Beyond Siloed Solutions: A Collaborative Approach to Building a Cohesive Math Learning Ecosystem

In today’s educational landscape, supplemental math materials play a vital role in addressing the diverse learning needs of students. But ensuring that these materials align seamlessly with core curricula can be a challenge.

10 years ago, I was hired by the Director of Assessments of a large urban district to help them fill a gap in their instructional materials. They were concerned because teachers and leaders did not have access to the curriculum-aligned interim assessments needed to make data-informed decisions.  As I conducted a landscape scan, I met with their subject-specific Curriculum Coordinators to better understand the nuts and bolts of their curriculum. What I uncovered was surprising and has stuck with me ever since. This large urban district already had curriculum-aligned interim assessments, designed by their Curriculum Coordinators and embedded in their instructional materials. Their Assessment and Research teams, as well as their Chief Academic Officer, were simply unaware of this component of their adopted materials.

This story underscores the importance of a clear and shared vision when selecting supplemental products. By aligning product goals with district needs, districts can make more informed decisions and avoid unnecessary expenditures. While this can be particularly challenging in large or siloed districts, a collaborative approach can help ensure that supplemental materials truly enhance student learning.

To build a system with strong coherence, consider the following steps when evaluating supplemental materials.

Step 1: Get the right people in the room.

Before procuring additional supplemental products, set aside time for a cross-functional team to meet. When deciding who to include, consider these questions:

Ideally this team will start meeting in January, when planning for the next school year begins. While district org charts vary, aim to include someone representing the following teams: Teaching & Learning, Research and Evaluation, Technology, Assessment, Curriculum Coordinators, and Principal supervisors.

Step 2: Invest time in building a shared understanding and language to describe the status quo.

The primary goal of your initial meeting with the cross-functional team should be to build a shared understanding of what is already provided in your core instructional materials. Encourage leaders to roll up their sleeves and explore the materials to see the critical components for themselves. Consider bringing in external reviews from third parties such as EdReports to reinforce what might be missing from your core materials. As a team, discuss and align on the following questions related to your materials:

• What are the current assets?
• What are the current pain points?
• What gaps have external reviews identified?
• Is this a gap that needs to be filled in Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 instruction?

External reviews from sources such as EdReports can be a great resource for these conversations. Reading their reviews of core materials can help identify gaps such as fluency practice (Criterion 2.1 – Rigor and Balance), lack of support for diverse learners (Criterion 3.3 – Student Supports), and incomplete guidance on how to respond to Assessment data (Criterion 3.2 – Assessments).

Step 3: Vet products that address your mutually agreed-upon gaps and pain points.

With the help of the cross-functional team, develop a rubric to use when evaluating new products. The rubric should define a set of criteria for the ideal product that fills the gaps identified in your core materials. For example, if your core materials do not provide adequate fluency practice, then this would need to be an essential feature of your supplemental product that would be helpful in strengthening Tier 1. If your core materials do not provide adequate support for below grade-level students trying to master prerequisite skills, this would be an essential feature of your supplemental product that could strengthen Tiers 2 or 3.

• We have identified X gap in our core curriculum. How will your product help fill that gap?
• Are other districts using your product to address a similar gap? What successes and challenges are these districts having?  What core curriculum are they using your product to supplement? Are you able to share district contact info?
• How have schools used this product to complement Tier 1, 2, or 3 instruction?

Consider using CEMD’s Jobs to Be Done framework to identify the most essential function you will need from your supplemental product.  What do teachers and students need that they are not getting from their core curriculum? Is it practice, augmentation, intervention, or facilitation?

Step 4: Select a finalist based on the product which will make it easiest to align your core and supplemental products (aka achieve coherence).

Once you have completed step 3 and generated a ‘short list’ of products that fill gaps in your core curriculum, identify a finalist by evaluating products for how they align to your adopted curriculum.  A supplemental product might give your students extra practice—but if that practice is disconnected from the skills they are working on in Tier 1, cognitive overload or confusion may result. Ultimately this will decrease the likelihood of transfer occurring and students’ achieving mastery.¹

• We use X core curriculum; how is your product aligned with X?
• How can we ensure students are able to connect what they are working on in your product to what they are studying in Tier 1: for example, getting support with finding the least common multiple in preparation for a unit on adding fractions with unlike denominators?
• How have you seen schools use your product to complement or reinforce X core curriculum?

More is not always better! In many of our schools, teachers have  myriad disconnected products they can use in their classrooms. Unfortunately these disparate products can decrease the likelihood that students achieve mastery, because they engage students in disjointed activities with no opportunity for transfer to occur through making connections in what they are learning. To promote instructional coherence, leaders can consider a coherent decision-making process, such as the one described above.

¹ https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-use-interleaving-foster-deeper-learning/