Second Elementary Math Adoption Parent Meeting – January 2026

by Sugi Sorensen
February 09, 2026

Overview

The La Cañada Unified School District (LCUSD) hosted an elementary math adoption parent informational meeting on Wednesday, January 28, 2026 in the district’s Governing Board meeting room. The second of three planned for the 2025-26 school year, the meeting was led by Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Jim Cartnal. Assisting Cartnal was a panel led by Principal Carrie Hetzel (Paradise Canyon Elementary – PCY), elementary teachers Mandy Redfern (La Canada Elementary – LCE – 2nd grade) and Camilla Hartman (Palm Crest Elementary – PCR – 5th grade), and La Cañada High School (LCHS) math department chair Juan Nuñez. Principals David Santiago-Speck (PCR) and Kelly Duncan (LCE) were introduced by Cartnal as possibly attending, but by meetings’s end had not. Superintendent Wendy Sinnette was in attendance in the audience section, but spoke only briefly adding clarification at two points during the meeting.

In contrast to the first meeting on November 5th when approximately 40 parents attended (out of a 90 who had reportedly RSVPed), less than half that number attended the January 28th meeting, a fact Cartnal appeared keenly aware of, lightheartedly telling parents, “If you did want to bring a friend, there are plenty of available open seats.”

Unlike the first meeting, which was dominated by a sharp confrontation between parents and staff over the Math Priorities Survey questions, the January 28th meeting was notably more substantive and less combative. Cartnal covered considerably more ground: distributing a Hanover Research summary sheet on “Best Practices in Math Program Implementation” and a summary of the state’s Standards for Mathematical Content (SMCs) in Kindergarten and 2nd gade; presenting an update on the work of the staff-only LCUSD Elementary Math Adoption Committee; revealing a short list of six finalist candidate curricula that had been selected; presenting preliminary results from the recently-completed Math Priorities Survey; and discussing both the Science of Math training to district staff and the Spring Math diagnostic screener in detail. The meeting ran approximately 90 minutes.

Major Meeting Takeaways

Everyday Mathematics is Out

Though the first parent meeting in November hinted at it, this meeting confirmed that the district is finally giving up on Everyday Mathematics, its K-5 elementary math curriculum, a bad decision made nearly a decade ago that the district has stubbornly defended, but never publicly acknowledged. At the November 05th meeting, Cartnal had left open the possibility that LCUSD might renew Everyday Math, “That Everyday Math is not something that I think we’re completely, you know, against, if you will,” a stunning statement given the enormity of problems it has created over the last decade.

But at the January 28th meeting, Cartnal left no room for doubt:

“…In 2025-26, this academic year, we’re determining our math priorities. Next academic year we’re going to pilot curricula. Remember the pilot is for K-5. We’re looking to replace Everyday Math. We’re keeping Math In Focus in grades 6, 7 and 8. And then we will adopt in the ’27-28 school years.”

This was confirmed later in the meeting when Cartnal revealed the winnowed list of six finalist curricula it is considering:

Science of Math is In

The second major takeaway and most hopeful signal from the January 28th meeting was the evident impact of the Science of Math training on committee members. LCE 2nd grade teacher Mandy Redfern candidly acknowledged that the Science of Math points to “teaching math in a little bit of a different way than we have been over the last two decades.” The statement was striking – perhaps the closest thing to an admission from a district teacher that Everyday Mathematics’ pedagogical approach has not served LCUSD students well.

LCHS teacher Juan Nuñez’s observation that the research validates the balanced approach to mathematics instruction that the math adoption committee has been discussing, and Cartnal’s willingness to publicly (if obliquely) question the California Mathematics Framework, all suggest that the committee is internalizing the evidence base. The Science of Math supports explicit instruction, procedural fluency, mastery-based progression, and evidence-based intervention – priorities that stand in tension with the discovery-based, spiral-curriculum philosophy of Everyday Mathematics. If the committee acts on what the research says, the next curriculum should look meaningfully different from the current one, a relief parents have long sought.

