Math for All (MFA) is a professional learning program that helps teachers personalize high-quality, standards-based mathematics education to better meet the needs of a wide range of learners, including those with disabilities. Prior research has demonstrated Math for All’s promise for positively impacting teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and classroom practices, and students’ performance on mathematics achievement tests.

Now, funding from the U. S. Department of Education’s Education Innovation and Research Program is supporting this project to implement, test, and refine strategies for regionally expanding Math for All in a variety of settings and with diverse high-need populations in Illinois, and to build local capacity and infrastructure to support the sustainability and continued expansion of the program after this project ends.

Our scale-up strategies in this project are designed to support the depth, sustainability, spread, and shift to local ownership of Math for All. These include (1) training local staff developers and teacher leaders as facilitators of the program; (2) inclusion of school leaders in the professional learning for facilitators and teachers; and (3) integration of Math for All into the existing professional learning structures that are part of teachers’ regular work schedules. Research efforts are designed to yield formative findings to help refine the scale-up strategies, provide evidence about MFA’s effectiveness in a variety of settings and for diverse student populations, and supply information about the cost-effectiveness of the program.

We anticipate this project will result in 120 local facilitators prepared to lead Math for All professional learning, more than 600 teachers with enhanced skills to personalize rigorous mathematics instruction, and about 12,000 students with improved mathematics achievement.

EDC is collaborating with Bank Street College of Education, Deacon Hill Research Associates, Abt Associates, Teachers College, Columbia University, Chicago Public Schools, and Regional Office of Education #47 to carry out this project.