A pair of new materials under consideration by the Anoka-Hennepin School District failed to pass on July 15 on a 3-3 tie vote. Board members Matt Audette, Linda Hoekman and Zach Arco voted down the new high school physics textbook on the grounds that supplemental district documents did not show enough “rigor” in the source material. A social studies textbook also failed for the lack of a motion.
“I made as good a faith effort as I possibly could to review all the curriculum,” Arco said. “The books are largely OK in my opinion. My consternation, again, comes with how some of the UbDs are done. I think it’s just important for these UbDs to incorporate the feedback this board now has to offer. I think we can get on track to get these as soon as possible.”
UbDs, or Understanding by Design documents, are a widely used teaching framework that tasks teachers with identifying desired learning results first, then working backwards to find out how to use the material to achieve that result.
Arco, Hoekman, and Board Member Kacy Deschene were voted onto the board in November of 2023, while the textbooks were in the middle of their piloting process.
AHSD Director of Secondary Curriculum Dr. Nichole Rens shared a bit about the process with the board on July 15.
“In 2019, the Anoka-Hennepin Science Study Committee began working with new Minnesota standards and how to implement them in the district,” Rens said. “As part of the work of the study committee, they’ve identified how to update our curricular materials — we’re looking now at (currently owned) physics textbooks that are 19-years-old.”
District staff recommended the purchase of Experience Physics, published by Savvas for $176,327. That includes $50,000 worth of equipment for hands-on lab work. The purchase was factored into the recently passed budget.
Assistant Superintendent Dr. Joshua Delich also presented alternatives to the board rather than buying new textbooks, including continuing to use the current books that have a 2005 copyright and no online supplemental content, as is common with current textbooks.
“Core physics concepts have not changed in that time, but the applications of them are significantly different,” Delich said, pointing out that the first iPhone did not come out until 2007.
Arco inquired what the differences between the old and new standards — adopted by the Minnesota legislature in 2023 and are required to be implemented by the 2026-2027 school year — were and how the new materials would reflect that. Delich said that he would try to give a “high level” overview of them.
“The standards are additive, we’re not lessening from previous standards to the new,” Delich said. “As standards are enacted within any state, they’re going to look at how it fits and how to continue to drive rigor in teaching and create a tightness with level of relevance and what is actually going on with learners, what the best practice and research is saying.”
Rens said elsewhere in the meeting that the new standards and materials would be more application and “phenomena” based, with students being presented with questions and tasked to find the answers rather than getting the answers from teachers right away.
“Our district tries to get textbooks of relevance that would support the learning of today and redevelop a high quality UbD that allows for high levels of teaching and learning in classrooms,” Delich said.
Audette said that he had an issue with the responses given by the piloting teachers, saying that half did not give a favorable response to the textbook. He agreed concerning UbDs, saying he did not want the district to rush into a purchase.
“(My concern) related to UbDs (is) how do you successfully assemble this together with the new standards?” Audette said. “With the new book — that those who piloted had some strong disagreement with the quality — we land in a place now where we’re like, ‘Geez, we’d better buy something, it’s getting late.’ I haven’t been able to fix those things in my mind.”
Rens said that the smaller sample size for this particular pilot yielded those split results.
Superintendent Cory McIntyre said that the book was found to be the one that could best serve the classes it intends to teach.
“We know today we are preparing students for careers that do not exist (yet),” Rens said. “We have to prepare students to be critical thinkers because the jobs don’t exist yet. The physics we are preparing them to do is not to create a helicopter that can fly in the atmosphere but a helicopter that can land on Mars with no gravity. That’s the physics we are asking them to do. Yes, it’s Newton’s laws, but it’s breaking all of them. You have to know Newton’s laws and apply them in a totally different way.”
Arco, a Mechanical Engineer in the medical industry, says he “knows physics very well” and observed a lessening of requirements from prior UbDs to the current ones. That included going from covering 11 topics to seven topics, the combining of chapters and a “shift from rigorous technical aspect to perhaps a more conceptual understanding.”
“I’m always going to stand by that we need both. I want the standard held high, I want to challenge our students,” Arco said. “The irony here is that I’m not even convinced the textbook would be problematic, but the UbDs because of what I perceive to be a lessening of the topics that we’re covering.”