Survey Results Validate Longstanding Parent Concerns

The LCUSD Math Priorities Survey results – even in their “rapid” preliminary form – broadly validated concerns parents have raised for years about Everyday Mathematics. The emphasis on procedural fluency, paper-and-pencil mastery, teacher-modeled gradual release instruction, and hands-on manipulatives are all hallmarks of the Math In Focus/Singapore Math approach. That all three stakeholder groups – parents, teachers, and students – converged on these priorities lends significant weight to the adoption’s apparent direction. Cartnal’s willingness to draw a direct line from the survey results to the winnowing criteria (“That’s not what we said is the local interest and the local need of La Cañada Unified”) suggests he sees the survey as a mandate for change.

Having disclosed the meeting’s major takeaways, we now present a fuller accounting of what transpired at the full January 28th meeting.

Adoption Overview and Guides to the District’s Thinking

Cartnal opened the meeting by reiterating the purpose of the parent meetings: to share updates about the work of the LCUSD Math Adoption Committee and to gather parent feedback and insights “so we can improve our outcomes and support student success.” Starting a theme he would revisit throughout the night, he made a notable acknowledgment about the district’s past, conceding that the last elementary math adoption in 2015–16 had failed to adequately bring the community along: “We learned and listened very intently and carefully about the last LC math adoption that took place in 2016–2017. And we’re looking to correct some of the challenges, particularly as it regards not bringing our community along to maybe, we could have perhaps done a little bit better job.”

Cartnal described two primary guides to the district’s thinking. First, the district’s participation in a 2025 Math Adoption Cohort through the Mathematics Unit of the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), which has partnered with UnboundEd, an educational think tank. Cartnal noted with evident pride that UnboundEd’s primary presenter was an LCHS alumna and former student of his. The LACOE + UnboundEd partnership has provided the committee with a five-phased approach to materials adoption, as well as access to a publishers’ materials fair and workshops on the California Mathematics Framework (CMF) and its influence on the State Board of Education’s recently completed elementary math materials adoption in November 2025. Cartnal explained the five-phased approach to parents in attendance during his recap of the activities of the LCUSD Math Adoption Committee:

The second major guide to the district’s math adoption is its ongoing partnership with Hanover Research, which had produced three publications distributed to the committee: Best Practices in Math Implementation (2025), a Vendor Scan: Math Interventions and Screeners, and a Science of Math Literature Review. Hanover also developed and administered the LCUSD Math Priorities Survey to district staff, K-8 parents, and 7/8 students, and is disaggregating the survey results to inform its creation of a “high-quality” instructional materials evaluation rubric to be used for scoring candidate curricula.

The adoption timeline remains unchanged from what was presented at the first meeting:

• 2025–26: Determine LCUSD math priorities through stakeholder surveys; develop an instructional materials rubric; explore adoption of a math screener/progress-monitoring tool and intervention program; winnow the state-approved list of approximately 38 titles down to a working short list.
• 2026–27: Pilot two math curricula. Conduct multiple parent feedback and curriculum review sessions. Conduct a vote among faculty. Make a recommendation to the LCUSD Governing Board. The pilot focus is K–5 only; Math In Focus will be retained in grades 6–8.
• 2027–28: Implement new textbooks in LCUSD elementary classrooms.

Cartnal provided a more specific winnowing timeline than at the first meeting: the goal is to get from approximately 38 titles down to about four by the end of this school year, then further narrow to two curricula for piloting in 2026–27.

Hanover Research: Best Practices in Math Implementation

Next Cartnal distributed a one-page executive summary handout from Hanover Research’s Best Practices in Math Implementation report – originally written for an unnamed client district – and gave parents a few minutes to read it before highlighting key points. Among the recommendations he called out were the importance to “actively engage district staff and community partners when developing, adjusting and implementing math standards and best practices in the district,” and the need to find assessment tools that allow the district to “assess students before they transition between grade bands to ensure learning continuity.”

