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"content": "\u003cp>When ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, educators quickly asked whether students would use artificial intelligence to cheat, learn or simply get through homework more efficiently. Evidence is beginning to point toward a troubling answer: Many students appear to be completing assignments faster while learning less from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This conclusion comes from one of the largest studies of how generative AI is changing student behavior and academic skills. Sina Rismanchian, a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, partnered with researchers at McGraw Hill to \u003ca href=\"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.21629\">analyze millions of student interactions with ALEKS\u003c/a>, an online math platform used by more than four million students a year, from fifth grade through college. Because ALEKS includes both low-stakes practice problems and college placement tests, the researchers were able to compare how students behaved and performed before and after ChatGPT’s arrival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To isolate AI’s effects, the researchers compared two kinds of math problems that differ in how easily students can outsource them to AI: word problems and graphing problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Word problems can be copied and pasted directly into AI chatbots for instant answers. Graphing problems are far more cumbersome. A student would need to upload a screenshot and still recreate the graph inside ALEKS using its tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After ChatGPT’s launch, student behavior and performance on the two types of problems began to diverge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in early 2023, students started spending less time on word problems while continuing to spend about the same amount of time on graphing problems. The gap widened every quarter. By the end of the study period, near the end of 2025, average time spent on word problems had fallen 31 percent among high school students and 27 percent among college students — from about four minutes per word problem to less than three. (Middle school students showed only a modest decline of 9 percent, and fifth graders showed essentially none.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers believe those averages are being pulled downward by some students who spend only seconds on word problems because they’re using AI to answer them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same pattern appeared in college placement tests. When the exams were taken without supervision, students spent much less time on word problems after ChatGPT’s release. During proctored exams, the time spent on word problems returned to historical norms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But time is only half the story. The more troubling finding is what happened to learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many colleges allow incoming students to retake placement tests after practicing more math in ALEKS, giving them a chance to qualify for a higher-level course. Before ChatGPT, that practice generally paid off. After ChatGPT, students answered more word problems correctly during unsupervised practice sessions but performed substantially worse on those same kinds of problems when they later took a proctored placement test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, students answered about 80 percent of these word problems correctly on supervised placement tests. After ChatGPT’s introduction, that fell to about 60 percent — a roughly 25 percent reduction in the odds of answering a word problem correctly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Performance on graphing problems, by contrast, did not decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>After ChatGPT’s release, students performed worse on word problems (AI-susceptible) during proctored exams, but answer more word problems correctly in nonproctored settings\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66423\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 512px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-66423 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Rismanchian-et-al.png\" alt=\"Graph showing score gaps in exams. \" width=\"512\" height=\"186\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Rismanchian-et-al.png 512w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Rismanchian-et-al-160x58.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The dotted line marks the public release of ChatGPT. Source: Figure 4, Rismanchian et al “Faster Completion, Less Learning: Generative AI Reduced Study Time on Math Problems and the Knowledge They Build,” June 2026 preprint.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If students’ math skills had generally deteriorated because of pandemic learning loss, weaker high school preparation or digital distraction, graphing performance should have deteriorated too. It didn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study cannot definitively prove that students were using AI. The researchers couldn’t see what else was happening on students’ screens outside of ALEKS. But it’s difficult to think of another explanation. The changes appeared only in problems that are easy to outsource to AI, disappeared under supervision and grew steadily over nearly three years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What makes me nervous is that it’s not only about the word problems,” Rismanchian told me. “This cognitive surrender might be going on in writing, science, everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper, “\u003ca href=\"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.21629\">Faster Completion, Less Learning\u003c/a>,” was released in June 2026 as a working paper and has not yet been peer reviewed. Like any single study, it doesn’t settle the questions of how much students are using AI in their schoolwork, whether it’s harming learning and by how much. But it joins a growing body of evidence that generative AI is causing students to skip the brain work that leads to learning, and that this “cognitive surrender” is becoming commonplace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A randomized experiment in Turkey found that high school students who used AI to help them study math ultimately \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/kids-chatgpt-worse-on-tests/\">learned less\u003c/a> than students who practiced without it. Anthropic, the maker of Claude, has separately reported that many college students appear to use AI to obtain answers and \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-offload-critical-thinking-ai/\">offload cognitive work\u003c/a>. Rismanchian’s earlier research, released in March 2026, documented \u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/publication/403013405_Artificial_Integrity_Concerning_Patterns_of_AI_Usage_Among_Undergraduate_Students\">troubling patterns of AI usage\u003c/a> in short response essays among undergraduate students at a large California research university.