The Milwaukee Teacher Who Spent Twenty Years Building a Creative Education Movement Nobody Noticed — Until Now

About twenty kindergarten and elementary teachers crammed into a third-floor classroom at Milwaukee’s North Division High School on a steamy afternoon in late June. The air conditioner was having trouble. It didn’t seem to bother anyone. They were too engrossed in a fractions lesson. Not because they had to. For some reason, math was making sense for the first time in many of their careers.

It wasn’t an accident. It was the result of decades of quiet, unyielding, and frequently unappreciated work by a professor by the name of DeAnn Huinker, a woman who dedicated the majority of her career to fixing something that the majority of powerful people refused to acknowledge was flawed.
Huinker, a professor of math education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, had spent years witnessing the district’s pupils lag behind in math—not because the kids weren’t talented, but rather because the teachers weren’t given the resources they needed to truly comprehend what they were teaching. The fact that we send adults into classrooms to explain ideas they were never taught properly and then act perplexed when students don’t learn is an unsettling reality of American education. When Huinker realized this, she made the decision to take it seriously in the early 2000s.

She received a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation in 2003, which at the time was the largest in the university’s history, to establish the Milwaukee Mathematics Partnership. Bringing university math experts into direct collaboration with classroom teachers, allowing teachers to participate in training design, creating feedback loops that truly work, and preventing district politics from consuming funds are all ideas that seem almost too good to be true. It turned out to be more significant than it sounds because Huinker was in charge of the funding herself. Districts with limited resources have a method of identifying conflicting emergencies.

The years that followed, roughly from 2004 to 2014, are now referred to by seasoned Milwaukee educators as the “golden years.” There are 120 math teacher leaders dispersed throughout the district’s schools. Test results increased. Proficiency increased. One school saw a 40 percentage point increase in math proficiency, despite the fact that 98% of its students came from low-income families. People began traveling from all over the nation to observe Milwaukee Public Schools. If this had persisted, the city’s current relationship with public education might be very different.

But it didn’t go on. The collaboration with the university ended in 2014 when a new superintendent took office with different priorities. Surprisingly, considering how long it had taken to create what was there, the end arrived quickly. In the words of one of the first teacher leaders, Beth Schefelker, who had spent years negotiating doubtful principals and uncooperative administrators: “They broke it.” Threading that needle required years of labor. Unraveling it took months.

Public schools are susceptible to a specific type of institutional amnesia. Within a few years, a program vanishes, the leadership shifts, and even the building’s remaining employees are unsure of what was lost and why. That’s what took place in Milwaukee. Currently, 41% of students in the state are proficient in math, while only 12% of students in the district are. One former colleague referred to Milwaukee’s math instruction as the “crown jewel,” but it has become silent.

When viewing this story from a distance, it’s remarkable how recognizable the pattern seems. A teacher or researcher fights bureaucratic indifference at every turn while creating something truly effective, frequently with little acknowledgment. It functions. Then years of meticulous work are abandoned because institutional priorities change, funding stops, or a new leader wants to put their own stamp on things. It’s not just Milwaukee. In American public education, it’s practically a tradition.

Huinker never gave up. After the partnership ended, she continued to work with district teachers, training the next generation of math teachers, finding small funding sources, and maintaining the methods in some areas of the school system. Open forums, content-focused learning, and teachers teaching teachers are all features of the current early childhood education sessions. Kayla Thuemler, a first-grade teacher who had always claimed to detest math, discovered that she was actually enjoying a fractions lesson with a number line. She asked her coworkers, half laughing, “Why am I enjoying myself right now?”

Even though it’s a straightforward question, it’s probably the best thing that can happen during a professional development session. It indicates that a genuine message was received. It’s still unclear if the district has the financial means or stable leadership to rebuild what was lost on a large scale. However, those who were present during the heyday of the building are still there, sharing their knowledge. That’s something, at least.