December 8, 2014
TO
LEA Superintendents
FROM
June St. Clair Atkinson
SREB MATH & LITERACY DESIGN COLLABORATIVE OPPORTUNITY
Thanks to the hard work of our educators on the initiatives funded by the Race to the Top grant, North Carolina
has made considerable progress in raising student achievement. However, the funding we’ve received from the
Race to the Top grant is ending. Fortunately, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) has secured the
resources to work with selected districts in North Carolina in a multi-year initiative to provide educators with the
knowledge and tools to meet the requirement of the new college and career-ready standards. This work will
involve providing staff development and coaching in 235 schools across the state. Over the next five years the
work will develop capacity that will enable the knowledge and tools to be spread to other schools over the next
five years. As we shared at the recent Superintendents’ Quarterly meeting, your school district is invited to learn
about and apply to participate in this important work.
Since 2011 SREB has provided both off-site staff development and school-embedded assistance in literacy and
mathematics to more than 6,000 teachers in 38 states using the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and the
Math Design Collaborative (MDC). These teachers have remarkable stories to tell about how LDC and MDC
engage and motivate students to learn and how they impact student achievement. To read their stories, see
SREB’s publication Students Step Up When Teachers and Leaders Transform Classrooms distributed at the
Superintendent’s Quarterly, or click here to access it at the SREB website.
As a participant in the college and career-ready agenda, your school district will receive weeks of training and
coaching over the next three years using proven literacy and mathematic instructional tools and strategies.
Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC)
The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) seeks to ensure that every student graduates from high school with the
literacy skills necessary for success in college and career. LDC provides a common framework upon which
teachers can individually or collaboratively build literacy-rich assignments in their content areas in ways that both
advance literacy skills and advance knowledge and understanding in the content field. The LDC approach to
planning instruction includes all content areas except math and is based on teachers engaging students in:
 regular practice with complex grade level text and its academic language;
 reading, writing and speaking grounded in evidence from text, both literary and
informational; and
 building knowledge through reading and writing about content-rich nonfiction material.
Math Design Collaborative (MDC)
The Math Design Collaborative (MDC) provides teachers not with a math curriculum but with teaching tools
called formative assessment lessons – to help them know if their students truly understand and can apply the math
standards they have been taught. Teachers learn to select and launch the appropriate formative assessment
assignments about three-quarters of the way through a unit to determine if the student can reason with
understanding to apply the math taught to solve multiple-step problems. The MDC model of instruction is based
on teachers engaging students with:
 opportunities to perform the Standards for Mathematical Practice;
OFFICE OF THE STATE SUPERINTENDENT
June St. Clair Atkinson, Ed.D., State Superintendent | jatkinson@dpi.state.nc.us
6301 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, North Carolina 27699-6301 | (919) 807-3430 | Fax (919) 807-3445
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER
SREB Math & Literacy Design Collaborative Opportunity
December 8, 2014
Page 2
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assignments that engage students in productive struggle with mathematics; and
assignments that elicit evidence of conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and application of
mathematics.
Math Design Collaborative (MDC)
The Math Design Collaborative (MDC) provides teachers not with a math curriculum but with teaching tools
called formative assessment lessons – to help them know if their students truly understand and can apply the math
standards they have been taught. Teachers learn to select and launch the appropriate formative assessment
assignments about three-quarters of the way through a unit to determine if the student can reason with
understanding to apply the math taught to solve multiple-step problems. The MDC model of instruction is based
on teachers engaging students with:
 opportunities to perform the Standards for Mathematical Practice;
 assignments that engage students in productive struggle with mathematics; and
 assignments that elicit evidence of conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and application of
mathematics.
As a consequence, teachers witness growth in students’ ability to solve problems and see significant improvement
in math achievement.
Staff Development
Selected Teacher Leaders
SREB is prepared to provide intensive training for four literacy and two math teachers per participating school,
along with a separate two-day principal training. All training is followed up with onsite visits; 24 site visits in
year one, 16 in year two and eight in year three. SREB will cover all costs of training and a portion of the cost for
substitute teachers and other expenses. Teachers selected to participate will become experts in LDC and MDC
and will be instrumental in spreading the practices to other teachers in their school.
School Leaders
For this initiative SREB will provide each participating school’s administrative team with two days of training in
practices that will support the school’s implementation of LDC and MDC. The two main topics in the leadership
training are 1) what to look for in LDC and MDC classrooms and how that aligns with the North Carolina
Continuum of Teacher Development, and 2) how to develop and support professional learning communities
around LDC and MDC. Further, principals are expected to attend each training and there will be time at each
training for a special pull-out session for school leaders.
Orientation
A three-hour orientation for invited schools and districts is planned in Durham at Durham Public Schools Staff
Development Center, 511 Cleveland Street on January 12, 2015, at 10:00 AM, and in Morganton at the North
Carolina School for the Deaf, Main Building, 517 West Fleming Drive on January 13, 2015, at 10:00 AM.
District teams should include the superintendent, the associate superintendent over Curriculum and Instruction,
and principals of high schools and middle schools that are potential participants, along with a teacher leader from
the school. Additionally, SREB is offering a 45-minute webinar each on December 11 and December 12, 2014,
from 3:00 PM – 3:45 PM to share information about the orientations. Follow this link to gain access to the
webinar.
We hope you will seriously consider accepting this invitation to attend the orientation and agree to become a
pacesetter school or district in the State of North Carolina. SREB will be a quality partner and the work builds on
and advances the work we have been doing in North Carolina.
Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to seeing you at the orientation.
JSA:MH:mw