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That doesn’t mean AI always undermines learning. Carefully designed AI tutors have improved student achievement in controlled experiments by asking questions, personalizing instruction and withholding answers until students reason their way through a problem. But using AI this way should increase the time students spend on a problem, Rismanchian said. The ALEKS data show the opposite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rismanchian doesn’t believe the answer is simply banning AI. Instead, he argues, students need to value learning enough to resist the temptation to outsource it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A recent RAND survey suggests many already recognize the threat to their brains. Students report worrying that AI is \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4742-1.html\">weakening their critical-thinking skills\u003c/a> while more of them admit using it for schoolwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students are not entirely to blame. Even as many professors have warned students not to use AI to complete classwork, universities themselves have embraced the technology, often giving students free access to premium chatbots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we need to communicate to students that you should value your learning,” Rismanchian said. “If ChatGPT does it for you, then you haven’t learned it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rismanchian understands the temptation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An international student, Rismanchian began using ChatGPT to help polish the English in his papers. The ideas were still his own. But after several months, he said, he noticed something unsettling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I realized that I cannot write anymore,” he said. “I was losing my writing abilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So he stopped using AI to write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He still uses it to code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-ai-eroding-math-skills/\">\u003cem>AI use eroding math skills\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in early 2023, students started spending less time on word problems while continuing to spend about the same amount of time on graphing problems. The gap widened every quarter. By the end of the study period, near the end of 2025, average time spent on word problems had fallen 31 percent among high school students and 27 percent among college students — from about four minutes per word problem to less than three. (Middle school students showed only a modest decline of 9 percent, and fifth graders showed essentially none.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers believe those averages are being pulled downward by some students who spend only seconds on word problems because they’re using AI to answer them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same pattern appeared in college placement tests. When the exams were taken without supervision, students spent much less time on word problems after ChatGPT’s release. During proctored exams, the time spent on word problems returned to historical norms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But time is only half the story. The more troubling finding is what happened to learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many colleges allow incoming students to retake placement tests after practicing more math in ALEKS, giving them a chance to qualify for a higher-level course. Before ChatGPT, that practice generally paid off. After ChatGPT, students answered more word problems correctly during unsupervised practice sessions but performed substantially worse on those same kinds of problems when they later took a proctored placement test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, students answered about 80 percent of these word problems correctly on supervised placement tests. After ChatGPT’s introduction, that fell to about 60 percent — a roughly 25 percent reduction in the odds of answering a word problem correctly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Performance on graphing problems, by contrast, did not decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>After ChatGPT’s release, students performed worse on word problems (AI-susceptible) during proctored exams, but answer more word problems correctly in nonproctored settings\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66423\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 512px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-66423 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Rismanchian-et-al.png\" alt=\"Graph showing score gaps in exams. \" width=\"512\" height=\"186\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Rismanchian-et-al.png 512w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Rismanchian-et-al-160x58.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The dotted line marks the public release of ChatGPT. Source: Figure 4, Rismanchian et al “Faster Completion, Less Learning: Generative AI Reduced Study Time on Math Problems and the Knowledge They Build,” June 2026 preprint.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If students’ math skills had generally deteriorated because of pandemic learning loss, weaker high school preparation or digital distraction, graphing performance should have deteriorated too. It didn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study cannot definitively prove that students were using AI. The researchers couldn’t see what else was happening on students’ screens outside of ALEKS. But it’s difficult to think of another explanation. 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Rismanchian’s earlier research, released in March 2026, documented \u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/publication/403013405_Artificial_Integrity_Concerning_Patterns_of_AI_Usage_Among_Undergraduate_Students\">troubling patterns of AI usage\u003c/a> in short response essays among undergraduate students at a large California research university.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That doesn’t mean AI always undermines learning. Carefully designed AI tutors have improved student achievement in controlled experiments by asking questions, personalizing instruction and withholding answers until students reason their way through a problem. But using AI this way should increase the time students spend on a problem, Rismanchian said. The ALEKS data show the opposite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rismanchian doesn’t believe the answer is simply banning AI. Instead, he argues, students need to value learning enough to resist the temptation to outsource it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A recent RAND survey suggests many already recognize the threat to their brains. Students report worrying that AI is \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4742-1.html\">weakening their critical-thinking skills\u003c/a> while more of them admit using it for schoolwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students are not entirely to blame. Even as many professors have warned students not to use AI to complete classwork, universities themselves have embraced the technology, often giving students free access to premium