NYC official reveals plunging math scores at schools using new DOE curriculum: ‘Decline across

NYC official reveals plunging math scores at schools using new DOE curriculum: ‘Decline across the city’

Scores on Algebra 1 Regents exam plummeted by 14 percentage points at south Queens schools that used a controversial new curriculum teachers have blasted as “a complete disaster,” a superintendent revealed this week

Josephine Van Ess, superintendent of Queens South High Schools, told parent leaders Wednesday that the 29 high schools under her watch, all but one of which used the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, saw their average pass rate plunge from 59% to 45%.

The commercial curriculum — which forces teachers to give scripted lessons on a rigid schedule, expects students to “discover” solutions with little instruction, and frustrates kids lacking prerequisite skills — is partly to blame.