Dos Pueblos High School is introducing a new math curriculum, Amplify Desmos Math (ADM), which “enhances” the interactivity of math assignments by allowing teachers to manipulate and change graphs during lessons.

“The curriculum has a lot of really cool activities and really interactive and explorative things that are all positive,” said Alisa Block, DPHS Math 1 teacher.

During the November 18 board meeting, the Santa Barbara Unified School District decided to implement ADM for all high schools in the district, and Sonia Wilson, the SBUSD Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services, oversees the ADM process.

“We had a team of teachers, teacher leads, and a committee that worked on this adoption,” Wilson said. “They met to define the purpose of the adoption, and it was really driven by the state of the data and how students were performing.”

In the 2024-25 school year, the ADM curriculum was also incorporated at the eighth-grade level, following SBUSD seventh-grade classes.

“We did see positive growth at the junior high level in both seventh and eighth grade,” Wilson said. “We believe we will continue to see positive outcomes as we have moved into the Math 1 space this year.”

This is the first year that the new curriculum is being implemented in high schools across the district, and DPHS teachers are working to include ADM in their Math 1 classes.

“The curriculum has a lot of really cool activities and really interactive and explorative things that are all positive,” Block said. “I do have a lot of activities that I genuinely enjoy and see the students working together on.”

SBUSD hopes to raise test scores and align lesson plans across the district with ADM. According to Wilson, the ADM goal is to increase students meeting or exceeding the math standards.

“I think the main hope was that we would grow math skills in our students, and we would see our math scores rise when it comes to the big CASPP tests,” DPHS Assistant Principal Melissa Ewart said.

Ewart said if the new Math 1 curriculum is successful this year, ADM will continue to be implemented in the remaining high school math classes across the district.

“So there are plans to get them [teachers] on board and familiar with the curriculum this spring, in case that it comes and is ready to go in May,” Ewart said. “So that’s our goal is if the company can have all the curriculum ready to go for math two.”