chatbots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we need to communicate to students that you should value your learning,” Rismanchian said. “If ChatGPT does it for you, then you haven’t learned it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rismanchian understands the temptation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An international student, Rismanchian began using ChatGPT to help polish the English in his papers. The ideas were still his own. But after several months, he said, he noticed something unsettling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I realized that I cannot write anymore,” he said. “I was losing my writing abilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So he stopped using AI to write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He still uses it to code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A few days into the new semester this January, the LaSalle Parish school district in rural Louisiana made a pronouncement: No more homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, none of the 2,500 students in this district — from the youngest learners up through high school seniors — have been required to do schoolwork at home. Parents can request practice problems if they’d like, Superintendent Jonathan Garrett said, but that work won’t be mandatory or graded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Homework assignments, it turned out, were among the biggest sources of complaints Garrett had heard from parents and students over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When there was a negative feeling about school, it usually stemmed from what kids are bringing home, the frustrations they feel completing that, and that parents and guardians feel trying to help them complete it,” he said in an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond that, Garrett said the move was driven by concerns – shared by many educators – that much of the homework students are assigned – especially in math – is needlessly repetitive, takes too long to complete and hasn’t adapted to the challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The response to Garrett’s announcement was swift — and overwhelmingly positive. The message is the district’s most “liked”\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1444965060964889&set=a.499624705498934\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> post on Facebook\u003c/a> by far this year, with hundreds of shares — many of them by parents from neighboring parishes asking how they could get their own schools on board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scope of the district’s no-homework guidance is new, but it follows a trend that educators and researchers have been noticing for years: More teachers are moving away from homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn’t spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8025066/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> perform better than their peers\u003c/a>. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More homework was also associated with negative attitudes about school for younger children in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control,” and that’s what happens during the school day, Superintendent Garrett said, not homework. “There has been a shift away from it naturally anyway, and I felt like this made it equitable across our entire school system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>In math especially, students need practice\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The debate over homework has swung back and forth for more than a century, and the tide of public opinion has shifted every few years. It’s likely to continue changing for a simple reason: Researching homework is a challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no good way to isolate the amount of time spent on homework and its effects on students, because it may take one student five minutes to complete the same math problem that another student spent 45 minutes on. That extra time doesn’t necessarily result in the struggling student performing better than the student who grasped the assignment more quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, just like playing the violin or hitting a baseball, or any other skill that requires training, there is evidence that students need practice to master academic subjects, particularly in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some experts worry the overall decrease in homework could be a problem for math achievement, at a time when\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/naep-test-2024-dismal-report/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> math scores across the country are already at a dismal low\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best argument for homework is that mathematical procedures require practice, and you don’t want to waste classroom time on practice, so you send that home,” said Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher who has studied homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The effects of AI on homework\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Generative artificial intelligence has added a new wrinkle to the homework debate, too. More than half of teens said they used chatbots to help with schoolwork, and\u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/02/24/how-teens-use-and-view-ai/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> 1 in 10 said they used virtual assistants\u003c/a> to do all or most of their schoolwork, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A different survey of teachers by the EdWeek Research Center found that 40 percent said homework assignments had decreased over the past two years, and of those, 29 percent said it was\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/are-schools-assigning-less-homework-a-new-survey-offers-answers/2026/02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> because students’ use of AI had lessened the value of homework\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 1996 and 2015, very few fourth graders — between 4 and 6 percent — reported being given no math homework the previous night, according to surveys from the Nation’s Report Card. By 2024, that percentage was up to more than a quarter. There was a similar trend for eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, a nonprofit that advocates for parents, has seen this trend in her own fourth grader’s public elementary school class in Vermont, whose teacher doesn’t assign homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The thing they point to is that it’s an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students,” said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She believes, however, that students should do some homework without the help of their parents. “I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that’s an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said she and her mother create their own homework now for her son: reading exercises and flash cards in math. Kids, she said, “need more practice. … Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everyone feels this way about homework. For Jim Malliard’s two children in Franklin, Pa., adverse experiences at school became a barrier to completing homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It became a fight because the kids had so much school-based anxiety from trauma and bullying at school that they didn’t want to deal with school when they got home,” said Malliard, whose kids attended a public high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malliard, who\u003ca href=\"https://candyappleadvocacy.