From the report’s key findings, Cartnal highlighted: “Early childhood mathematics instruction is successful when students use manipulatives and representations to illuminate math concepts and when learning is integrated into a variety of activities during the school day, including read-alouds and plays and interdisciplinary instruction.” He tied this finding directly to the district’s decision to retain Math In Focus in grades 6–8, echoing a sentiment he first disclosed at the November 5th parent meeting:

“At the heart of that decision to keep Math In Focus in grades 6, 7 and 8 is this idea that we appreciate that our teachers really, really think that’s a terrific curriculum. Our students have done really, really well at it. And then when you look at the kind of inherent structure (in Math In Focus) is rooted in the use of manipulatives and hands-on learning, really at younger ages too.”

Math Adoption Committee Work

Cartnal then presented a detailed update on the seven areas of work undertaken by the 22-member LCUSD Math Adoption Committee (unchanged in composition from the first meeting – comprising teachers from each school and grade band, site principals, and district staff, with no parent members). The committee has met four times and is following UnboundEd’s five-phased approach to materials adoption, currently working through phases one (“Lead with a Vision and a Plan”) and two (“Know Your Needs”). The seven areas of work:

• Develop a Math Vision Statement unique to LCUSD
• Define and discuss adoption requirements and guardrails
• Define and discuss adoption priorities
• Learn about the November 2025 CDE-approved curriculum list
• Learn about the Science of Math
• Learn about diagnostic screeners (Spring Math, Amplify Math)
• Share progress with parents, staff, and all schools

As an aside, the LCUSD Math Vision Statement was modified from the draft version shown to parents at the November 5th meeting, deleting the introductory sentence (i.e. “In La Cañada Unified Schools, we aspire to create a mathematics program where every student is empowered to achieve excellence, think critically, and solve problems with confidence and creativity”), removing explicit mention of project-based learning among the named instructional methods, and deleting the last sentence (i.e. “The LCUSD math program relies on best practice instructional approaches supported by research into how students learn”):

The Science of Math

Among the more consequential committee activities reported by Cartnal was a December 13, 2025 webinar attended by committee members, led by Robin S. Codding, Ph.D., of Northeastern University, titled “Math Myth Busters & The Science of Math” (see here for slides from the presentation.)

The Science of Math is a growing movement focused on using objective, evidence-based research about how students learn math to inform educational decisions – analogous to the “Science of Reading” movement that has revolutionized literacy instruction nationally. Cartnal noted that the district, under his predecessor Anaïs Wenn, had previously engaged teachers in Science of Reading training, and that he wanted to build similar capacity around the Science of Math. He floated the possibility of inviting Dr. Codding to provide professional development directly to LCUSD teachers.

When Cartnal invited the teacher panel to share their reactions, teacher Mandy Redfern offered a measured but revealing response: “I liked that research is starting to shift and apply what we already know about Science of Reading into math and mathematical thinking… It’s exciting to kind of extend our learning and think about teaching math, maybe in a little bit of a different way than we have been over the last two decades here in La Cañada.”

The last six words of that statement – “over the last two decades” – deserve emphasis. They constitute a rare, if understated, acknowledgment by a sitting LCUSD teacher that the instructional approach to elementary math in this district may have been deficient for a generation. Everyday Mathematics was adopted by LCUSD in 2016 in an acrimonious battle between parent and staff interests and concerns, documented voluminously on this website. Twenty years is a long time to have been, in Redfern’s words, not quite doing it right.

Juan Nuñez echoed the sentiment, saying the Science of Math training was “really kind of validating a lot of the conversations that we’ve been having in the adoption committee with regards to the balanced approach – presenting conceptual understanding alongside being procedurally fluent. And how those two things can’t be separated from one another if you’re hoping to do math effectively.”

Cartnal himself added a candid observation: the Science of Math research “would advocate differently… it happened to make me think differently about, for instance, some of the policies that are coming from the State of California.” He was referring to the controversial 2023 California Mathematics Framework, about which he added: “It has some solid points. But not all of it.” For Cartnal to publicly question the California Mathematics Framework – even obliquely – is notable, given that the Framework has been a flashpoint in California’s ongoing math wars and has been criticized extensively by mathematicians, parents, and educators across the state.

