A Streamlined Math Solution Brings Planning Time Down and Student Performance Up in California

With math curriculum on one platform and assessment on another, teachers in the Liberty Elementary School District in Tulare, California, struggled to connect data to instruction and spent hours creating their own resources. 

“We were jumping from platform to platform, trying to make it work for our students,” says Lisa Nelson, the district’s learning director. “It really made our job a lot harder.”

The district now uses a streamlined curriculum with easy access to performance data (goodbye, multiple platforms!), allowing teachers the time to focus on each student’s unique needs. They chose HMH Performance Suite because it brings together on one platform high-quality math curriculum (in this case, Into Math), the most accurate assessments available (NWEA’s MAP Growth), and planning tools that free up teachers’ time.

“Honestly, I was skeptical at first,” says Kayla Govea, a kindergarten teacher for Liberty School District. “We go through different programs all the time. But then I tried it and I thought, ‘I could totally do this. It’s amazing.’” 

Lessons tailored to each student’s needs

Combing through data and using it to build lessons tailored to each student’s needs can be an overwhelming task. But Performance Suite does the heavy lifting for teachers. It can provide a comprehensive view of student performance, create groups instantaneously, and suggest resources to revisit concepts or skills that students need to work on.

“I'm not having to go through all the assessment scores to group students,” says Miranda Evans, a second-grade teacher for Liberty School District. “The program makes groups for me based on the latest data, so I know which students I need to pull aside for extra help.”

The program can provide teaching resources for students in Evans’s class who are struggling as well as for those who surpassed the lesson’s objective. Those ready for an extra challenge can do an interactive lesson on the computer while Evans works with a small group to reteach a concept.

“The resources are provided for me right there,” she says, “so I don’t have to go into different parts of the program and look for them myself.” 

Nikki Van Dusen, a seventh-grade teacher for Liberty School District, centers every lesson around data. She always wraps up with the embedded check for understanding. The results determine what she teaches the next day. 

“If students are in the orange to green, that means they’re on track so I can review and move on,” says Van Dusen. “Or I might see that we struggled and I need to stop and redo a lesson because the way I taught it wasn’t working.”

‘Bumping up the rigor’ in math class

Teachers have found that the way vocabulary is integrated in Into Math lessons encourages deep understanding. The program guides teachers to introduce key terms that later pop up in real-world problems, ensuring retention. 

“Our students are comfortable with the mathematical vocabulary and using the terminology that's embedded within the lessons,” says Nelson. “It's bumping up the rigor for our students.” 

Evans agrees that the academic language embedded in Into Math lessons is a lot stronger than with their previous math curriculum. Now during lessons with her second-graders, for instance, she hears them using math vocabulary fluently. They’ll say things like, “These are addends.” “These are base-10 blocks.” “I need my counters.” “Wow, you did that using place value.”

That fluency has given students the confidence to talk about math more freely and take more risks with their learning. In Marisa Sanders’s fourth-grade classroom, students will talk through how they solved a problem without feeling intimidated by classmates who may have arrived at a solution in a different way. This wasn’t always the case. 

“At first, kids were more reluctant to share their thinking with the class, where now they’re seeing that it's okay to talk through mistakes,” Sanders says. “If we're wrong, we need to talk about it so that we can help each other fix it.”

More math success with less work

Starting any new curriculum or integrating new teaching tools can be daunting. “But once you get used to [Performance Suite], it has all the resources for you where you're literally working less,” says Lisa Nelson.

Teachers have said as much to Nelson. They tell her they’re spending less time on planning because of all the ready-made lessons available to them. “They're seeing that they're saving time in the classroom, which leaves time that they may not have had prior to Performance Suite for those small-group interventions,” says Nelson.

Liberty's success is especially promising considering that this is their first year using Performance Suite with Into Math. District leaders are still collecting formal data, but early evidence points to significant student gains.

“The data that we're seeing from Performance Suite is astronomical,” says Nelson. “We're seeing a huge increase in student scores and understanding of the math.”

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Explore how HMH Performance Suite's seamless integration of curriculum and assessment allows teachers to determine students' next steps with confidence.