into problem-solving.

“It comes down to building a strong math community,” Rachel said. “And that's not just about the lessons and the equations and the strategies. It's about how we talk about math. It's about how we feel about math and how we overcome mistakes and celebrate mistakes and celebrate differences in our mathematical thinking. And so I think that's the foundation that we want to create so that more students can feel successful in math.”

As the work continues, Elissa anticipates even stronger math skills and greater self-confidence in students as they progress through their academic journey.

“Our students are all going to have access to grade-level standards and rigorous instruction, and that experience is going to be so much more coherent and smooth,” Elissa said. “I'm excited to see what happens with these students in a few years of having something consistent.”