As founder and former chief executive of Costa Mesa’s FileNet Corp., Ted Smith sold software to big banks, insurance companies and the rest of Corporate America.
Smith left FileNet, now part of IBM Corp., in the 1990s. But he’s still pushing software.
He’s chief executive of Santa Ana’s Mind Research Institute, a nonprofit that seeks to get schools to use its learning software to boost math and science education.
The challenge is as hard as anything Smith faced at FileNet, he said. Educators know they need help, but change doesn’t always come easy, he said.
Then there’s the scope of the problem.
The U.S. is 24th in math skills out of 30 industrialized nations, according to Smith.
“That’s incredibly low,” he said. “It’s shocking.”
And the number of engineers America graduates falls every year, Smith said.
Mind Research Institute hopes to boost math and science education by providing schools with software that uses animated representations of math concepts to help kids develop “spatial-temporal reasoning,” or the ability to think in time and space.
The nonprofit has spent the past decade urging public schools in Orange County and throughout the U.S. to use its software.
In the past three years, Mind has grown users from 4,100 students in 30 schools to 70,000 students in 400 schools in 19 states.
“Schools are looking for a solution that can help our children really understand math,” Smith said.
Executive Backers
Besides Smith, Mind has attracted some big backers, including Broadcom Corp.’s Henry Samueli, Paul Folino of Emulex Corp. and Jim Mazzo of Advanced Medical Optics Inc.
Employers are concerned about shrinking math skills, said Folino, chairman of Costa Mesa-based networking electronics maker Emulex.
“One of the most challenging things for technology companies is the recruiting and retention of technically competent people,” he said.
Traditional math teaching relies on textbooks, which can lose those with learning disabilities and limited English skills, Smith said.
“When you give them a textbook, a ruler and a protractor, they’re turned off,” he said. “Kids like computer games.”
That’s where Mind comes in.
Mind’s games keep students focused by becoming progressively more challenging, according to Matthew Peterson, cofounder and chief technical officer.
The work behind Mind started more than 15 years ago when University of California, Irvine, physicist Gordon Shaw looked at whether early music training would help a child’s spatial-temporal reasoning.
His studies later set off a media frenzy about how classical music might make babies smarter.
Shaw’s research eventually led to Mind’s formation in 1998.
Since then, the nonprofit has developed about 200 computer games for children in kindergarten through fifth grade.
More software is on the way, Peterson said.
The creation of more products will ultimately depend on how much Mind can grow its budget, according to Smith.
The nonprofit has a yearly operating budget of about $10 million, which funds research and the development of software, he said.
Mind generates revenue through software sales to schools and donations.
Convincing school principals to use Mind’s products has been an ongoing challenge, according to Smith.
Public schools face limited resources and budget cuts, which make purchasing decisions difficult, he said.
Selling a new way of teaching isn’t easy because few want to derail from the traditional education programs in place, Smith said.
Mind’s selling point is that it can produce results, according to Smith.
Schools that have used Minds’ programs include James Madison Elementary in Santa Ana and Jack L. Weaver Elementary in Los Alamitos.
Madison Elementary has more than 870 students.
Ninety-five percent are Hispanic. Nearly 80% of them are learning English. More than 90% of them are eligible for subsidized lunches.
The school implemented Mind’s programs for its second grade after students scored well below the 50th percentile on the 1999-2000 tests.
Since then, Madison has exceeded the annual academic performance index growth targets set by the California Department of Education.
Mind can’t take all the credit for Madison’s gains. But Smith contends its software has played a role.
“We have scalable results,” he said.
Some schools turn to Mind’s programs as a way to boost test scores and student performance. Weaver Elementary is one of them.
Unlike Madison in Santa Ana, the school has about 600 students with only 1% of them being English learners. Only about 13% of its students are eligible for subsidized lunches.
Weaver’s students already were 60% proficient in math before the school started using Mind’s programs about nine years ago. The students now are 90% proficient in math, according to Smith.
Weaver opted to use Mind’s programs in addition to its standard curriculum to make its school more attractive to parents and students, according to principal Erin Kominsky.
“For us it was bread and butter to attract people to come,” she said.
Mind has started a grant program called the Orange County Math Initiative with the help of the Orange County Department of Education and local corporate backers, including Irvine’s Microsemi Corp. and Santa Ana’s Advanced Medical Optics.
The grants provide schools with five years of funding for math software, training and support, professional development services for teachers and evaluation of student results.
In February, Mind and its supporters hosted a luncheon where it invited 165 elementary, middle and high schools to participate in its grant program.
Of the 164 that attended, a little more than 70 applied and were awarded grants, Smith said.
This fall, those 70 schools will begin using Mind’s programs.
“There’s room for growth,” he said.
