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Are you smarter than a NYC 6th grader? Try solving these new math curricula problems.
By
Jessica Gould
Published Apr 28, 2025
Modified Apr 28, 2025
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Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
By
Jessica Gould
Published Apr 28, 2025
Modified Apr 28, 2025
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It’s a common experience for many New York City parents. They sit down to help their kids with math homework, only to be totally flummoxed.
Part of the reason is math instruction has undergone a generational shift. New math curricula being rolled out in the city’s school system prioritize more hands-on work using real-life examples, like recipes, often before students are explicitly taught exactly how to figure out the answer.
The goal, Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in an interview, is to develop “critical thinking skills” through “productive struggle.”
“It’s not tied to regurgitation of the content. It’s focusing on the reasoning behind the mathematical operation instead of just following the steps to arrive at the answer,” she said.
“It's very different than the way that I learned math… We’re not used to this math.”
Here are two examples of math problems sixth graders may face using one of the new curricula. Can you solve them? We showed them to Stuyvesant High School teacher Gary Rubinstein, who blogs about math education. He said he sees the value in the approach, but that some students will get frustrated.
This is a warm-up exercise for a lesson on ratios. Rubinstein said it was meant to get students counting and thinking about the proportion of each color if it is duplicated.
“The warm-up is kind of thought-provoking. Students might wonder if they should say that there are nine greens, two reds and six yellows. Or should they consider the areas? So if three greens make one red and two reds make one yellow… My sense is that they probably just want them to count the shapes… If there are three times as many yellows as reds, that will stay true even if there are multiple pictures.”
The answers are:
- 10 cups, four teaspoons.
- Three batches
- 25 cups, 10 teaspoons
- a. 30:12 (answers vary). b. Six batches.
Rubinstein saw value in using a recipe to get students doing math. But he worried this problem would prove too difficult for some students. That echoes a common criticism from some teachers about the new curricula, which they say can move too fast for some kids.
“The idea of using a recipe is solid. But these four questions could use more, as teachers say, ‘scaffolding,’ which is where you break things down into smaller steps. The first three questions are good. But then see how they jump to question four? That would lose many students. If I were doing the cookies lesson I would have about 10 questions building up to a question like number four. The way they have it, they definitely jump to the big concept too early.”
Math problems like this one will be taught in more middle schools starting next school year.
Last week, Aviles-Ramos joined Mayor Eric Adams to announce 84 middle schools will use one of three curricula to teach math, on top of the 100 already using the materials. The new curricula will eventually be taught across 589 middle schools in the city as part of Adams’ effort to improve proficiency rates that consistently show only half of students meeting expectations.
Superintendents have been asked to choose between three curricula from Illustrative Math, Amplify Desmos, and i-Ready. (The two problems above come from Illustrative Math.)
“I think the philosophy is to have students explore math concepts to give them an opportunity to figure out relationships and patterns themselves,” Rubinstein said. “All good teachers already try to do that to some degree, but this is really emphasizing this.”
In practice, though, he said, some students will need more hand-holding, or risk shutting down.
“These lessons are good as an ideal of what you might accomplish if students really enjoyed being challenged,” he said. “But unfortunately …it is also a lot more effort on the student’s part and they might not always be eager to work that hard.”
This discovery-based method has already gotten mixed reviews at the high school level with a new Algebra 1 curriculum, also from Illustrative Math. Some teachers praised the move to more hands-on learning, saying their students seemed more engaged. But others said some students were overwhelmed. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said the pacing of the new algebra course has been too fast for some kids, who often don’t have enough background knowledge to keep up. He said the coursework also didn’t align with the Algebra Regents Exam.
“Massive pieces were missing,” Mulgrew said.
He worried that the problems with algebra could also appear at the middle school level.
“Have they learned their lesson? I don’t know,” Mulgrew said of public school leaders.
Aviles-Ramos said she’s responding to the union’s concerns by having teachers adjust pacing guides and provide supplemental materials for Algebra 1, and she expects to do the same for middle schools.
“They’re right to be concerned. We have to get this right,” she said.
But she said with 50% of New York City’s middle schoolers testing proficient on state math exams last year, something had to change.
“There's a reason why we're leaning into different curricula, because our math scores are not where they need to be,” she said. “These are the steps we're taking to really address that in a very ambitious and bold way.”
Tagged
new york city
education
Jessica Gould
Jessica is the education reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Jessica reported on the shutdown and reopening of the nation’s largest school system, highlighting the unprecedented impacts on learning, health and mental health for students, staff and families. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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