Little Lake Unified School District

Challenge:

The Little Lake City School District (LLCSD) is a K–8 public school district located in southeastern Los Angeles County, encompassing parts of Santa Fe Springs, Norwalk, and Downey. LLCSD serves nearly 4,000 students across nine schools: seven elementary schools and two middle schools.

In Fall 2022, LLCSD requested a partnership with The Curtis Center to strengthen the mathematical knowledge of its elementary and middle school faculty and support them in applying the learnings to the work of teaching. Additionally, LLCSD requested that The Curtis Center review the district’s middle school scope and sequence, identify instructional gaps, and align the work with their accelerated programs.

Action Plan:

2022-2023

  • The Curtis Center met with LLCSD’s elementary teachers for a total of 10 days to engage them inquiry-based, standards, aligned, math-practice-focused model lessons.
  • The Center met with LLCSD’s middle school teachers for a total of 5 days of scope and sequence work.

2023-2024

  • The Curtis Center continued to meet with LLCSD’s elementary teachers for 16 days and with middle school teachers for 7 days to engage them inquiry-based, standards, aligned, math-practice-focused model lessons.

2024-2025

  • The Curtis Center met with LLCSD’s elementary teachers for a total of 4 days to engage them inquiry-based, standards, aligned, math-practice-focused model lessons, while middle school teachers participated in 8 days.
  • The Center engaged two cohorts of elementary school teachers at 4 days each in the Applied Mathematics Task Development. The sessions focused on collaboratively designing and micro-piloting mathematically rigorous tasks for classroom use.

Results:

Throughout the partnership, LLCSD observed a significant improvement in student performance on the CAASPP math assessments, with an average growth of 8.76 points, representing a 27.61% increase across its Grades 3-8.

Teacher Feedback:

  • I loved the coherence of the steps in the lessons to create a unit covering data, measurement and fractions.
  • I loved the connection to the standards
  • I loved how hands on everything was. It really went through the learning process of concrete to abstract. I enjoyed it all!
  • I liked the productive struggle presented for the zero exponent and the negative exponent rules. I’d never thought of those before!
  • I loved the level of engagement and accessibility for students.
  • I loved the breakdown of the math concept in chunks to allow students to develop understanding.

95.6% of participating teachers reported an increase in both content knowledge and pedagogical skill, highlighting the impact of the professional learning initiative.