About

Math Leadership Alliance (MLA) Introductory Video

The MLA initiative is a direct result of key feedback from teachers, teacher leaders, and administrators asking for a much clearer focus and aligned professional development programs for mathematics. See MLA Introduction Video for information about this exciting program.

Classroom-based Assessment

Kindergarten through Tenth Grade Assessments

Math Leadership Alliance (MLA) Informational Calendar

For a detailed calendar that includes class I.D., registration instructions, locations and special instructions regarding material to bring, see Informational Calendar.

MLA Calendar at a Glance

For a printable quick glance claendar see At a Glance.

Math Services Calendar

For the Regional Math Services calendar (Coaches Cadre) see Math Services.

Region’s Educators Launch Major Math Initiative

The start of a new school year is exciting enough…but it’s even more exciting this year as teachers and administrators from across the region have joined together to form and finance a major math initiative called the Math Leadership Alliance.  The MLA initiative is a direct result of key feedback from teachers, teacher leaders, and administrators asking for a much clearer focus and aligned professional development programs for mathematics.  Following several months of planning this past spring, twenty-two of the twenty-nine districts have agreed to formally collaborate on improving student achievement in mathematics.  Led by Superintendent John Adkins of Soap Lake, the Alliance is funded entirely by its member districts, with the intent of leveraging and sharing staff (both local and ESD expertise), teacher training, with the goal of improving mathematics achievement by 20% across all student demographics over the next three years. 

NC ESD Superintendent Rich McBride commented, “We are very excited about the potential of the Math Leadership Alliance. It is responding directly to the needs identified by teachers across our region.  It is leading edge, innovative and replicable...but most importantly, it has deep buy-in from our local districts, not only financially, but also has the significant advantage of leveraging staff training dollars, aligning materials and power standards across an entire region – actions we believe will save significant local taxpayer dollars across the over the next ten years.”

“We've also taken it one step further as a region to begin deeply imbedding our English as a Second Language, Migrant and Bilingual strategies into the Math Alliance as we already know that the strategies that help teachers reach these children are the same strategies that can help teachers with all kids,” added ESD Assistant Superintendent Cindy Duncan. 

This is further leveraged by key work building parent capacity as well as the addition of “graduation specialists” in two of our districts as a pilot project specifically targeted at increasing graduation rates within this demographic. This foundational work in the area of mathematics will develop as an important template that we can adapt to our future work in Science, as well.

Regional Math Leadership Alliance Background

Over the past two years the superintendents in NCESD intentionally changed the agenda of their monthly meetings to focus on student achievement.  They have been purposeful about becoming a collaborative learning community.  They use four guiding questions to develop the monthly agendas: 

What do we expect all students to learn and be able to do?
How will we know if they have learned it?
What do we do if students have not learned the information?
What will we do if students have learned or already know the information?

In February 2007, the superintendents asked the ESD to put together a framework for a regional model to increase student achievement in mathematics. Please see MLA Q&A for more information. For information about Power Standards see Regional Professional Learning Community in Action. See Calendar for training and events throughout the year.

North Central ESD's Superintendents' Advisory Committee has formed a Professional Learning Community to find solutions for student learning. Their latest proposal comes in the form of the Math Leadership Alliance.

Formation of the MLA

Superintendents reviewed a draft proposal at the February 1, 2007, Superintendents' Advisory Committee (SAC) meeting for establishing a Math Leadership Alliance (MLA) for districts in the North Central ESD region. The new alliance utilizes a governance structure and highly-focused approach to mathematics that has worked so successfully with the region's LASER science program.

Following the exceptional success and start-up of the region’s LASER science program last spring, the new alliance utilizes a similar governance structure and highly-focused approach to Mathematics that has worked so successfully to-date with the LASER program.

Brent Morrison, Math and Science Coordinator, and Cindy Duncan, Assistant Superintendent for North Central ESD, presented the draft proposal to the Superintendents noting: “We were charged by the superintendents in January to develop and submit a proposal that builds long-term Mathematics capacity in the region, is affordable for all of our districts, and is self sustaining, regardless of the availability of State or grant funding.”

Douglas Poole, Executive Director for Fiscal Services added, “This proposal, combined with an innovative and more equitable financing approach provides districts with affordable fees and ushers in a new era of highly-focused support for districts. At the end of the day, it’s effective for kids, it’s sustainable, it’s affordable...it’s a winning proposal all-the-way around for our owner districts.”

More information on the MLA can be obtained by calling or emailing Cindy Duncan, Assistant Superintendent, at 509.665.2651 cindyd@ncesd.org. More detailed fiscal questions or district fees can be directed to Douglas Poole at 509.665.2641 dougp@ncesd.org. Assistant Superintendent Cindy Duncan's SAC meeting presentation can be seen at MLA PowerPoint.