San Francisco – Reinforcing the agency’s core commitment to developing educational innovations through research and practice, WestEd is awarded a $7.9 million discretionary, mid-phase Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant from the U.S. Department of Education to scale, establish the efficacy, and disseminate study findings of Citizen Math, a promising, practical innovation designed to improve social-emotional and math outcomes.

Citizen Math: Using Math Class to Create Informed, Thoughtful, and Productive Citizens, will engage with more than 50,000 students who are currently underserved in Grades 6 through 8. Led by WestEd Director of Mathematics Kirk Walters and WestEd Director of Learning and Technology Jodi Davenport, the five-year grant (2021-2025) will fund rigorous evaluation and innovation and lead to promising new ways to deliver innovative, high-quality educational experiences for students that lead to greater equity and opportunity in middle school and beyond.

WestEd Director of Mathematics Kirk Walters says, “This new grant will allow us to expand and further study a program that has improved social-emotional and math outcomes for students—both of which are vital for citizenship.”

“Working with rural and urban educators in Maine, West Virginia, and Chicago Public Schools, we have the chance to help students learn more math, sharpen their own thinking, and get better at listening to other points of view. This is an incredible opportunity.”

The study project will involve research partners from American Institutes for Research and Citizen Math.

WestEd is also participating in three additional projects that are awarded 2021 EIR grant funds to develop and test interventions in ways that will support substantial scaling in the field across a range of solutions. These include:

  • Recovering from COVID-Learning-Loss with a Platform to Support Human Tutoring, Assistments Foundation, Inc
  • Game On: Teaching The AP CSP Through Game Design, An Urban Arts Partnership
  • Salability, Capacity, and Learning Engagement (SCALE) for Fraction Face-Off, Southern Methodist University
  • Knowledge acquisition and transformation expansion (KATE), a scale-up grant with Texas A&M University

Since WestEd’s inception in 1966, the agency’s researchers have been conducting studies to address significant questions and issues related to teaching and learning and to human development in a range of social settings.

Operating at the intersection of research, policy, and practice, WestEd brings the methods of systematic inquiry to bear on real-world problems. A key approach to our work is a dual commitment to building the general knowledge base while supporting applied learning in local contexts.

Read more about research and practice at WestEd.

Find the full list of selected EIR grantees.

If you would like to learn more about these WesEd projects, contact Kirk Walters.