In February, 1985, the Ford Foundation launched an experimental program to strengthen mathematics education in inner-city high schools. Five grants helped establish urban mathematics collaboratives (UMC) in Cleveland, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Later, additional UMCs were set up in Durham, Memphis, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, San Diego, and St. Louis. A UMC typically consists of a community advisory board that includes teachers, school administrators, and leaders from business and higher education. This booklet is a preliminary report on the first two years of the UMC initiative. The first chapter is a brief discussion of the program's links with other efforts addressing problems in the teaching profession. The rest of the booklet describes the start-up experiences of the collaboratives and suggests general principles about marshalling local resources on behalf of teachers. The appendices include a list of selected collaborative activities that have occurred at the 11 cooperatives, sample mathematics problems, sample comments on problems, and a newsletter from one of the UMCs. (TW)