On Wednesday, the Albany County School District No. 1 Board voted to adopt ORIGO Stepping Stones for use in all classrooms grades kindergarten to second as the primary curriculum for teaching math. Michael Busch, a professional development specialist with the district, helped bring Stepping Stones to the district. He said at first teachers expressed concern that Stepping Stones curriculum was too advanced. What we’ve seen, however, is that students have been rising to the challenge,” Busch said. Miller said students who used the program were showing improvements on assessment tests. We have seen just this year improvements in our MAP scores, because Stepping Stones introduces some of the concepts earlier in the year,” she said. “We didn’t get to those (concepts) with our old program.” The district began looking for new math curriculum when the state adopted the Common Core State Standards in 2012.