The “Greater Math in North Dakota” program is providing $500,000 in grants to improve mathematics instruction and learning in North Dakota schools.
Brooklyn Schaan is a program administrator in academic support at the department of public instruction. She says the program is designed to help teachers remedy learning gaps in students’ math knowledge. Schaan says many North Dakota students don’t have strong foundations in basic math skills.
"Right now, especially with our recent data with our state assessment, the students are only 39% proficient in the area of math. What we know with math, is that math relies heavily on students mastering certain foundation skills to build upon each year. Students aren't mastering those, so the problems in the skills that they're having is kind of exasperated."
The Greater Math in North Dakota program will be focused on math instruction in grades 3 to 8.
"This grant is different because it focuses on the instructional practices of educators. By helping our educators learn strategies and different evidence-based practices, we can affect our students. For a lot of our grants, we focus more on just our student needs and outcomes, and not focusing on the instructor or helping the educator to meet those needs."