When Baltimore’s chief academic officer and other school officials saw the stark results of a state standardized math exam in the summer of 2022, they set a plan to overhaul how students learn math.
Disruptions to in-person learning created a severe decline in math performance across the country and state. In Baltimore, just 7% of elementary and middle school students scored proficient in math during the 2021-22 school year, the first statewide exam since the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.
Statewide, students who scored proficient in math — a measure of students who meet grade-level standards on the state exam — plummeted to a level described by the new state superintendent as “abysmal.”
To reverse the trend, Joan Dabrowski, Baltimore’s chief academic officer, and her team launched a five-year math improvement plan in May 2023, focusing on teaching in small groups using a new curriculum.
The improvement plan’s target is for 25% of students to be proficient in math by the 2026-27 school year, nearly triple the percentage of students performing at or above grade level.
“We’ve set very ambitious goals that we want to hit,” Dabrowski said.
The Baltimore City Public School System consistently has the lowest math proficiency in the state and was among the hardest hit by the pandemic learning loss. Students showed moderate improvement on the 2022-23 exam, called the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program, with 9% of students in grades three through eight scoring proficient.
In Algebra 1, a key milestone class that students typically take in eighth and ninthgrades, just 6% of city schools students scored proficient during the 2022-23 school year. In Baltimore County, 7% of students were proficient.
So far this year, school officials have offered more professional training for teachers, prioritized small-group instruction and hosted “math nights” to engage families with math activities and games.
Last month, students took the state exam for their grade level with results available in August. As Baltimore City’s school year wraps this week, here’s what to know about the district’s math plan.
New math materials
In May, Baltimore’s school board approved a $1.78 billion budget for fiscal year 2025. The spending plan allocates $4.5 million for a new math curriculum that 30 schools will use next year. All schools will use Reveal Mathematics, a program by publishing company McGraw Hill, by 2027.
As part of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s multibillion-dollar education reform plan, state education officials are pushing for schools to use “high quality materials,” or accredited math and literacy programs.
School districts create their own curriculums by organizing units and lessons with a program’s materials. Reveal Mathematics’ program consists of textbooks, lessons and data tools that allow teachers to frequently track student performance throughout a class, not just at the year’s end.
Baltimore’s population of students who speak English as a second language has increased dramatically over the decade. Dabrowski said the Reveal program is expected to better teach multilingual students by developing their English skills during math lessons.
Third and fourth grade multilingual students saw gains in math proficiency during the 2022-23 school year, but fewer than 5% of multilingual fifth graders were proficient.
“We’re really excited to see the sort of impact that that will have on our students, our students’ scores and our student achievement and growth,” she said.
Small groups and tutoring
Baltimore’s math teachers started each class this school year with the same routine. Lessons begin with a “spiral review” — returning to a concept that students will build on, such as reviewing addition and subtraction to set up for multiplication and division.
Students then quickly break into small groups in which they can work at their own pace and get individual attention.
But teachers have to orchestrate how they spend time with each group and engage all students when they return to a whole class setting, said Patricia Campbell, a professor emerita at the University of Maryland College of Education.
“It allows [teachers] to really pay more attention to particular students and know if students are understanding what’s going on,” she said.
Spiral reviews help struggling students keep up with the class through routine topic reviews that get progressively harder.
“You have to spiral up. You keep building on it,” Campbell said. “Spiral curriculum can be very advantageous, but you need professional development for your teachers, and you need a curriculum so it’s set up with a spiral in it.”
District officials are trying to recruit teachers with a math specialty, a hard position to fill for middle and high schools, and offer more professional learning opportunities to strengthen teachers’ understanding of math concepts.
Cristina Duncan Evans, teacher chapter chair of the Baltimore Teachers Union, said steep teacher vacancies have caused an increasing number of students to go multiple years without a consistent math teacher. Math teachers are challenged to keep up with the pace of the current curriculum, which doesn’t account for students who come in learning below the grade level, she said.
“All the curriculum and coaching in the world is not as good as a strategy of filling the math vacancies that exist,” Evans said.
Next school year, nearly 150 math coaches will join the district to help teachers lead their classes. The school budget set aside $22.8 million for the positions. Evans said it’s unclear who exactly will staff those positions.
“What is the district’s plan around filling math vacancies? Because investing in math coaches sounds like a strategy that has the unintended consequence of pulling people out of the classroom to coach,” she said.
Baltimore’s school budget is also investing $12.7 million for “high-dosage tutoring” in 130 schools, with a focus on middle school and Algebra 1 students. High-dosage tutoring — individual or small group tutoring for up to five times a week — allows students to catch up on concepts during the school day without being pulled out of class and missing the current day’s lesson.
Middle school algebra
Algebra is considered the language of math, when symbols start to express relationships between values. Algebra 1 is seen as a gatekeeping class — it opens the door to other advanced math classes that require solving equations, education experts say.
“Hourly wages or salary over time or miles per hour … the language to express that mathematically is algebra,” Campbell said.
For students who struggle to think abstractly and solve equations, “further high school mathematics becomes very difficult and, even more critically, a lot of things that would allow them to pursue a career becomes more difficult,” she continued.
The course is offered in middle school so students have more opportunities to take advanced math classes in high school, such as calculus.
But most of Baltimore’s eighth graders don’t take Algebra 1. About 22% took the course in 2022, a 1% increase from the previous year. The 2025 operating budget adds $300,000 to increase the number of middle schoolers taking algebra classes.
Lyndsey Brightful, the Maryland State Department of Education’s mathematics director, said educators are focusing on how to prepare elementary and middle school students for the class so they can reach a state standard by the end of 10th grade.
The state heavily weighs Algebra 1 grades and the Algebra 1 scores on the statewide exam to predict a student’s ability to succeed in college or in a career. The readiness standard requires a proficient score in Algebra 1 on the MCAP test or an Algebra 1 course grade of C and above paired with a 3.0 GPA.
About 58% of Baltimore elementary and middle school students and those who took the statewide Algebra 1 exam scored in the lowest category as “beginning learners.” A goal of the improvement plan is to reduce that percentage to 25%.
“There’s just steep work we need to do,” Dabrowski said.
