TUSD is looking to replace out-of-date math textbooks for the district’s 47,000-plus students — an undertaking that would cost millions of dollars.
Given that state funding for those kind of purchases has been gutted, the Tucson Unified School District is considering free research-based materials created in part by the New York State Education Department.
The Eureka Math curriculum has yet to go before the TUSD Governing Board for approval. It contains lessons and assessments that are aligned with Arizona’s new standards, which cannot be said about many of the materials used by students and teachers today.
Though there are essential math lessons that will always remain the same, the way students are expected to learn and teachers are expected to teach has changed, said Heidi Aranda, TUSD’s senior program coordinator for K-12 mathematics.
“In the past, the U.S. curriculum has been known for being a mile wide and an inch deep — we taught everything every year, and what you find with the new standards is more of a focus at each grade level,” she said.
For example, fractions previously were taught starting in kindergarten but that concept is now concentrated in third through fifth grades, Aranda said.
The age of TUSD math textbooks varies by grade. Middle-schoolers are using books that are seven years old while elementary schools have books that are six years old. The district purchased new books for the high schools in 2013, thinking they were aligned to the new state standards. But that’s not the case.
Even at the elementary school level, different campuses have materials by different textbook companies. That means even though all schools are required to follow curriculum that maps out what students should be learning and when that should occur, it varies by school. That inconsistency could make it tough for a student who moves to a new school within the district.
It is unclear whether TUSD would print the books in their entirety for each student. At a minimum, TUSD would give access to all the lessons so teachers can make copies for class use, Aranda said.
Other school districts, like Sunnyside, have turned to free open source materials as a way to provide students with up-to-date resources.
Sunnyside uses EngageNY, free math and language arts materials available online through the New York State Education Department, and it is planning to use more open educational resources as they are vetted by district curriculum staff and teachers.
The Vail School District reported that it used to spend $500,000 a year on textbooks but has since cut that amount down to $20,000 by utilizing teacher-created resources or from the Internet.
The lesson plans are uploaded into the district’s Beyond Textbooks program, which school districts and charters in Arizona, California, Wyoming, Idaho and Kentucky, subscribe to and help populate.
Beyond the fact that a full K-12 textbook adoption is cost prohibitive, TUSD Superintendent H.T. Sanchez is hesitant to commit limited funds to textbooks at a time when the state standards are being adjusted.
“We could purchase books over two or three years but by the time we’re done the standards could be different,” he said. “And what would we defer to do that? The same source of funding dedicated to repairing tattered roofs is the same source we use for textbooks.”
