NYC public schools standardizing math instruction in junior high, high schools

New York City public schools will launch a division to better serve the city’s growing populations of English learners and students with disabilities and impose standardization on how math is taught in junior high and high school, education officials announced Monday.

The Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning will repurpose $750 million in existing funds from the Education Department budget, including 1,300 staffers under a new deputy chancellor, Christina Foti — who has overseen special education since the start of the Adams administration.

The reshuffle is the latest in a broader reorganization under Chancellor David Banks, who this spring dissolved the 2,000-person teaching and learning division that oversaw both the multilingual and special education offices and set curriculum policy.

“This leadership is not going to allow another Eric Adams to sit in the classroom and pray to be overlooked,” Mayor Adams, who struggled with dyslexia in high school, said at a press conference at Samara Community School in the South Bronx.

The Education Department has not had a deputy chancellor of students with disabilities and English language learners for several years.

Alongside the division, the city will launch a new multilingual learners advisory council of researchers, advocates, union leaders, teachers and parents to guide them on issues related to immigrant families, including an estimated 38,000 asylum-seeking students. An existing special education advisory council will continue to meet.

The former division of teaching and learning, under former Deputy Chancellor Carolyne Quintana, also led Banks’ signature literacy initiative in preschool and elementary schools. By this fall, each of the city’s 32 community school districts has to offer one of three curricula focused on letter sounds and combinations. The program, known as NYC Reads, was moved under the school leadership division.

Building off the literacy initiative, Adams and Banks also announced a math push Monday called NYC Solves, including a $32 million investment over five years to standardize curriculum and offer teacher coaching.

This fall, 93 middle schools in eight school districts and 420 high schools citywide will use the Illustrative Math curriculum, which emphasizes solving problems in both math and real-world contexts.

Over the next few years, all high schools will have to adopt Illustrative Math. Six schools have received waivers, education officials said.

For middle schools, district superintendents will choose from a list of preapproved math curricula, which currently includes three options: Illustrative Math, i-Ready and Amplify. At least 63 of the middle schools that will participate in NYC Solves this fall were already using Illustrative Math, a figure that may be higher if principals were using a free version that’s harder to track, according to the Education Department.

The eight districts whose middle schools will participate in the first phase this school year are: District 2 in Manhattan; 7, 11 and 12 in the Bronx; 14, 15 and 32 in Brooklyn; and 26 in Queens.

“Students must learn the fundamentals and understand the concepts behind them,” Banks said. “And importantly, they need a clear grasp of how math operates beyond the classroom — in the supermarket, at the bank, in careers.”