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> writes\u003c/a> about education issues and is a full-time caregiver to his wife, doesn’t think his children were overburdened with homework at their school, but he also doesn’t believe they were benefiting from it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The teachers would tell us homework only takes 15 minutes a night — sure, if a kid sits there and does it right away and is attentive and wants to do it,” Malliard said. “It was getting to be an hour for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually enrolled his children in a virtual charter school, which they attended for the rest of their K-12 schooling.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How much is enough?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Over the years, research has attempted to answer the thorny question of how much homework is appropriate, with varying degrees of success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Education groups and researchers generally recommend 10 minutes of homework each night per grade level. But it’s almost impossible to assign work that will take every student the same amount of time to complete, and research has shown there are harmful effects from too much time spent on homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A survey published in 2014 out of Stanford University that looked at more than 4,300 students in high-performing California high school schools found that the benefit of homework for high school students\u003ca href=\"https://ed.stanford.edu/news/more-two-hours-homework-may-be-counterproductive-research-suggests\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> plateaus after two hours a night\u003c/a>. Beyond that, the researchers found, it can lead to more stress and poor sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research on homework tends to focus on the amount of time students spend on it rather than the quality or purpose of the assignments, said Joyce Epstein, who has studied homework and is the co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One option worth considering, Epstein said, is to design homework that has a specific purpose but is perhaps shorter than traditional homework assignments. Giving students the opportunity to practice is important, she said, particularly in math, where concepts build on each other and move relentlessly forward throughout the year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The interesting issue for folks to consider is not should there be more homework, but should there be better homework,” Epstein said. “Better homework in math might be knowing the fact that kids don’t have to be practicing for hours, 10 to 20 examples,” when they could establish mastery in less time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students are completing math homework on their own but doing the problems incorrectly, some educators say it takes longer to reteach them the right way in class the next day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wendy Birhanzel, superintendent of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado, said her district has taken the approach recommended by Epstein, of focusing on the quality of homework while assigning less of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather than long “drill and kill” worksheets she remembers from her time as a student, Birhanzel said elementary students in the district might have a reading assignment, a few math problems and a small writing sample. “It’s more purposeful and less intensive,” Birhanzel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Louisiana’s LaSalle Parish, Superintendent Garrett said that to account for the lost practice time, he has given math teachers permission to slow down their instruction and give students time in class to practice concepts, even if that means they don’t cover as much content during the school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We felt like doing that would actually be more beneficial than racing through and covering every single thing that was listed. We’ll see,” he said. “This might be something that helps us in the long run.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced by\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Contact writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at gilreath@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A few days into the new semester this January, the LaSalle Parish school district in rural Louisiana made a pronouncement: No more homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, none of the 2,500 students in this district — from the youngest learners up through high school seniors — have been required to do schoolwork at home. Parents can request practice problems if they’d like, Superintendent Jonathan Garrett said, but that work won’t be mandatory or graded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Homework assignments, it turned out, were among the biggest sources of complaints Garrett had heard from parents and students over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When there was a negative feeling about school, it usually stemmed from what kids are bringing home, the frustrations they feel completing that, and that parents and guardians feel trying to help them complete it,” he said in an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond that, Garrett said the move was driven by concerns – shared by many educators – that much of the homework students are assigned – especially in math – is needlessly repetitive, takes too long to complete and hasn’t adapted to the challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The response to Garrett’s announcement was swift — and overwhelmingly positive. The message is the district’s most “liked”\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1444965060964889&set=a.499624705498934\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> post on Facebook\u003c/a> by far this year, with hundreds of shares — many of them by parents from neighboring parishes asking how they could get their own schools on board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scope of the district’s no-homework guidance is new, but it follows a trend that educators and researchers have been noticing for years: More teachers are moving away from homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn’t spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8025066/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> perform better than their peers\u003c/a>. