Fixing Teacher Training: A Florida EdTech Experiment

GAINESVILLE, FL – July 28, 2026

It’s one of the most persistent and costly failures in American education, a multi-billion-dollar expenditure with notoriously poor returns. Traditional teacher professional development (PD), often delivered in one-off workshops disconnected from classroom realities, has long been criticized for its ineffectiveness. Now, a unique partnership in Florida between EdTech firm Kiddom and the University of Florida Lastinger Center for Learning is testing a quiet but potentially revolutionary fix: what if training wasn’t a separate event, but an integrated feature of a teacher’s daily workflow?

This fall, a cohort of Florida middle school math teachers will participate in a research study that embeds “bite-sized” professional learning resources directly into their digital curriculum. The initiative, supported by a competitive research grant, examines a simple but profound question: does changing the timing and placement of professional support transform how teachers teach and how students learn? The answer could validate a new model of operational innovation for the entire education sector, one that aims to solve the twin crises of teacher burnout and stagnant student achievement by fixing the broken system of professional growth.

The Anatomy of a Broken System

For decades, the standard model for teacher training has been the after-school or summer workshop. While well-intentioned, this “sit-and-get” approach is widely seen as flawed. Research from organizations like the Learning Policy Institute consistently shows that such training is often too generic, too passive, and too far removed from the specific challenges teachers face daily. It treats educators as passive recipients of information rather than active professionals solving complex problems.

This disconnect has tangible consequences. When PD fails to provide practical, sustained support, teachers are left to translate abstract theories into classroom practice on their own. This contributes to frustration and burnout, fueling a teacher turnover crisis that costs the nation’s school districts an estimated $8 billion annually. The system spends vast sums on training that doesn’t stick, then spends even more to replace the teachers who leave.

Effective professional development, as defined by decades of research, looks starkly different. It is content-focused, job-embedded, collaborative, and sustained over time. It involves active learning, coaching, and feedback. The challenge has always been one of scale and logistics. How can a district provide such personalized, ongoing support to hundreds or thousands of teachers? This is the operational knot the Kiddom-UF Lastinger Center partnership aims to untie.

An Operational Fix: Integrating Support into Workflow

The collaboration’s core innovation lies in its delivery mechanism. Instead of pulling teachers out of their classrooms for training, the study weaves instructional support directly into Kiddom’s digital math curriculum, which is aligned with Florida’s B.E.S.T. (Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking) standards. As a teacher prepares a lesson on, for example, proportional relationships, the platform will surface relevant, point-of-need resources developed by the UF Lastinger Center.

These are not dense academic papers but practical, “bite-sized” tools: short exemplar videos, ready-to-use facilitation guides, and classroom resources. The design centers teacher judgment, providing support without prescribing a rigid script.

"Teachers work hard enough. They shouldn't have to switch between separate systems to do the critical work of lesson planning, delivery, and grading," said Abbas Manjee, Co-founder and Chief Academic Officer at Kiddom. "If integrated point-of-need support helps teachers make stronger decisions, that is a finding the whole field can use."

The content of these embedded supports is just as important as their placement. The resources are designed to help teachers implement the Math Language Routines (MLRs), a set of instructional practices developed at Stanford University. MLRs are structured routines that amplify, assess, and develop students' language for mathematical reasoning. They provide scaffolds for students to engage in rich mathematical conversations, moving beyond simple answer-getting to deep conceptual understanding.

"Math Language Routines are critical for building students' mathematical communication skills alongside core mathematical concepts," explained Zandra De Araujo, Director of Mathematics at the UF Lastinger Center for Learning. "We are excited to learn alongside Kiddom and to share what we find with educators as well as other researchers."

Florida's B.E.S.T. Bet on Evidence-Based Practice

The study’s focus on Florida is no accident. With the statewide adoption of the B.E.S.T. standards, which emphasize critical thinking and a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts, districts are actively seeking effective methods to support teachers in this instructional shift. This research initiative positions Florida at the forefront of testing a scalable, technology-driven solution aligned with its own educational goals.

Kiddom and the UF Lastinger Center are actively recruiting school districts to join the study, offering stipends for participating teachers and funding for partner schools to offset the costs of data-sharing and coordination. This structure underscores the project's academic rigor. It’s not a product pilot; it's a formal research study designed to produce generalizable knowledge. The findings, including a research brief and educator-validated recommendations, will be shared publicly, allowing districts across the country to benefit from the results.

This commitment to public knowledge elevates the partnership beyond a simple commercial arrangement. It represents a strategic investment in building an evidence base for what works in modern teacher development, potentially setting a new standard for how states can support educators in implementing new, more rigorous academic benchmarks.

The Strategic Partnership: EdTech Meets Academia

The collaboration is a powerful example of synergy between a nimble EdTech company and a prestigious academic research center. Kiddom provides the coherent instructional system—a scalable digital platform that can deliver curriculum and integrated support to thousands of users. The UF Lastinger Center provides the deep pedagogical expertise, the research-backed content, and the methodological rigor to validate the approach.

This model addresses a classic divide. Academic research often struggles to achieve impact at scale, while EdTech solutions can sometimes lack a strong pedagogical foundation. By combining their strengths, the partners can test a promising educational theory in a real-world environment, generating data that is both academically sound and practically relevant.

For Kiddom, a successful study offers powerful validation of its platform as more than just a content delivery system, but as a tool for professional growth. For the UF Lastinger Center, it provides a unique opportunity to see its research come to life in classrooms and to study its impact in a way that would be impossible through traditional means. The ultimate question the partnership seeks to answer is whether this new model of integrated support can finally bridge the gap between knowing what effective teaching looks like and making it a consistent reality in every classroom.