At the SD Board of Education meeting in Pierre on February 23, 2026, Shannon Malone was tasked with introducing the proposed math standards to the board, but she gave the floor to Dr. Monte Meyerink from Northern State University, who presented this slide show. Dr. Meyerink, who was a member of both the Math Advisory Group and the Standards Review Committee, presented the research that he said helped inform the writing of the standards. The slide below illustrates his role in the standards revision process. His last bullet point leads to a question from me: Where is this draft standards progression document?
It isn’t in the current version of the proposed standards. It wasn’t in the first version that the Board of Education discussed at the October 15, 2025 meeting, and it isn’t in the second version that was discussed at the November 10, 2025 meeting. I would love to see the standards progression document, as would all SD math teachers. I think many teachers are concerned about vertical alignment in the proposed standards, so this document might alleviate that concern.
If you look closely at the first version and the second and third versions of the proposed standards, you might also notice that the Introduction section in the first version is now missing from the second and third versions. That introduction explained the “collaborative process” that they used for the revision process. I do have some issues with some statements in that introduction. For example, the last sentence of the second paragraph says, “This group included K–12 educators and administrators from districts across the state, as well as representatives from higher education educator preparation programs.” I have seen the email list of the people in the math advisory group, and I think that there was only ONE representative (Dr. Meyerink) from higher education educator preparation programs.
The last sentence at the bottom of the first page also caught my attention. It says, “In lieu of identifying essential standards, the Department is creating a supplemental progression document that clearly outlines the development of mathematical skills across grade levels, organized by specific concepts.” That sounds like the document that is mentioned in the last bullet on Dr. Meyerink’s slide. Where is that document? Again, I really feel like it would be helpful to all interested parties to see it, and it really should be included in the proposed standards.
It was nice to finally see the detailed list of research that Dr. Meyerink provided the group. I did read through the articles. The first three articles are all about research on math intervention techniques, primarily interventions used with students who have disabilities. This confused me because state mathematics standards are written for ALL students. I am not sure why that research would be used to write standards. The last article is about Direct Instruction (DI), and while it covers research done over 50 years (which Dr. Graves mentioned in the first hearing), those years are 1966 to 2016. Also, I am not convinced that DI is the best way for students to learn math. This quote from the article stood out to me, “…DI assumes all students can learn new material when (a) they have mastered prerequisite knowledge and skills and (b) the instruction is unambiguous.” Since COVID-19, we see many students in classrooms that have gaps in their math knowledge, so they won’t have necessarily “mastered prerequisite knowledge and skills.” This poses a huge problem for teachers across our state as they need intervention techniques that they can implement while students are learning new material.
At the October 15th hearing, Shannon Malone mentioned that the Department of Education had just received a five-year $3.7 million SPDG grant. SPDG stands for State Personnel Development Grant. These grants are awarded from the Special Education Division of the U.S. Department of Education. On the U.S. Spending website, it says that the objectives of these grants are:
To assist State educational agencies in reforming and improving their systems for personnel preparation and professional development in early intervention, educational and transition services, to improve results for children with disabilities. As used in this program, "personnel" means special education teachers, regular education teachers, principals, administrators, related services personnel, paraprofessionals, and early intervention personnel serving infants, toddlers, preschoolers, or children with disabilities, except where a particular category of personnel, such as related services personnel, is identified.
So, the grant that they say will help implement the proposed standards is a special education grant. Dr. Meyerink’s research on intervention techniques now makes more sense. Now, my hard question is: How is this all related to the Standards Revision?
I want to remind everyone of the Goal of the Math Standards stated in the Board of Education Hearing, shown in the image below. We want ALL SD students to be mathematically proficient and able to problem-solve, think critically, communicate, and reason. I feel strongly that our current standards do that.
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