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More homework was also associated with negative attitudes about school for younger children in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control,” and that’s what happens during the school day, Superintendent Garrett said, not homework. “There has been a shift away from it naturally anyway, and I felt like this made it equitable across our entire school system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>In math especially, students need practice\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The debate over homework has swung back and forth for more than a century, and the tide of public opinion has shifted every few years. It’s likely to continue changing for a simple reason: Researching homework is a challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no good way to isolate the amount of time spent on homework and its effects on students, because it may take one student five minutes to complete the same math problem that another student spent 45 minutes on. That extra time doesn’t necessarily result in the struggling student performing better than the student who grasped the assignment more quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, just like playing the violin or hitting a baseball, or any other skill that requires training, there is evidence that students need practice to master academic subjects, particularly in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some experts worry the overall decrease in homework could be a problem for math achievement, at a time when\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/naep-test-2024-dismal-report/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> math scores across the country are already at a dismal low\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best argument for homework is that mathematical procedures require practice, and you don’t want to waste classroom time on practice, so you send that home,” said Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher who has studied homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The effects of AI on homework\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Generative artificial intelligence has added a new wrinkle to the homework debate, too. More than half of teens said they used chatbots to help with schoolwork, and\u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/02/24/how-teens-use-and-view-ai/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> 1 in 10 said they used virtual assistants\u003c/a> to do all or most of their schoolwork, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A different survey of teachers by the EdWeek Research Center found that 40 percent said homework assignments had decreased over the past two years, and of those, 29 percent said it was\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/are-schools-assigning-less-homework-a-new-survey-offers-answers/2026/02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> because students’ use of AI had lessened the value of homework\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 1996 and 2015, very few fourth graders — between 4 and 6 percent — reported being given no math homework the previous night, according to surveys from the Nation’s Report Card. By 2024, that percentage was up to more than a quarter. There was a similar trend for eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, a nonprofit that advocates for parents, has seen this trend in her own fourth grader’s public elementary school class in Vermont, whose teacher doesn’t assign homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The thing they point to is that it’s an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students,” said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She believes, however, that students should do some homework without the help of their parents. “I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that’s an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said she and her mother create their own homework now for her son: reading exercises and flash cards in math. Kids, she said, “need more practice. … Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everyone feels this way about homework. For Jim Malliard’s two children in Franklin, Pa., adverse experiences at school became a barrier to completing homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It became a fight because the kids had so much school-based anxiety from trauma and bullying at school that they didn’t want to deal with school when they got home,” said Malliard, whose kids attended a public high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malliard, who\u003ca href=\"https://candyappleadvocacy.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> writes\u003c/a> about education issues and is a full-time caregiver to his wife, doesn’t think his children were overburdened with homework at their school, but he also doesn’t believe they were benefiting from it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The teachers would tell us homework only takes 15 minutes a night — sure, if a kid sits there and does it right away and is attentive and wants to do it,” Malliard said. “It was getting to be an hour for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually enrolled his children in a virtual charter school, which they attended for the rest of their K-12 schooling.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How much is enough?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Over the years, research has attempted to answer the thorny question of how much homework is appropriate, with varying degrees of success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Education groups and researchers generally recommend 10 minutes of homework each night per grade level. But it’s almost impossible to assign work that will take every student the same amount of time to complete, and research has shown there are harmful effects from too much time spent on homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A survey published in 2014 out of Stanford University that looked at more than 4,300 students in high-performing California high school schools found that the benefit of homework for high school students\u003ca href=\"https://ed.stanford.edu/news/more-two-hours-homework-may-be-counterproductive-research-suggests\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> plateaus after two hours a night\u003c/a>. Beyond that, the researchers found, it can lead to more stress and poor sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research on homework tends to focus on the amount of time students spend on it rather than the quality or purpose of the assignments, said Joyce Epstein, who has studied homework and is the co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One option worth considering, Epstein said, is to design homework that has a specific purpose but is perhaps shorter than traditional homework assignments. Giving students the opportunity to practice is important, she said, particularly in math, where concepts build on each other and move relentlessly forward throughout the year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The interesting issue for folks to consider is not should there be more homework, but should there be better homework,” Epstein said. “Better homework in math might be knowing the fact that kids don’t have to be practicing for hours, 10 to 20 examples,” when they could establish mastery in less time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students are completing math homework on their own but doing the problems incorrectly, some