School-wide Lesson Study Case: Hillcrest Elementary School

Hillcrest Elementary School, in San Francisco Unified School District, began its journey of school-wide lesson study in 2016, focusing on mathematics.  Between  2016 and 2019, mathematics achievement at Hillcrest for students of color, low-income students and English learners went from below district averages to substantially above district averages.

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Hillcrest School began to build school-wide lesson study in 2016, focusing on Teaching Through Problem-solving in mathematics. Hillcrest’s growth in mathematics standardized test scores (SBAC) from 2015-19 is shown below. The black lines show SFUSD results.

*Information from the California Department of Education http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest

Hillcrest School demographics are shown below.

*Information from the Education Data Partnership http://www.ed-data.org/

 

Some distinguishing features of the school’s work include

  • Teachers conduct in-depth study of mathematical content they teach
  • Teacher-led cycles of experimentation with reflective mathematics journals, focused on sharing and spreading effective use of journals
  • After public research lessons, students use their own mathematics journals to teach small groups of outside educators how journals are used to support mathematics learning
  • Teacher leaders take part in SFUSD’s teacher fellowship program