Bellevue School District Integrated Math:

The Bellevue School District in Washington is held up as the "poster district" for success with Integrated Math. Many districts across the country, including Clayton, have emulated Bellevue's approach in using Integrated Math.

Bellevue has strongly promoted Core Plus IM but when the district analyzed their math performance using the TIMMS format in 2004, they concluded that their 11th and 12th grade students were performing at an 8th grade level, when compared to high performing nations. Consequently, Bellevue is now revamping their entire math curriculum to try to match international standards by heavily supplementing their TERC/Connected Math/CorePlus Integrated Math sequence. Bellevue scored very high on the 10th grade state math test the first time it was ever given. This is because the are a very affluent community with highly educated parents. The amount of improvement since that time has been unimpressive. In fact, if you normalize the statistics, it shows that their improvement has been worse than Seattle's scores. Bellevue does not now believe that Core Plus IM with AP Calculus is sufficient, even though they have been strong promoters of it in the past. What Bellevue is now saying is that they like discovery math, but the content of their curriculum needs to be dramatically changed. So far they have focused on K-8 and will be addressing curricula reform for high school in the coming years.

About test scores: Bellevue's SAT scores did rise from 1999 to 2005 by 10 points, but the nation as a whole went up 9 points, and one cannot be sure if this is due to real math improvements or variations in the test. Also, Bellevue's verbal SAT scores went up 27 points during that same time, while the nation as a whole only increased 3 points. So, why did Bellevue's verbal scores increase significantly more than the math scores? It is possibe that this change is more reflective of the deomographic shift that happened in Bellevue during this time. During this time Bellevue became home to many Microsoft employees and executives as Microsoft grew expolsively and brought in significant talent from other states and overseas. The influx of well educated, affluent parents and their children may account for this apparent increase.

In short, Bellevue's success is a myth based on the fact that they have a higher level of student to begin with. Bellevue's kids haven't succeeded in math because of Core Plus IM...they have succeeded despite Core Plus IM with a lot of outside help (tutoring, Kumon, parents, etc....). Bellevue switched to Core Plus IM against the teachers wishes. They put a "gag order" on the teachers and when parents tried to find out what the teachers thought of the program, teachers reported they were not allowed to talk..... Many seasoned teachers left the district, and many others were forced out. Bellevue was sued for age descrimination 3 times, and settled out of court twice.

The Bellevue Story

The Bellevue Critique