Math Skills Map from Montana
The Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI) in partnership with New Classrooms, is excited to announce the release of an enhanced Montana Mathematics Content Standards (2026) framework now enriched with a comprehensive, standards-aligned skills map.
This update builds directly on Montana's existing K–12 math standards, adding the granular, classroom-ready detail that educators have been asking for: a full set of foundational and grade-level skills, connected to one another through learning-progression pathways and mapped directly to standards and resources.
What changed?
The current, publicly implemented Montana Mathematics Content Standards already provided a solid backbone: 450+ standards organized across 64 domains, 7 conceptual categories, and 9 grade levels.
The new release layers a purpose-built Math Skills Map on top of that structure. The skills map helps teachers see exactly how learning builds from one grade to the next.
The map breaks down Montana's standards into individual skills–specific pieces of math learning, whether procedural, conceptual, or applied, that can be taught and assessed in a single class period.
Once a student has mastered a skill, the map shows what it unlocks next, whether that's deeper work within the same grade or more advanced content.
Every skill in the map also comes with its own teaching resources.
“Adopting Montana’s new math standards was a major step for our students, and this skill map will help make those standards actionable for teachers,” said Superintendent Hedalen. “Improving math and reading achievement is a top priority, and this is exactly the kind of instructional infrastructure our classrooms need to help every student be successful.”
Why It Matters to Educators
For classroom teachers, the skills map turns a standard into a sequence. Instead of asking "what does mastery of this standard look like, step by step?", teachers now have that breakdown ready-made including how a skill connects to what students learned the year before and what they'll need next.
“Montana is giving educators an incredible gift with this skill map,” said Joel Rose, CEO and co-founder of New Classrooms. “When paired with the state’s outstanding new math standards, this skill map gives teachers a concrete, class-by-class way to help every student reach proficiency. We’re excited for what this means for Montana’s teachers and, ultimately, for Montana’s students.”
For instructional leaders, coaches, and curriculum teams, the built in associations offer a tool for:
Vertical alignment work across grade levels, without having to hand-build a scope-and-sequence from scratch.
Targeted intervention planning, since gaps can be traced to specific prerequisite skills rather than an entire standard.
Consistent language across a district, since every skill is written and coded the same way statewide.
The new Pre-4th Grade Skills pathways is especially valuable for early literacy-in-math and intervention teams, giving a clear on-ramp into the K–8 sequence for students who need additional foundational support.
Why It Matters to EdTech Providers
The Math Skills Map was built by MTOPI in partnership with New Classrooms, a national nonprofit focused on math instruction, to complement the state's adoption of new academic math standards.
They partnered to leverage the state’s CASE publishing tool to build the Math Skills map using the CASE (Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange) format and made it all publicly available through Montana's Satchel instance and the Satchel Rosetta Exchange.
Making the skills map available in an interoperable and accessible format means that curriculum publishers, adaptive learning platforms, and assessment providers can now:
Align content and items at the skill level, not just the standard level, enabling far more precise tagging, reporting, and gap analysis.
Build or refine adaptive learning pathways using the pre-built "precedes" progression data, rather than reverse-engineering a skill sequence from the standards alone.
Support accurate crosswalks and reporting for Montana districts, with a machine-readable, interoperable structure that plugs directly into existing CASE-compatible systems.
This is the kind of structured, relationship-rich metadata that makes it possible to build genuinely responsive tools like AI tools that recommend the right next skill, dashboards that show true prerequisite gaps, and curriculum maps that stay in sync with the state's official standards.
Explore the New Skills Map
The updated Montana Mathematics Content Standards (2026), with the full Math Skills Map integrated, is now publicly available:
Montana’s CASE Publishing Tool (free and open access for Montana educators, schools, districts, and vendors via Satchel)
Satchel Rosetta Exchange (international hub for CASE, give back contribution required for companies but free for educators)
We're grateful to the Montana Office of Public Instruction for their vision and New Classroom’s partnership in bringing this project to life, and we're excited to have even played a small role in getting this into the hands of educators, instructional leaders, and edtech partners across the state.
