BCSC School Board Member Jason Major. Mike Wolanin | The Republic
Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. has approved a new math curriculum for elementary school students.
The school board voted on April 3 to adopt the Eureka Math2 curriculum from Great Minds. The cost of acquiring this resource for kindergarten through sixth grade is $1.325 million, according to curriculum specialist Gail Koors.
School officials have said that the use of this curriculum will likely begin during the next school year and remain in place for at least the next six years.
Prior to voting on the matter, board member Jason Major had some questions about why this curriculum was chosen instead of enVision Math by Savvas Learning Co.
He explained that Director of Elementary Instruction Laura Hack shared a document with the board that showed different school corporations, math proficiency levels for their fifth and sixth grade students, and the math resources each used.
“My concern with Eureka is that in two out of three out of the cases where Eureka’s used, their performance is less than ours,” said Major. “In three out of three, enVision is greater. … I know there’s a lot of work that was put into this. I just kind of want to understand a little bit about what the difference is between enVision and Eureka and why it looked to consistently perform better for students.”
Hack replied that there are several factors that go into each school corporation’s math scores, including when they adopted the curriculum, how they conducted professional development, how they handled roll-out of the new curriculum, and whether or not consumables were available.
“There are other things that aren’t listed on that sheet that really make up the curriculum and the components of what happens inside that math class,” she said. “So while there are a few facts on there, there are a multitude of many things that happen within that math classroom. So that’s one big reason that we like Eureka Math, because we really are going more into complex math.”
Koors said that when the BCSC Elementary Mathematics Adoption Committee was examining options, enVision Math did not make it into their top three choices.
Additionally, they liked Eureka Math2 because they were looking for a program that would fill in gaps with the conceptual side of math and provide students with a deeper understanding of the subject.
“It’s not going to be an immediate, overnight that we might see a change,” she said. “It’s going to take some time, but then that can’t be taken away from us, because we have that conceptual development, not just procedural fluency. We can teach kids to do a problem. We can teach the steps to the process. But if that application has changed, if the scenario has changed, if the student has to make a decision about which process to use, that’s where we’re struggling. So we really wanted to find that piece that would help us to build that framework so that we continue to grow.”
Koors said at a previous board meeting that committee members have talked with other school corporations that switched to Eureka Math2, and their representatives were very pleased with the resulting student math discourse.
After hearing from Hack and Koors, the school board approved the curriculum unanimously.
The board also heard a presentation at their April 3 meeting on recommended resources for math courses in secondary schools. They are expected to vote on these at a future meeting.
