The Institute of MERIT was fortunate to have received a grant from the New York State Education Department to fully fund a three year teacher leadership program for teachers in grades K-12. This program has been funded since 1986, when Dr. Jong Pil Lee had the foresight and desire to help improve the mathematics teaching of instructors from New York City and Long Island Schools. Since that first class nearly 1500 teachers have participated at the Institute Leadership Training for Teaching Mathematics and Technology. Initially grants were only able to fund one class per year so a rotation was designed to work with Elementary teachers followed by Middle School Teachers and then High School teachers. For the past few years we have successfully been able to double our efforts and run two programs simultaneously. We are continuing to look at additional resources in order to be able to fund each of the different grade levels every year.
Unfortunately New York State Department of Education is no longer funding programs to assist teachers in improving their knowledge base, understanding and pedagogical procedures of mathematics. The result is the termination of the Institute of Leadership Training for Teachers of Mathematics and Technology.