In a conference center near San Francisco International Airport on Monday, new ways to teach math were taking off, and with little time to spare. In less than two weeks, the city’s public schools will roll out a new curriculum for the first time in more than a decade.
The San Francisco Unified School District’s math overhaul for its roughly 30,000 elementary and middle schoolers is part of broader reforms that stemmed from the pandemic shutdown and 2022’s bruising school board recalls. Later that year, the board set new goals to improve student outcomes in math and reading. Both had shown troubling decline during the pandemic, especially among kids of color. (A new literacy curriculum launched last year.)
The new school year starts on Aug. 18 amid uncertainty over recent budget cuts and staffing shortages. But as teachers and principals circulated around the training sessions Monday, there was palpable enthusiasm for the new material.
Presidio Middle School principal Kevin Chui, a former math teacher, called the middle school curriculum “really promising.” He was around for the 2014 rollout of the previous curriculum, which SFUSD designed in-house.
This time, SFUSD chose an elementary school curriculum called Imagine Learning Illustrative Math that other districts, including New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Sacramento, have used.
Last year, Chui’s school joined in piloting the new middle school curriculum, called Amplify Desmos Math, which math teachers know because of one of its popular tools, an online graphing calculator. Chui told The Frisc that the curriculum is already helping students “see mathematical concepts that, I think, were really abstract and hard for teachers to get across.”
Presidio is also one of the middle schools rolling out a return of algebra. Like most school districts, SFUSD’s middle schools once offered algebra. But in 2014, the school board, amid fears of “tracking” younger students, or segregating them along racial lines, made it for high schoolers only. After the pandemic, a growing call to return algebra to middle school became a hot-button political issue and extremely popular ballot measure. This school year is the second in a three-year test of different versions. A final decision on the best option is due in 2026.
The new math curriculum isn’t just about technology and tools. The district also wants classroom environments that encourage kids to talk with each other. In one breakout room, principals discussed what kinds of routines and structures could foster more in-class conversations. For example, teachers could encourage kids to team up, show their work on the board, and walk their classmates through it. “We want kids talking,” the presenter told the principals.
New math, fewer teachers
Rolling out curriculum is no easy feat in flush times; after a recent round of deep budget cuts, the district is working with nearly $114 million less than last year. Major cuts to the central office have left fewer staff to train and support classroom teachers.
The budget crisis will reach into classrooms too. SFUSD also cut costs by offering early retirement buyouts this spring, and nearly 400 veteran teachers accepted. Even with promises to hire back new (and lesser paid) teachers, there remain just under 100 classroom teacher vacancies, according to the United Educators of San Francisco, which said it got the figure from the district.
Staff turnover is also a barrier to better student outcomes, UESF vice president Frank Lara noted. “You need a stable, experienced principal to be able to supervise and support educators. And then you need certificated, trained, stable educators who can implement the curriculum. The focus on the curriculum itself negates the people and the support that’s needed.”
District spokeswoman Laura Dudnick did not say how many vacancies are specifically for math positions. Anyone hired in the next week before school will have missed this week’s training, but more will be available next week and throughout the year.
The bells and whistles, the integration, the tech tools make it so much better. Our curriculum needed to evolve, but we weren’t given the resources.
denman middle school math teacher rori abernethy
Despite the budget and staff woes, there’s a sense of urgency. When the school board kicked off its five-year reform plan in 2022, the goal was to have 65 percent of eighth graders meet expectations on state tests in 2027 — up from 42 percent in 2022. But in 2023 and 2024, that number dropped to 40 percent.
A third-party audit released in Jan. 2024 showed that 68 percent of K-8 math assignments were grade-appropriate. But just 28 percent of lessons that the auditors observed offered strong instructions for students. Only 39 percent of students were deeply engaged in lessons.
SFUSD decided it was time for an upgrade. Starting in fall 2024, 155 elementary school teachers piloted two curricula. (Imagine Learning won the bake-off.) In middle school, 84 teachers tested Desmos on its own.
‘The next evolution of teaching’
Desmos is in its first year of commercial launch across the country and already has glowing recommendations. Rori Abernethy, a longtime math teacher at James Denman Middle School, previously incorporated some of its free online tools into her math lessons and hers was one of last year’s pilot classrooms.
Abernethy “absolutely loved it” and said it builds upon the homegrown curriculum. She even recognizes some of its lessons in Desmos.
“It’s the next evolution of teaching,” Abernethy said. “It’s like they took our [2014] curriculum and they turned it into my vision of, ‘Oh my god, this is what it should have been.’ It’s the bells and whistles, the integration, the tech tools that make it so much better. Our curriculum needed to evolve, but we weren’t given the resources.”
With Desmos, kids know right away whether they got homework right or wrong, which Abernethy said is a huge time saver. Even before they completed all the units, her seventh graders were clearly improving — from 20 percent proficient in 6th grade to 30 percent proficient in seventh, said Abernethy. “That’s a huge jump,” she said. “I had a kid tell me, ‘I finally feel smart.’ This year, I think it’ll go even further. It’s easier for new teachers to do better.”
But Abernethy added the new system isn’t perfect. Teachers will either need more instruction or guidance on what to cut from the curriculum, she said, and the central office losses that have reduced math and tech support for teachers are a mistake.
A progress report this spring showed the district partially missing interim goals, but data about the new curriculum’s pilot year was modestly encouraging. There was still a decline in student performance in the fall semester across the district, but it was less decline than in the same period the year prior.
Students in pilot classrooms last winter scored 15 points higher on a state standardized test than non-pilot students. The numbers jumped even higher for African American students — by 30 points — and for Hispanic/Latino students by 22 points. (SFUSD noted that the point scale was adjusted to account for scores across different tests.)
“The board is thrilled to be able to engage in really high-quality instructional work,” said Phil Kim, school board president and former middle school teacher. “This is a great opportunity for us to continue to articulate our commitment to excellent instruction in our classrooms.”
The San Francisco Parent Coalition, which advocated for urgent academic reform, also supports the new curriculum. Like Abernethy, the group has concerns about support for teachers, but the overhaul is a welcome change in a district that’s faced crisis after crisis in recent years. “For us this is a huge win,” said spokesperson Emily de Ayora. “It’s giving us a lot of good energy to move forward.”