PRIME stands for Promoting Reform in Mathematics Education. The project began in 1994 as a five-year National Science Foundation grant developed by principal investigators: Dr. Elias Toubassi, Dr. Marta Civil and Dr. Fred Stevenson from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. From 1994-1998, the project involved over 120 teachers (recruited from eight school districts) who participated in summer training and received follow-up classroom assistance during the school year.

Under the grant, the PRIME staff included up to four experienced classroom teachers who served as "support teachers" visiting participants in their classrooms to assist in a variety of ways. Support teachers provided such services as modeling innovative lessons, assisting with the use of technology or manipulatives in the classroom, helping teachers plan for instruction or for special math events, observing teachers and giving feedback on the mathematical content of their lessons.

At the conclusion of the NSF-funded PRIME program in 1998, the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona instituted a program to extend some of the opportunities offered by the grant in a self-supporting endeavor called the PRIME Extension Consortium. This Consortium allows individual schools to utilize the services of PRIME support teachers by sharing the cost of funding the program.