What strategies allow all students, especially English Language Learners, to grapple with and make sense of math so that they can see themselves, and be seen, as capable and creative mathematicians?

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       This question hung in my mind as the staff of my elementary school, HTeNC, looked at Smarter Balanced Assessment data (SBAC) from the previous year. According to the data, it seemed that despite our focus on Project-Based Learning as a tool for equity in our school, students classified as English Language Learners were grossly underperforming on this standardized test. If you are like me, prior to this revelation, you might be thinking, this is one measurement of student data. Why care so much? Well, as I’ve come to find out, while many of us would argue that this is not an effective way to measure student growth, it is the main way policy makers, school board members, and parents measure the effectiveness of a school. And if we want our kids to go out into the world and compete with every other student across the globe, they need to be able to kill it in on these tests. My school, at it’s core, an equity project. So how have we let the very population of students we were striving to serve slip through the cracks?

        Let me be clear: our network of schools are vibrant hubs of teaching and learning. We use projects to allow students to engage in work that is meaningful to them in the present, not just their distant future as adults. Through these projects students become reflective and collaborative innovators, learning to think outside of the box to solve relevant problems and engage in social justice work in our communities. However, upon looking at our SBAC data, it was clear we had to look critically at the scope of our curriculum.