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Illustrative Mathematics was established in 2011 at the University of Arizona as a means to assist schools in adopting the Common Core standards. It has since grown to include a K-12 math curriculum that’s been implemented across 48 states by some 1,500 school districts — including those in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Bill McCallum, a lead writer for the Common Core math standards, and Kristin Umland, then a faculty member at the University of New Mexico, led the effort, which was supposed to last a year or two.

At first, Umland said, the organization was focused on helping other groups, including the Smarter Balanced and College Board testing companies, improve their products to meet the more rigorous standards.

Eventually, she said, the group shifted to creating the curriculum — including lesson plans — that it felt best served students as they strove to achieve both a conceptual understanding of math, the why of how math works, alongside procedural fluency, the ability to solve problems.

Illustrative Mathematics now encompasses 90 employees — all are remote workers — with no central location. For those states that still use it, the curriculum is aligned to Common Core standards — and there are also state-specific versions for those states that don’t.

“Our goal is to change outcomes for students, regardless of the standards they are using,” Umland said. “Math is math, and all states agree that kids should learn math.”

Select schools within the New York City system have been using Illustrative Mathematics for half a decade. A recent, massive rollout across hundreds of campuses has been met with sharp criticism from many teachers and declining scores on the Regents Algebra I exam.

Some said the curriculum moved too fast and didn’t allow enough time for students to practice what they’ve learned. One educator acknowledged these initial growing pains but said the level of rigor was a welcome changeone that helped students more easily understand abstract concepts.

Umland has heard all of the complaints. While she acknowledges these early days struggles, it doesn’t mean the move is a failure. Only that it needs more time, she said.

“There’s no magic bullet,” she said. “If there was, somebody would have figured it out by now.”

Los Angeles, which adopted the curriculum in its middle and high schools in 2023, meanwhile, was celebrating its recent test score gains.

The 74 talked with Umland recently about the math wars, how her organization’s approach stands out from the rest and about Illustrative Mathematics’s bumpy New York City rollout.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Where does Illustrative Mathematics fit into the math wars? And by math wars, I mean that push and pull between teacher- and child-centered learning?

We always see ourselves as a third way. There’s no-one-size-fits-all for all students in all contexts. There are times when students need to understand and hear a direct explanation. And there are other times they should be given a chance to think about it for themselves, make sense of it, grapple with it and discuss it. So, it’s not either or. It’s what’s appropriate for what you’re trying to help students learn in the particular moment.

What type of lesson would require a direct explanation?

So, a perfect example is when kids are learning to count. There’s no way they can figure that out on their own. Numbers are different in different languages. That’s a completely cultural thing. That’s something you have to learn by hearing other people say the number to you.

But when you’re starting to do addition, once they understand what three is and what two is, you can say, “If I have three marbles and two marbles, how many marbles do I have altogether?”

The things that are cultural have to be taught directly. But once you understand what the meaning is, you can figure it out.

How does Illustrative Mathematics’s approach to teaching and learning compare to most other curriculum methods?

A lot of folks learn mathematics from an “I do, we do, you do model,” where the teacher does an example question, then they work together with the students, and then the students go practice.

Our method sort of flips that model on its head, allowing students to think about a problem so they can get oriented to it. And then there’s discussion where they make sense of it.

And, finally, the teacher brings it all together. It gives students a chance to think for themselves before being shown something.

I can show you how to do two plus three by counting it all myself, or I can say, “Here’s a picture that shows two marbles and three marbles. How many marbles do you see altogether?”

Some kids will know how to count it and will do it. And some kids won’t. They’ll talk about it, share their strategies, and then the teacher can make sure that the student who does it correctly shows their solution. Or if none of the students do it, they can show them how.

Illustrative Mathematics had a rough rollout in New York City. What went wrong for some teachers/schools?

A lot of the complaints weren’t necessarily about the curriculum itself, but about the rollout or the implementation.

Teachers need to have professional development where they get oriented to the design structure and they get a chance to experience what a lesson feels like. They need a chance to practice.

Ideally, they have opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues on planning and they have coaching support as they go. It’s just sometimes hard to coordinate all of those pieces.

A lot of teachers, in the first couple of months, are still trying to understand how it works. But once they get to the second or third month, then they start to see how it works. When something is new, it’s harder. It doesn’t necessarily make sense. And it takes time for people to get oriented to it.

We’re seeing the best success in the places where they’ve been doing it longer. They’ve put in a lot of time to support it and when they get to that phase, then they’re really seeing the outcomes for students.

What do you want to fix about mathematics education in this country?

A lot of school districts have come to realize that they need high-quality instructional materials. They’ve made that commitment. Then they start to ask themselves, “OK, so what do we do for (struggling students)?”

In a multi-tiered system of support, tier one instruction is the core instruction that all students receive. Students identified as needing additional support will receive tier two instruction. Often, this means they will be pulled for small group instruction or additional instruction.

One of the problems is that for many of these students, it’s like they’re on a highway and then they get pulled off onto the frontage road — only they never find a way back. They end up on a parallel track. What we want is to figure out how to support these students.

How might you help kids stay on track?

Right now, we’re really focusing on early math. We are currently developing a pre-K math curriculum. It will be available next school year. If you can get to students early, it has an exponential impact on them before they head on to later grades. If we can do a better job with the youngest math learners, they won’t have the problems that we see at the secondary level in the future.

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