WAKE COUNTY - Back in 2016, Wake County schools audited 20 different schools in both English Language Arts and Math.

• Wake County Schools will continue using the MVP curriculum.
• It was first implemented over the past two years. 
• 30,000 students are currently learning through MVP but following complaints from parents and school staff, a committee was created to review it.

That audit showed 78% of high school students were meeting the Math expectations, however only 19% were doing assignments that actually aligned to state standards and less than 10% of classrooms displayed standards for mathematical practice.

“In essence, students were meeting the expectations of the assignments created for them however the students were not being exposed to the level of rigor and demand defined in the new standards and the eight mathematical practices were nearly nonexistent,” says Chief Academic Advancement Officer Dr. Edward McFarland.

And Board Chair Dr. Jim Martin points out that those audit results never “resulted in public or parental outcry, that’s concerning.”

However since that audit, a new math curriculum has been introduced and implemented over the past two years for both Math 1 and Math 2, known as Mathematics Vision Project or “MVP.”

Dr. McFarland says 30,000 students are currently learning through “MVP” but following complaints from parents, school staff created a committee to review the program this past Spring.

Parent Blain Dillard says, “We feel like we’ve not been given a fair trial of the program because Wake County hand picked the people that were on the jury.”

Dillard goes on to say “Our children, they are having difficulties doing homework because they are not taught in class. Time and time again they’re getting terrible grades on tests and the evidence is that they’re not being taught by this program.”

WCPSS received a total of 16 complaints between 8 different schools.

They say growing a new curriculum can take between 3 and 5 years.

McFarland says, “when staff initially start a curriculum they just learn the index, the pages, they’re learning to get through it. The second year they come back with a much broader range of understandings of what they need to do in the classroom, they have different experiences and so it’s important to understand this is a growing process.”

He also says “We want to get it right for their kids and so we’re going to continue working and we would like to do that cooperatively but we are certainly going to continue on the path forward doing the very best we can for our students every single day.”