Newport-Mesa board takes step to replace controversial Swun Math for sixth grade

The Newport-Mesa Unified school board approved an agreement Tuesday that facilitates the replacement of the sixth-grade Swun Math curriculum, a controversial program critics have decried as full of errors and typos.

Under the agreement, the district will pay $10,000 to Open Up Resources, a nonprofit math education company, for teacher training and ongoing support.

Open Up Resources’ curriculum was developed by a team of K-12 teachers, mathematicians and education researchers, according to the organization’s website. For the next few months, Newport-Mesa will be testing the nonprofit’s Illustrative Mathematics program, which district teachers selected last month after examining other programs available.

After piloting Illustrative Mathematics, in 2018 the district will test another program, Middle School Math by Agile Mind, that the teachers also selected.

The board also agreed to pay the Orange County Department of Education $7,200 for four full-day training sessions for about 30 middle and high school teachers.

Newport-Mesa first introduced Swun Math in 2013. Parents and teachers later urged the school board to disregard it in favor of another Common Core-based math program.

Trustees voted in May to replace Swun Math in kindergarten through fifth grade with another curriculum that implements the Common Core standards.

Sixth-graders, however, are still using Swun. Teachers are looking to replace it with another program more aligned with seventh- and eighth-grade curriculum.

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