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A County’s Implementation of the Singapore 
Math Curriculum 
The adoption in 2008 of the Singapore 
Math curriculum was mapped to the state’s 
standards in 21 elementary schools in a county 
in Georgia. Eleven schools in the county 
qualified for Title I status, reflective of settings 
where more than 70% of students attending a 
school are from low-income households. A 
school that qualifies as Title I receives federal 
funds to support the improvement of student test 
scores, prevent student drop-out, and provide 
free- and reduced-lunch programs with general 
school improvement. Thirteen of the twenty-one 
schools studied were identified Title I; fifteen of 
the schools reflected a growing English 
language learner (ELL) population of largely 
Latino students. In one school studied, 94% of 
the students were eligible for the free-and-
reduced lunch program.
Prior to implementation of the new 
mathematics curriculum, teachers and school 
administrators participated in a two-day, district-
wide training session that introduced bar 
modeling, number discs, abstract 
conceptualization, number bonds, place value, 
and manipulatives. In the first year of 
implementation, two representatives from the 
county were employed full-time to facilitate the 
rollout of the Singapore Math curriculum and 
regularly visited each school to conduct 
classroom observations, deliver mini-workshops, 
and answer curriculum questions. The county 
created a password-accessible website for 
teachers to access Singapore Math resources and 
videos to facilitate instruction and learning. In 
addition, a teacher representative in each school 
was selected to occupy the role of liaison 
between the school and county to address 

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GATEways to Teacher Education 
A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators 
VOLUME 14, ISSUE 1 
PAGE 26 
curriculum- and instruction-specific questions. 
For funding reasons, only one county 
representative was employed in the second year 
to facilitate the implementation of the 
curriculum. 
While students in Kindergarten and Grade 
1 would move into higher grade levels with a 
foundation of Singapore Math in subsequent 
years, the rollout of the new curriculum also 
occurred in grades 2, 3, and 4 in the first year of 
implementation. As a result, the Singapore Math 
curriculum was introduced as a new approach 
for students learning mathematics in the higher 
grade levels for whom a previous curriculum 
was familiar; that is, students in the higher grade 
levels would not have a spiraling Singapore 
Math curriculum as the lower grade levels would 
experience.