Errors in math materials frustrate teachers

To an outsider, this looks like an unusual lesson. Fifth-graders at Harbor View Elementary School in Newport Beach are sketching rectangles to parse a story problem involving mangoes and fruit cups.

It’s a visual lesson meant to teach a deeper understanding of math that goes beyond rote memorization — a strategy embedded in Common Core, new learning standards that most states have adopted.

Implementing these standards isn’t easy. Compounding the problem is the curriculum being used in Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s 22 elementary schools. It has left some teachers frustrated.

The district purchased educational materials created by Cypress-based Swun Math, a private company, but they contain errors and typos, teachers have said.

“The errors are well documented,” Carolyn Prough, a fifth-grade teacher at Newport Coast Elementary, said at a school board study session Feb. 10. Prough told the board that a district administrator asked her to email every time she found an error.

“Every single one of you should know that there are gaping holes in this program, errors throughout the materials.”

The stakes are particularly high now, with students sitting down for their first Common Core tests in April.

“So we are left with a product that does a horrible job of teaching the Common Core,” Prough told the board.

About the errors, Susan Astarita, the assistant superintendent of elementary education, said: “It’s troublesome to teachers, I get that. We’re doing everything we can to correct it.”

Earlier this month, at the district’s request, a panel of 11 teachers began performing what administrators describe as “edits” to the Swun materials, placing teachers in the uncommon position of fixing the contractor’s mistakes.

But the remedy frustrates the head of the teacher’s union.

“We already paid for this. We should not have to fix something we already paid for,” Kimberly Claytor, president of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers, said after a school board meeting earlier this month.

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Math That is Just Wrong

The district chose Swun in 2013 because it offered a consistent, step-by-step process for teaching and excellent coaching and professional development, according to Kurt Suhr, director of elementary education at the district. And the Lennox School District, where Newport-Mesa Supt. Fred Navarro previously served as superintendent, had used Swun Math.

Suhr said the $1.89-million cost of three years of Swun Math was far cheaper than textbooks. The math program uses workbooks instead of traditional textbooks.

Swun Math is known as a professional development company. Carrie Mitchell, Swun Math program director, said the Common Core math curriculum is new for the company and it is vetted through a “rigorous” process. She said that when the company finds errors and typos, it posts the corrected curriculum on its website.

When asked why the rigorous process didn’t ferret out typos and errors, she replied, the teachers “found things that we needed to change.” She also referenced a recent story on TheAtlantic.com describing Swun Math as “a widely praised program.”

Mitchell said Lennox, Compton Unified and Monrovia Unified school districts are using the same curriculum as Newport-Mesa and are very happy. Those districts have not reported errors, she said.

Second-grade teacher Audrey Woolfolk is on the 11-person team correcting the Swun Math curriculum for Newport-Mesa Unified and said she found errors “all the time” and math that “is just wrong.” Earlier this month, she corrected instructions for a second-grade test that said a cube has eight angles — the wrong answer.

“Well no, a cube has 24 angles. It has eight vertices,” Woolfolk said. “That’s just bad math.”

Woolfolk teaches at Wilson Elementary, which was among the three schools to adopt Swun Math early on as a pilot project. All Newport-Mesa elementary schools are now using Swun Math in kindergarten through sixth grade.

“In some ways it’s good for kids to see that people make mistakes,” Woolfolk said, “but the part that bothers me the most is the math errors that people may not realize are actual math errors.”

Paying teachers like Woolfolk to make the corrections will cost the district an estimated $3,300 this trimester, Suhr said. The teachers are doing this work outside of their regular teaching schedule.

District officials said in an email that Swun Math has reimbursed the district $16,000 for materials that needed to be reprinted.

Kathleen Atkins, who is also with Swun, said even textbooks contain errors. “It just happens,” she said.

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Making it work

On a recent morning at Harbor View Elementary School, Matilda Lapin sketched out a division problem in a Swun Math workbook.

The fifth-grader said she likes using the workbook. She likes showing how she arrived at an answer — another Common Core requirement.

“It helps me to see more clearly and see the steps,” said Lapin, 10.

“What we’re asking them now is to look deeper so they can explain why three times four works as 12,” said Lapin’s teacher, Season Leech, a 15-year teaching veteran.

“It’s so they can visualize what math is,” Leech said. “It’s not just about getting the right answer. It’s about how you got there.”

Harbor View Principal Todd Schmidt credited the teachers at the school for turning typos in Swun Math into “teachable moments.”

“It would be easy to blame Swun for everything,” he said, “but the Common Core has made this more challenging.”

But school board Trustee Karen Yelsey seemed to sum up the crux of the issue at a Feb. 23 study session when she asked: Why are teachers fixing a consultant’s problems?

“I think the frustration is we shouldn’t have our teachers correcting the problems,” she said. “We should have them correcting the problems.”