After more than a month, Newman Crows-Landing Unified School District Board of Trustees approved Amplify Desmos Math as the math curriculum for seventh and eighth graders on Monday.

The curriculum will now be for K-8 and will go into effect in August. Last month, the board approved Amplify Desmos for TK-6 and California Reveal Math for ninth through 12th grade.

The decision was made after instructors used both programs, where they gave feedback and decided which of the two they preferred, according to NCLUSD’s Director of Curriculum and Learning Heather Vargas. K-12 math classes were a part of a pilot process where instructors used material tailored to a curriculum.

She added seventh and eighth grade instructors were using California Reveal at the time. With two of four teachers unsure about the curriculum during its testing, it was crucial for the district to find the right program for grades levels that are crucial in a student’s education, Vargas said.

“We wanted to make sure and get it right because seventh and eighth grade; those are critical grades,” Vargas said.

Amplify Desmos is a digital problem-based program focused on problem-based lessons while being personalized to meet the needs of teachers and students. Lessons are structured through Proficiency Progression, a model that provides teachers an assessment on a students’ prior knowledge of grade-level learning, according to the company’s website.

In July 2023, the California Department of Education adopted the Mathematics Frameworks, which focuses on problem solving, using data and applying it in the real world, according to the framework’s documents.

The instructional material will cost NCLUSD $140,222.96 for the digital licenses and kit materials.