Spring Math Diagnostic Screener

Cartnal reported that the committee has also been exploring Spring Math, a comprehensive MTSS/RTI system for mathematics that includes universal screening, progress monitoring, and intervention. As reported at the first parent meeting in November, the district has been actively seeking a math-side equivalent of the DIBELS reading fluency screener it already uses successfully in early elementary grades. Cartnal reported that approximately 12–13 staff members from multiple schools attended a Spring Math presentation, including himself, Nuñez, and several principals and teachers.

Teacher Nuñez provided the most detailed and enthusiastic description of Spring Math’s appeal. He explained that while LCUSD already has common assessment protocols and benchmarks, teachers “just don’t have the capacity to process and create and do” everything the data calls for within the daily grind of a 180-day school year. Spring Math addresses this by formalizing the screening-to-intervention pipeline: students complete brief, timed assessments (“10 problems, you have five minutes”), the data feeds into an analytics platform that identifies intervention groups and generates intervention materials. Nuñez said, “…it (Spring Math) felt like a tool that can generate a lot of what we would hope to do in terms of identifying struggling students and providing us the structure to support them.”

Cartnal added that one of the researchers behind the Science of Math – a reference to Dr. Amanda VanDerHeyden – is also the creator of Spring Math, lending intellectual coherence to the district’s interest. He cited the so-called “Southern Miracle” in Louisiana and Mississippi, where statewide implementation of programs including Spring Math contributed to historically low-performing states making remarkable gains in student math achievement.

A parent asked whether Spring Math includes a parent portal for tracking student progress. Nuñez and Principal Hetzel confirmed that the program generates data in formats easily shareable with parents, similar to DIBELS reporting on the ELA side. Redfern clarified that any diagnostic screener would be an add-on, supplementing, not replacing, the unit assessments already being sent home. I  separately clarified for the group that Spring Math’s daily classroom component is only 10–15 minutes a day, making it a manageable supplement to core instruction rather than a major time commitment.

Winnowing the Approved Curricula List Down to Six

As stated earlier, among the most substantive news of the evening was the revelation of a short list of six finalist candidate curricula, which was a major surprise given the district had just completed its Math Priorities Survey, and the survey results were supposed to inform Hanover’s creation of a “high-quality” instructional materials rubric that we were told would be used to help the district winnow curricula down to a manageable number. As described by Cartnal at the November 5th meeting, the sequence of events in the adoption should have been:

Math Priorities Survey ➡︎ Create Selection Rubric ➡︎ Down-select Candidate Curricula

Instead, the district winnowed down the list of candidate curricula to six before the rubric was created. Perhaps time pressures compelled the district to take shortcuts in its plans announced last November. Hopefully the district will not ignore the rubric altogether.

Cartnal reported that members of the Math Adoption Committee attended a publishers’ materials fair on December 12, 2025 at the Arboretum in Arcadia, organized through LACOE. In attendance were Cartnal, Hartman, Redfern, Hetzel, and Principals Santiago-Speck and Duncan. Teacher Redfern added important context: “I want to make sure everyone knows we didn’t just look at these six. All of the publishers were there, and we went around and dug through their material, made them pull out our grade levels. There were about 24 that we looked through. These were the ones that seem to align with our priorities.”

Cartnal described the winnowing criteria the committee did use: first removing titles focused only on grades 6–8 (since Math In Focus is being retained), then eliminating fully digital curricula (per survey results), then evaluating against the committee’s requirements – CPA alignment, better preparing students for the challenging step-up to Math In Focus in grade 6, a balanced approach of conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, ClassLink compatibility, support for all learners including English language learners and advanced learners, budget fit, a strong home-to-school communication component, and professional development support.

