We funded Teaching Matter’s response to learning losses in math – to create a revised “Math Matters” intervention – a customizable approach to improving mathematics instruction in selected New York City middle schools through intensive on-site coaching of teachers. The program enhances teachers’ capacity to accelerate student learning during the pandemic instead of just remediate the learning losses. Teaching Matters has been creating a “math playbook” that codifies the work done, in order to scale it to future school partners.
In its first year, Teaching Matters’ practices translated directly to student performance. Across the 4 schools, 66% of students who were not chronically absent met their expected growth target for the year (according to NWEA, the national norm pre-pandemic was 50%). In the schools that administered iReady, 22% of students who were not chronically absent performed “on grade level.” This represented a 13 percentage point increase from 9% at the start of the year.