As math gaps continue to widen in many grades, educators face an uphill battle to help students regain ground in the subject.
Following historic math declines on the Nation’s Report Card in 2022, a quarter of 4th graders and more than a third of 8th graders cannot meet basic math benchmarks, and researchers estimate on average, elementary and middle school students will need more than four months of additional instruction to catch up to pre-pandemic math performance. Teachers must support a wider range of student needs—and more severe math struggles—within each classroom.
Those interested in learning research-backed strategies to boost student math learning can sign up for an Education Week mini-course on the topic. (This five-week email series will launch Oct. 1 but will be available on demand.)
Below are articles, reports, and videos from Education Week, along with state, national, and international education studies, for further reading on math instruction.
Understanding the problem
- Explaining That Steep Drop in Math Scores on NAEP: 5 Takeaways
- Teaching About Data Can Mean Leading Challenging Discussions
- Universities Are Teaching Competing Math Philosophies to Future Teachers. Why That Matters
- Dyscalculia and Dyslexia: Reading Disabilities Offer Insights for Math Support
- Understanding the complexities of mathematical cognition: A multi-level framework (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology)
- Emerging neurodevelopmental perspectives on mathematical learning (Developmental Review)
Progressing in fact and procedural fluency
- Finding Time for Math Across the Curriculum
- Graphs Are Hard for Students to Digest. Can a ‘Slow Reveal’ Help?
- Young Students Gravitate Toward Math. How Teachers Can Build on That Curiosity
- Why Does Fact Fluency Matter in Math? 4 Educators Offer Answers
- Kids Need to Know Their Math Facts. What Schools Can Do to Help
- Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Response to Intervention for Elementary and Middle Schools (Institute of Education Sciences)
- Re-thinking ‘concrete to abstract’ in Mathematics Education: Towards the use of symbolically structured environments (Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education)
Breaking down fractions
- Making Sense of Fractions: This Tactic Helped Students Grasp a Key Math Topic
- Approach to Fractions Seen as Key Shift in Common Standards
- ‘Fraction Phobia': The Root of Math Anxiety?
- Exploring the impact of a fraction sense intervention in authentic school environments: An initial investigation (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology)
- Developing Effective Fractions Instruction for Kindergarten Through 8th Grade: A Practice Guide (IES)
Comprehending word problems
- Why Word Problems Are Such a Struggle for Students—And What Teachers Can Do
- Introduce Word Problems to Students Sooner, Studies Say
- What’s the Problem With Word Problems? (Opinion)
- Addition and Subtraction Situations Chart (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction)
- Word problems in mathematics education: a survey (ZDM Mathmatics Education)
Countering math anxiety
- Math Anxiety Weakens How Students Study. Here’s What Teachers Can Do
- The Myth Fueling Math Anxiety
- How to Ease Students’ Academic Anxieties When Learning Speeds Up
- A meta-analysis of the relation between math anxiety and math achievement (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology)
- Relations between students’ mathematics anxiety and motivation to learn mathematics: A meta-analysis (Educational Psychology Review)
