You may recall that last year the St. Tammany Parish school board voted unanimously on a resolution urging the state of Louisiana to reject Common Core. Almost one full year later the same board voted last week to dump Common Core-aligned math curriculum.
It will phased out over the course of the school year.
“We’re going to phase out the Eureka Math from the math curriculum by the end of this school year,” said School Board President Beth Heintz.
While a number of educators and others urged the board to give Eureka Math more time to work, a large and vocal contingent of parents just wanted it gone.
Over recent months concerned parents have echoed similar sentiments.
Said one parent, “I have a child who is very discouraged, who has always been a good student in math and between my husband and I we have three college degrees, we have to Google to figure out what we’re supposed to help our child with.”
“We have listened to our parents,” said Heintz. ” We realize that they do not care for the Eureka Math curriculum. I know that many of our teachers have listened to that. I’m sure they will keep that in their minds when choosing the curriculum they want to use in their classrooms.”
Already the black line master work sheets that students use online with Eureka have been deleted. The school system will now create work sheets of their own to replace the Eureka element.
The system is already moving to purchase textbooks that will likely be in St. Tammany classrooms after the first of the year. That is also a process.
“We look at text books that are available to us. We see if they are aligned to our curriculum,” said Heintz. “We get parental input. We get teacher input, and thoroughly review the textbooks before they are chosen.”
Eureka Math was only a portion of St. Tammany’s overall math curriculum. Heintz said teachers will now be assessing their students to see where they are and what they need to learn, and then they’ll chose curriculum that will allow them to move forward.
Parents… you do make a difference. School board members are accountable to you.