educators say it takes longer to reteach them the right way in class the next day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wendy Birhanzel, superintendent of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado, said her district has taken the approach recommended by Epstein, of focusing on the quality of homework while assigning less of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather than long “drill and kill” worksheets she remembers from her time as a student, Birhanzel said elementary students in the district might have a reading assignment, a few math problems and a small writing sample. “It’s more purposeful and less intensive,” Birhanzel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Louisiana’s LaSalle Parish, Superintendent Garrett said that to account for the lost practice time, he has given math teachers permission to slow down their instruction and give students time in class to practice concepts, even if that means they don’t cover as much content during the school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We felt like doing that would actually be more beneficial than racing through and covering every single thing that was listed. We’ll see,” he said. “This might be something that helps us in the long run.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced by\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Contact writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at gilreath@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>BATON ROUGE, La. — About two dozen second graders sat on the carpet at the front of Jacquelyn Anthony’s classroom, reviewing how to make tens. “Two needs eight!” the students yelled out together. “Six needs four!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The numbers may get a little trickier,” Anthony told them next. “But remember, the numbers we need to make 10 are still there.” The students then turned confidently to bigger calculations: Forty-six needs four ones to make a new number divisible by 10; 128 needs two to make 13 tens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the hour, the second graders slung on their backpacks, gathered their Chromebooks and lined up at the door before heading to English and social studies class across the hall. While most schools wait until middle school to transition students from one class to another, kids at Louisiana’s Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts do so starting at age 6 or 7. It’s part of a strategy known as departmentalizing, or platooning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anthony, rather than teaching all four core subjects, specializes in math. The school’s new facility, built in 2025, was designed with departmentalizing in mind: The classrooms have huge glass windows, so teachers can see their next class preparing to line up in the hallway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Teaching today is so different than it was a long time ago, and there are so many demands on them. And the demand to be an expert in your content area is very high,” said Sydney Hebert, magnet site coordinator for the art-focused public school in the East Baton Rouge Parish school district. “We want to make sure that our teachers are experts in what they’re teaching so that they can do a good job of teaching it to the kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As schools contend with a decades-long slump in math scores — exacerbated by the pandemic — some are turning to this classroom \u003ca href=\"https://www.the74million.org/article/why-the-kids-in-my-school-move-from-class-to-class-as-young-as-kindergarten/\">strategy even for very young students\u003c/a>. In recent years, \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/evaluations/evaluation-departmentalized-instruction-elementary-schools\">more e\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/evaluations/evaluation-departmentalized-instruction-elementary-schools\">lementary schools have opted to departmentalize\u003c/a> some grade levels in an attempt to boost academic achievement. The share of fourth and fifth grade classrooms operating on this schedule has doubled since the year 2000, from 15 percent to 30 percent in 2021. Often, that means educators will specialize in one or two subjects at most, such as fourth grade English language arts and social studies, or fifth grade math and science. The theory is that teachers who specialize will be more familiar with the content and better able to teach it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That may be particularly important for math: Studies have shown that some early \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/teachers-conquering-their-math-anxiety/\">elementary school teachers experience anxiety\u003c/a> about the subject and question their ability to teach it. Educators also say that the curriculum and standards for math and English in the early grades are changing rapidly in some districts and have become more complicated over time. In a departmentalized setup, it’s also far less likely that math instruction will get shortchanged by an educator who prefers spending time on other subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But while some schools swear by this model, the research on it is mixed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One prominent 2018 study on the practice in Houston public schools \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/two-studies-point-to-the-power-of-teacher-student-relationships-to-boost-learning/\">found it had\u003c/a> a negative effect on test scores, behavior and attendance. The study doesn’t explain why that was the case, but the researcher said it could be because teachers on this schedule spend less time with individual students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another \u003ca href=\"https://caldercenter.org/sites/default/files/2024-11/CALDER%20WP%20298-0424.pdf\">study published in 2024\u003c/a> analyzing Massachusetts schools had different outcomes: Researchers found moderate gains in academic achievement for ELA and a significant boost to science scores for students in departmentalized classes. The results in math, however, showed few gains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Generally, teachers specialize in the subject they are most comfortable teaching. When a school departmentalizes for the first time, principals typically look at each educator’s test score data over time to determine whether they should specialize in math or reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are some arguments that, at least if it’s someone who likes the subject, who is passionate about the subject, you have a greater chance of them doing a better job of delivering instruction,” said Latrenda Knighten, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “But you’ll find mixed reviews.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66049\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66049\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Woman teaches at front of classroom\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-2000x1334.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-2048x1366.