The winnowed short list announced by Cartnal includes:

1. Math In Focus (HMH/Marshall Cavendish) – already used in grades 6–8; being considered for K–5 as well. Not on the 2025 CDE-approved list but available via the 2014 CDE-approved list.
2. California Math Expressions (Heinemann)
3. Amplify Desmos CA Math (Amplify)
4. Eureka Math² (Great Minds)
5. enVision+ (Savvas)
6. Into Math (HMH)

Cartnal provided color commentary on several of the titles on the list. He described HMH’s Into Math as that publisher’s “California-ized” version of Math In Focus: “It has those Singaporean concepts at its heart. It has a more robust kind of digital presence than Math In Focus does. That is their state of the art.” He described California Math Expressions as “really, really strong work, rooted in the close analysis of East Asian country high schools.”

Importantly, Cartnal noted that four of the six titles – California Math Expressions, enVision+, Eureka Math², and Into Math – are all built around the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) progression that is central to Math In Focus and Singapore Math pedagogy. He admitted Amplify’s Amplify Desmos Math CA is notably not CPA-aligned and suggested it was included primarily because the Amplify platform is already used by LCUSD teachers for DIBELS, and teachers have found that tool effective and hoped Amplify might have a similar screening tool for math.

Several of these characterizations are disputed and will be addressed in a separate LCMP article under development.

When I asked Cartnal to clarify whether curricula from the earlier 2014 CDE-approved list remain eligible for adoption – a relevant question since Math In Focus is not on the current 2025 list but is on the 2014 list – he confirmed they are. He emphasized that “many, many, many members of faculty” have suggested extending Math In Focus to K–5, and characterized it as “obviously a very strong contender because of the positive faculty and student support that we have for the title in grades 6, 7, and 8.” He added the important caveat that the committee recognizes math instruction in K–5 differs from 6–8, and they “don’t want to replicate challenges that we had back when we did our last selection.”

Piloting Logistics

The meeting produced the most detailed discussion of piloting logistics to date, prompted by questions voiced by parents at the first parent information meeting on November 5th. Key details that emerged, prompted by probing questions asked by parent John McArthur included:

Teachers who elect to pilot will pilot both finalist curricula, not just one. Cartnal was emphatic: “We do not want to have a situation where Dr. Redfern’s piloting one curriculum, only knows that one, and Ms. Hartman’s piloting the second curriculum, only knows that one, saying which one do you want to choose?” Hartman explained this was drawn from past experience: “We have found in the past that when one teacher will just learn one, and then they’re like, ‘This is the one!’ Right? Instead of realistically looking at both curriculums.”

Teachers who choose not to pilot will continue using Everyday Mathematics but will be given access to review pilot materials and provide feedback. Parent McArthur pushed back on this, expressing concern about teachers opting out and creating inconsistency within a grade level: “I just disagree with having teachers that stick on the old curriculum. I don’t know if I like that.” Cartnal acknowledged the concern but did not indicate a mandate requiring all teachers to pilot, instead emphasizing that the district wants to ensure even non-piloting teachers “feel some sense of ownership and buy-in.”

Math Priorities Survey Results

Cartnal spent about a third of the meeting going over preliminary results from the LCUSD Math Priorities Survey, developed in collaboration with Hanover Research and administered January 12–23, 2026. He prefaced his remarks by noting that they had just received the preliminary results from Hanover that day so hadn’t had a chance to unpack the results yet, and that a more thorough analysis would be forthcoming “in the next couple of weeks.”

He characterized the survey as eliciting a “terrific response”:

• 587 7th/8th grade student responses
• 536 K–8 family responses (approximately one-third of the district’s 1,700 K–8 families)
• 66 staff members (LCE: 18, PCR: 15, PCY: “a good number,” plus 7–12 grades and 1 administrator)

Parent Jenny Wannier had asked an important clarifying question earlier in the presentation: were the survey results shown an amalgamation of all three groups, how many students and teachers responded, and how would the groups’ responses be weighted? Cartnal deferred the detailed breakdown to slides shown moments later but confirmed the same survey instrument was given to all three groups, with some routing differences based on demographics (e.g., staff who don’t teach math were routed past certain questions). He noted that the full disaggregated analysis from Hanover Research was forthcoming.

