2024 DC Math Report
RELEASED MARCH 2024
Pictured: Ron Brown College Preparatory High School, a 2024 Math Bright Spot school.
The DC Math Hub report Problem Solving Math Education in the District: Strategies for a Brighter Math Future 2024 includes valuable insights from instructional leadership teams and leading educators at public schools in the District of Columbia who have shown success in math growth for students.
DC Bright Spots for Math Growth by Grade Band
How We Identified Them
To identify the DC schools that are making the most progress in math achievement, we focused on math growth metrics, which measure how much students improve their skills over time, regardless of their starting point. DC Bright Spot schools have the highest math growth across the District of Columbia for the 2022-2023 school year in their grade bands, with a focus on schools that serve an average or high proportion of economically disadvantaged students, English learners, students of color, and students with disabilities.
Pictured: Stanton Elementary (DCPS), a 2024 Math Bright Spot school
How do Schools Become Math Bright Spots?
These schools share a collection of research-based strategies that contribute to strong growth and achievement in math for priority populations of students.
Strategy 1: Develop students’ mathematical mindset and confidence
Bright Spot schools’ educators, students, families, and communities believe in universal math potential, and that everyone can be a “math person” with the right supports and relevant material.
-
What It Means
For example, many DCPS schools follow UnboundEd's GLEAM framework (Grade-Level, Engaging, Affirming, and Meaningful), which focuses on educator mindset and planning to ensure that instruction provides all students, with a focus on Black and Brown students, with grade-level content that engages and affirms their identities and experiences.
What It Looks Like
By creating more inclusive and empowering math environments, DC’s Bright Spot educators believe they help students of color develop positive math identities and dispositions, as well as enhance their mathematical competence and confidence. This can lead to more equitable math outcomes for students of color and benefit society by increasing diversity and innovation in math and STEM fields.
Pictured: Friendship Blow Pierce PCS.
Strategy 2: Utilize scheduling and data to maximize effective instructional time
DC’s Bright Spot educators have the time they need to ensure every student is exposed to high-quality, grade-level instruction while receiving individualized opportunities to improve their skills.
-
What It Means
Educators analyze student data such as test scores, exit tickets, or formative assessments. Then they use the results to intentionally schedule math instructional and intervention blocks—including opportunities for small group, blended learning, and one-on-one tutoring—during the regular school day to meet each specific student’s needs. In Bright Spot schools, students also receive the results from assessments quickly, accelerating educators’ ability to correct student- and classroom-level misconceptions immediately.
What It Looks Like
KIPP Promise Academy in Ward 7 is a Bright Spot elementary school for its math growth in 2023 which also posted math achievement rates pre-pandemic that were higher than some Ward 3 schools. Educators there described how math instruction is “double blocked” with a first block that includes a lesson, time for independent practice, and exit ticket completion. Then, teachers transition into a “responsive block” where they immediately respond to student misconceptions gleaned from the exit ticket data by extending the lesson, pulling students into small groups, or using manipulatives if necessary.
Strategy 3: Use high-quality instructional materials with a systemwide, coherent strategy
Bright Spot schools implement high-quality curriculum—designed to let students discover, inquire, predict, explain, share, and explore—with collaborative district-level support, and supplement with personalized learning platforms to accelerate learning instead of remediating.
-
What It Means
Just like mathematical content, problem solving must be actively taught; curricula and instructional materials must make space and time to build those skills just as they make time to teach addition or algebra. For math learners, this means that the conceptual and procedural strategies for learning a math skill are aligned across days, weeks, and years. It also means concepts are aligned across different types of instruction—offered by lead teachers, as well as support provided through interventions, tutoring, and other individualized practice.
What It Looks Like
Multiple Bright Spot schools reported that teachers meet weekly to collaborate with a math instructional coach to review upcoming lessons and student data and develop a plan for direct instruction, intervention, and enrichment activities aligned with the curriculum and student interests.
At the middle school level, one award-winning educator discussed the importance of her school’s commitment to learning acceleration. Tiffany Smith of Cesar Chavez Public Charter School attributes her students’ math success to her commitment to building her students’ confidence as a math learner and critical thinker. Ms. Smith’s top advice to other teachers is to take a moment to look deep into exit tickets for student misconceptions and to focus on celebrating students with genuine praise that specifies the exact skill they mastered.
Pictured: KIPP Promise.
Strategy 4: Blend conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, and math fact fluency in instruction
To achieve math proficiency and agency, every student needs to learn procedural fluency in meaningful ways. This means teaching how procedures are linked to concepts, helping students develop and use various strategies and methods, giving students ample opportunities to choose the best strategy or method for each problem, and assessing students' understanding of all aspects of fluency.
-
What It Means
A common theme we heard from Bright Spots was the amount of intentional time spent on activities to build teachers’ capacity to teach conceptual math knowledge. When we interviewed Burroughs Elementary last fall, a Bright Spot school for growth that was also recognized by EmpowerK12 as a Bold Performance school for having math and reading achievement that exceeded pre-pandemic averages for similar schools, we learned about their weekly practice of having teachers deliver upcoming math lessons with a coach and fellow teachers present. Their peers provide feedback about the possible student misconceptions that could result from the lesson and how they can adjust to improve. Several other Bright Spot DCPS elementary schools shared about a similar practice in interviews for this report.
What It Looks Like
Bright Spot educators also conveyed that student learning requires more than just translating knowledge by telling students what to do. Here are some of the social-emotional strategies they see as fundamental to their success:
Set students up for success and celebrate it when it happens.
Make space for mistakes.
Actively and deliberately create trusting relationships.
Celebrate and make it fun!
In Bright Spot schools, educators create spaces of encouragement, support, understanding, and success that allow students to feel physically and emotionally safe to learn.
Strategy 5: Support teacher preparation and ongoing development
To limit student misconceptions, Bright Spot instructional leadership teams provide ongoing support for teacher implementation of curriculum and conceptual understanding by giving teachers the knowledge, training, flexibility, resources, time, and team to do their best work.
-
Bright Spot teachers considered these the most effective supports for their own work and promising practice to support their peers to improve:
Have more than one person in the classroom at a time. Not only does this give students the attention they need, but it also creates consistency in instruction—if one teacher is absent, there’s no interruption to learning.
Plan ahead, and plan together. Bright Spot teachers report that strategic long-term plans keep them organized and making sure they can cover the content, leave time for students to practice new skills, and discover where re-teaching is needed – all while building fluency and problem-solving skills along the way.
Develop skills and content knowledge but use “person power” wisely. Bright Spot teachers can use targeted PD to hone their craft because their schools build a team of coaches, specialists, interventionalists, and peer teachers to support their successful teaching practices.
Allow and encourage educators to be flexible and innovative. Bright Spots teachers reported they can use their own professional judgment to adapt what works (and set aside what doesn’t), and use technology to support but not replace teaching.