Two years in, the gains keep coming. For schools in Bentonville, Arkansas, the hard work has paid off.
Students in grades PreK–4 have used Eureka Math² since the 2024–2025 school year. Students in 3rd and 4th grades are among those who take end-of-year state tests, and their proficiency rates on the Arkansas math assessment grew by nearly nine percentage points in the curriculum’s first year, going from 59.1% to 68% scoring at the proficient level on the ATLAS math assessment between spring 2024 and spring 2025.
That momentum has carried into year two. 3rd and 4th grade proficiency rates climbed another four percentage points, from 68% to 72%, between spring 2025 and spring 2026.
Younger students are showing similar momentum. K–2 students’ proficiency rates on the ATLAS math assessment grew by three percentage points, from 74% to 77%, between spring 2025 and spring 2026. As more cohorts move through Eureka Math² starting in PreK, that early foundation can help support gains in grades 3–4 and beyond.
Behind these results is a curriculum built with teachers in mind. "The teacher friendliness, the usability of Eureka Math² is what really made it rise to the top," said Cleveland. "It’s structured in a way that the teacher can pick it up and look at a lesson and use it.”
Cleveland pointed to hard work by teachers and a commitment to usage as the drivers of the district’s sustained progress. Bentonville holds high expectations around implementation and use of the curriculum, and classroom walkthroughs confirm teachers are meeting them: “There's no question when I walk into a classroom, I’ll see Eureka Math² being used," said Cleveland.
But Cleveland cautions others interested in learning from Bentonville's experience to recognize that curriculum requirements on teachers should come with strong support for them.
"Administrators have to give more than lip service. They’ve got to support teachers in answering questions they have. It can't just be telling them to use Eureka Math² but should also include showing them what that looks like and offering to help," said Cleveland.
Another part of the district's success stems from having math coaches throughout schools. She said coaching is particularly important since today's high-quality math instruction typically looks different from the math instruction teachers themselves had or previously taught. For example, it emphasizes conceptual development and procedural fluency. That focus on conceptual development over rote memorization is new for many educators.
Cleveland said the curriculum itself also builds in room for teachers to adapt. Eureka Math² includes fewer lessons than there are school days, creating opportunities for teachers to slow down, revisit concepts, or bring in additional support when their students need it. Once teachers understood the underlying content and learning goals, they were encouraged to treat lessons as a guide rather than a script, adapting to their students’ needs as they went.
“We had commitment, leadership support, coaching, and responsiveness,” said Cleveland. “These are the keys that really helped us have a successful implementation.”
Arkansas leaders, like many around the country, are focused on ensuring struggling learners get the support they need and continue to make up more ground. Cleveland said she believes the math curriculum will help with that goal. She said embedded resources, such as UDL callout boxes in the teacher workbook, which are aimed at making the curriculum inclusive, are especially helpful.
The district is also emphasizing cognitively guided instruction, in which math teachers build on students' prior knowledge and emphasize intuitive approaches to problem solving by asking students questions, listening, and engaging with their thinking. Cleveland said pairing that with HQIM has resulted in more discussion and better results in math class.
At the end of the day, Cleveland said she credits Bentonville's teachers for helping students grow so much over these two years. She and other administrators have walked through classrooms on several occasions to assess how implementation was going. "They wanted to do their very best on day one, and they wanted students to do their best," said Cleveland.