Cartnal presented what he described as the “rapid data dashboard” results across four slides. The key findings:

Balanced Program with Procedural Fluency

The survey showed “strong support for a balanced K–8 math program rooted in procedural fluency development and conceptual understanding.” Problem-solving, critical thinking, and real-world applications outranked digital tools and technical vocabulary as priorities across all three respondent groups. Cartnal drew a direct line to the winnowing process: “Any of those titles on that 38 state-approved list that do not have these things, we’re not going to look at, because that’s not what we said is the local interest and the local need of La Cañada Unified. The four-thousand kids here. Not LA Unified. Not the state of California.”

Teacher Modeling and Gradual Release

There was strong support for “teacher modeling in a gradual release of learning to students with comprehension quick checks.” Cartnal quoted directly from the preliminary survey analysis: “Across every measure, the gradual release approach emerges as a non-negotiable feature for the next LCUSD K–8 math program.” When Superintendent Sinnette asked Cartnal to explain to parents what “gradual release” means, Nuñez explained the classical “I do, we do, you do” model: the teacher demonstrates first, then works through problems collaboratively with students, then gradually releases responsibility for independent practice. He emphasized that this cycle continues “until there is formative data, like data in real time that indicates the kids are ready to attempt this in a more independent fashion.”

Staff Flexibility and Procedural Fluency

61% of staff said they favor flexibility in how concepts and procedures are taught. 78% of staff rated procedural fluency as important, while parents placed relatively more weight on preparing students for advanced high school math classes. Cartnal interpreted the staff response as wanting the latitude to say, “We need more procedural fluency work here,” or “We need to really work on explaining your answers when you’re justifying your understanding.”

Hands-On Learning and Manipulatives

Hands-on learning tools earned broad backing: 79% of staff, 63% of parents, and 64% of students. The survey also indicated that “fluency means accurate, well-rehearsed paper and pencil work, not racing through drills.” Cartnal was at pains to clarify this does not mean a return to timed multiplication table results posted on the wall: “We do not want to return to the poster at the front of the room, the stars across that says, ‘Jimmy was the fastest!’” Automaticity is important, he said, but “everyone does that at different paces.” All stakeholders “put a premium on resources that build careful procedural mastery and embed frequent accuracy checks.”

Paper-and-Pencil Over Digital

Staff and parents were the strongest advocates for traditional practice formats. Students notably highlighted YouTube as a major resource when they get stuck – Cartnal characterized this as “probably more frequent that they would look at YouTube” than ask their teachers, a revealing data point about how students are supplementing classroom instruction.

Rubric Implications

The final survey results slide contained a recommendation that the high-quality instructional materials rubric should “assign strong point value to programs that present authentic hands-on problems and tasks that model solution processes, highlight patterns, connect concepts across domains, and use physical manipulatives” – since these features align with stakeholders’ top priorities of problem-solving, conceptual understanding, and real-world application.

Next Steps in the Adoption

Though Cartnal did not speak specifically to it, he showed a slide listing the next steps in the district’s math adoption:

The next presentation to parents was announced to occur on Wednesday, March 4th, 2026 at 6:30PM-PDT in the LCUSD Governing Board meeting room.

Q&A

Cartnal wrapped up the evening with a question and answer session. Notable questions from parents and exchanges that emerged included:

AI and Emerging Technology

A parent asked how emerging technologies and AI are being factored into the curriculum selection. Cartnal acknowledged uncertainty but noted publishers are using AI “as a support device to create on-demand appropriate-level question kinds of supports or reviews for kids.” Redfern was blunter: “I would say it’s actually quite terrible in almost every single publisher right now. Because it’s so new.” She added that the team remains open to AI features, “especially for test creation so that we can modify things and support students for all of our learners.”

