Shifting to a vision of focused, coherent, and rigorous mathematics for every student

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS-M) shift the traditional vision of what constitutes an excellent mathematics program. This shift emphasizes teaching for a balance of conceptual understanding and procedural fluency over teaching with an emphasis on procedures; making sense of and persevering on challenging, open-ended problems over short, closed exercises; solving a variety of types of performance tasks to assess understanding over multiple choice questions; and working collaboratively to construct mathematical understandings and build mathematical arguments over working in isolation. Educators throughout the district have already begun to shift to this new vision of mathematics. Our work now is to scale up this program to implement it in all schools.