Rens said that there is room to fill in gaps within the UbDs. They are “living documents,” and as they have not been used yet, the teachers will have the opportunity to add to or change them as they create lesson plans for the upcoming school year.
“As a curriculum director, I tell all my teachers, ‘You all have to be cookies on my cookie platter, you can’t be a brownie,’” Rens said. “‘You can be a chocolate chip cookie, a peanut butter cookie, a sugar cookie but we’re all starting from the same dough.’ And that dough is the UbD. What you do with that for your lesson plan is your art of teaching. There is not enough in a UbD to teach every day, it is your guiding document.”
Rens said she was not sure “how many districts have 20-year-old textbooks in their classrooms.” She said that textbooks are usually on a seven to 10 year replacement timeline even if state standards don’t change, and she is not sure why these textbooks are so far behind that timeline.
“I would encourage you not to read UbDs and judge the rigor and excellence that’s happening in classrooms based on words on paper without visiting those classrooms and seeing what’s happening in there,” Rens said. “Words on paper will tell you one thing, but what our excellent teachers are doing in the classroom can’t be conveyed on paper.”
Board Member Jeff Simon offered a compromise whereby the textbooks would be purchased so teachers can start working with the new material prior to the school year, and UbDs and course rigor would continue to be discussed at the board level.
“Tonight, I don’t think I’d be able to vote yes on it,” Arco said. “I would need time to sift through what that compromise was. ”
McIntyre said that with the next scheduled school board meeting coming in August a week before the school year starts, it would most likely come back to the board next spring. The board motioned to pass the purchase without any additional amendments.
“So without making an amended motion, what we are saying here as a board tonight’s that we would like our district to continue using nearly 20-year-old textbooks and adopt new UbDs in the next month and a half before school begins using the old materials for this coming school year students in honors and standard physics,” Board Member Kacy Deschene said. “Is that correct?”
Before the 3-3 vote that denied the purchase of new textbooks, Simon offered that if Arco could get his concerns answered in a timely fashion, the board could call an extra meeting to purchase the books in time for the next school year.
“(Arco) had some very specific questions that, I agree, have not been answered,” Simon said. “I would say to administration, ‘I know you’re saying if it’s not done tonight it can’t be done for a year, I get that timing.’ But I would say if those questions can be answered for an individual board member, and if we get to the point where four say, ‘Now I get behind it,’ we can always do a quick board meeting to get people back in for a vote.”
Social Studies purchase fails without motion
The purchase of a national Geographic U.S. History seventh grade textbook failed on a lack of motion over some of the same concerns. In addition, the board voiced objections in the past over upcoming Ethnic Studies standards that must, per the state of Minnesota, be implemented by the 26-27 school year.
Associate Superintendent for Middle Schools Becky Brodeur presented a version of the resolution to purchase textbooks that would also put a hold on “Strand Five,” the state standards pertaining to Ethnic Studies, until the 26-27 deadline.
The current textbooks in use in seventh grade classrooms are 11 years old, do not have a 1:1 ratio for each student to be issued a textbook and have electronic materials whose access expired on June 30. The district has the option to extend their subscription by another year, Brodeur said.
“At the moment, I don’t feel comfortable purchasing these, so I’m going to vote no,” Arco said. “I can’t seem to separate, despite whoever explains it, the textbooks from the UbDs. Even if the textbooks are largely OK, they are integrally tied to the UbDs.”
Audette recommended that the district write UbDs first and then buy textbooks after the district has them in place.
“When we’re talking about UbD documents, you can’t write them without the materials and the standards, as Dr. Rens said previously,” Brodeur said. “I’m not sure we can meet your needs to write UbD documents without the materials.”
McIntyre offered the board some considerations as both purchases failed to pass. The district will have to retool its plans to implement new materials in 11 courses by the 2026-2027 school year, and the budget cutting process that starts this upcoming school year will have to be taken into account. He also hoped that prior discussions surrounding the Curriculum Instruction Assessment Committee would help identify a faster process.
“There’s going to be a number of pressure points,” McIntyre said. “I’m going to need your help. A month ago we asked for your feedback after reviewing those things and we really didn’t get much feedback. So that’s why we brought this here. We have some process work to do together, which I look forward to, because I think we can get there together.”
- Ian Wreisner can be reached at Ian.Wreisner@apgecm.com
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