Differentiation for All Learners

A parent with two children at very different ability levels asked how the district evaluates curricula’s ability to differentiate instruction. Principal Hetzel responded that she has been reviewing curricula that include built-in “re-teach” and “extension” sections, so teachers have ready-made materials for both struggling and advanced learners without having to create supplemental content from scratch. Another parent echoed the importance of this: “As someone who’s constantly asking my child’s teacher to differentiate for them, I often find it’s not the teacher’s fault. It’s often just that they don’t have the material to do that, and I’m basically saying I want you to create something special for my child.” Superintendent Sinnette added that well-designed curricula also includes a home-to-school component for extending work.

Digital vs. Paper-Pencil Threshold

Parent Eugene Lin asked whether the district has established a target threshold for paper-and-pencil time versus digital instruction, citing emerging evidence that digital instruction may result in less information retention. Cartnal said no specific threshold has been set, but the primary delivery will be physical textbooks with digital supplements as this was an area of strong agreement between both staff and stakeholders in the priorities survey. He offered a candid observation about publishing industry economics: “Printing one of these and selling it one time in a 7–8 year period is a very different business proposition than annual digital subscription fees.” Cartnal implied that the district is trying to resist that economic pressure in favor of what the community values.

TK-to-Kindergarten Transition

A parent asked about the transition between Transitional Kindergarten and Kindergarten. Cartnal explained that the K–5 adoption focus deliberately excludes TK because the district wants its TK program to be “play-based… really, really systematic play-based,” where math concepts are woven into organic, exploratory activities rather than structured into a formal math block.

Homework

When a parent asked about the district’s philosophy on homework quantity, Cartnal said the survey data reflected that “routine practice is important,” supported across all three stakeholder groups. He indicated specific homework policies would be addressed as part of instructional conversations during and after the adoption process.

Parent Access to Finalist Materials

Cartnal addressed how parents would get to review the winnowed list of finalist curricula. He said the district would schedule review sessions both at the district office and at individual school sites – the latter being a suggestion that came from a parent at the first meeting. These sessions are expected in March and April, as the committee works through publisher presentations and desktop reviews of the finalist materials before making its final recommendation to narrow from four to two.

Analysis and Observations

The second meeting was in many respects what the first meeting should have been – an informative, detailed update on the adoption process with concrete deliverables. Though there were a few surprises, most notably the announcement that the district had already winnowed down the 38+ candidate curricula to six before the evaluation rubric had been created, the news was softened by the disclosure that the district committee that had attended the publisher’s fair in December had gone into it with a list of prioritized requirements. The price of skipping proper requirements definition in the form of the rubric is that the team wound up selecting several curricula that clearly did not meet their claimed stated requirements. This concern will be explored in depth in a separate article.

Several issues that provoked sharp conflict at the first meeting went unmentioned or unresolved. The question of outside tutoring and supplementation – whether the survey asked about it, and how the district accounts for widespread private math tutoring masking curriculum deficiencies – was not raised. The detailed, disaggregated survey data has not yet been shared with parents. The instructional materials evaluation rubric that Hanover is developing has not been presented for parent review. And the question a parent asked about how the three stakeholder groups are weighted in the survey analysis remains unanswered. All of these are presumably on the agenda for the third and final parent meeting on March 4th.

Conclusion

The second parent meeting represented a meaningful improvement in substance and tone over the first. Cartnal presented a far more detailed picture of where the adoption stands, what the committee has been doing, and what the survey data indicates. The short list of six curricula – with four alleged CPA-aligned options plus Math In Focus itself – gives the community something concrete to evaluate. The Science of Math training appears to be shifting committee thinking in productive directions. And the survey results, even in preliminary form, align with what engaged parents have been advocating for years.

What remains to be seen is whether this positive trajectory translates into an actual selection that breaks decisively from the inquiry-orientation of Everyday Mathematics, or whether institutional inertia and the influence of a state framework that the district’s own leadership now acknowledges has problems will pull the adoption toward a curriculum that merely repackages the same constructivist approach in new binding. The March 4th meeting, where the evaluation rubric and fuller survey data are expected to be presented, will be the next critical test. Parents who care about the outcome should attend. Bring a friend. There are, as Cartnal noted, plenty of available open seats.