Five
Colleges Receives $300K NSF Grant
A
new, Five College-led collaboration of K–12 school districts,
higher education institutions and nonprofit organizations
has received a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation
to improve mathematics teaching in kindergarten through college
in the Pioneer
Valley.
 The Western Massachusetts Mathematics
Partnership (WMMP) is the latest project of the 27-year-old
Five College Schools Partnership. WMMP comprises seven public
school districts in western Massachusetts and mathematics
faculty members from Springfield College, Holyoke Community
College, Greenfield Community College, Western New England
University, Westfield State University and the member institutions
of Five Colleges. The SummerMath program at Mount Holyoke
and the Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology
Education (CAITE) are also participating.
While math scores
among schoolchildren from poor and minority backgrounds continue
to lag behind those of middle-class and white students in
western Massachusetts, the number of certified math teachers
coming out of local college programs is stuck in the single
digits. The WMMP will look at all aspects of the problem,
from teacher preparation and classroom instruction to professional
development, to determine where lie the best opportunities
for improvement.
The heart of the WMMP will be
five working groups, organized around curriculum, equity
and diversity, instruction and professional development,
teacher preparation and innovation. Each group will collect
and analyze information in its area over the first year.
In the second year, the working groups will develop an evidence-based
project design for improving mathematics education and preparing
new teachers.
“What’s important now is that we have in place the process for determining where
the problems are,” says Sue Thrasher, coordinator of the Five College School
Partnership. “We’ve brought together sixty people from seven school districts,
six colleges and three universities who are committed to working together to
figure this out.”
The National Science Foundation’s Math and Science Partnership program (MSP)
funds teams composed of institutions of higher education, local K–12 school systems
and their partners through competitive, merit-based grants.
Based in Amherst,
Massachusetts, Five Colleges, Inc., is a nonprofit educational
consortium created in 1965 to advance the extensive educational
and cultural objectives of its member institutions—Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges and the University
of Massachusetts Amherst.
For more information, contact
413-256-8316. |