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ms. Anthony teaches math and science at Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts on December 9, 2025 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. \u003ccite>(Annie Flanagan for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yet there are a few reasons why the strategy is typically reserved for students in older grades, according to school leaders: Spending all day with one teacher increases the bond between the teacher and student, which is important for younger children. In Baton Rouge, Anthony teaches 50 students throughout the day instead of the same 25 students all day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Teachers want to get to know their students,” said Dennis Willingham, superintendent of Walker County Schools in Alabama. The district departmentalized some fifth grade classrooms decades ago, but recently added third and fourth grade classes on this schedule. “You tend to see less departmentalization below third grade because of the nurturing element.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also generally more challenging for young students to quickly change classrooms, even for electives, which means lost instructional time. Smaller elementary schools may also struggle to hire enough teachers to schedule all of them on a departmentalized setup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But increasingly, schools that are satisfied with this approach for older grade levels are trying it out with their younger grades, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the pandemic, the San Tan Heights Elementary School in Arizona changed its curriculum to one that was more rigorous, and it became harder for the third grade educators to master the standards of all four subject areas, said Henry Saylor-Scheetz, principal at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He proposed that third graders be taught by separate math, English language arts and reading teachers. “I told them, let’s try it for a semester. If it doesn’t work at the end of the year, we’ll go back,” Saylor-Scheetz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ten days into the experiment, teachers told him they never wanted to return to the old schedule. In the subsequent years, the school added more classrooms on this model until, by 2023, all K-8 students were departmentalized. For the last few years, teacher retention at the school was 95 percent, according to Saylor-Scheetz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saylor-Scheetz, who last year became principal of a nearby middle school, credited the change for helping the school improve from a C rating on its state report card — a rating it had stagnated at every year since 2018 — to a B rating as of 2022. Since then, more schools in his Arizona school district have shifted to this schedule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d love to see this become something we do as a nation, but it is a paradigm shift,” Saylor-Scheetz said. “There’s merit in doing it, but there has to be a commitment to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts, students in first through third grades have two partner teachers, one for math and science and another for ELA and social studies. The school has been operating on this schedule for third through fifth grade students for more than a decade. Eight years ago, its leaders decided to try it for first and second grade students, too, and were pleased with the results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a December morning at the school, young students talked quietly with each other in the hall as they lined up to go from math class to English language arts. All told, the switch took less than five minutes. “We’re at the end of the second nine weeks, so we’ve had a lot of practice,” said GiGi Boudreaux, the assistant principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strategy has not always been successful, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the pandemic, administrators also attempted to departmentalize its kindergarten classes. It didn’t work as they’d hoped: It was a challenge to get the 5-year-olds to quickly change classes and focus on classwork again once they did. Parents also didn’t like it. The school then tried moving teachers from classroom to classroom instead of moving students, but the educators hated it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was too much, so we didn’t do it after that,” said Hebert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Baton Rouge school doesn’t have comparison data to show that students perform better in a departmentalized setup, but most educators in the school prefer it, Hebert said. Third grade test scores from 2015 — before the school departmentalized its younger grade levels — showed 73 percent scored “advanced” and “mastery” level on the state ELA test, and 56 percent scored advanced or mastery on the math test. In 2025, 80 percent of third grade students scored advanced or mastery in ELA and 55 percent in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that the teachers like it better, and the kids have adapted to it,” Hebert said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers meet weekly with their partner teachers and grade-level counterparts to discuss their classes and progress on the state standards. Once a quarter, all of the math teachers across the grades meet to talk about strategies and student performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Deer Valley Unified School District in Arizona, departmentalizing some classrooms has helped reduce teacher turnover, said Superintendent Curtis Finch, particularly for early career educators, who can find it challenging to master the content and standards of all four subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re not confident in your subject, then you don’t have good examples off the top of your head. You can’t control the room, can’t pull the students in,” Finch said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are drawbacks though, Finch acknowledged. In a self-contained classroom, teachers can more easily integrate their different lessons, so that a math lesson might refer back to a topic covered in reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66051\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1707px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66051\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Woman leaning on desk\" width=\"1707\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-2000x2999.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-1366x2048.jpg 1366w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1707px) 100vw, 1707px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ms. Anthony poses for a portrait at Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts on December 9, 2025 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. \u003ccite>(Annie Flanagan for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And even though Anthony, the second grade math and science teacher in Baton Rouge, loves teaching math, she also misses the extra time she could spend with each student when she had the same 25 children in her class all day for the entire school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a joy for me to be self-contained and to build that little family,” Anthony said. “I think the social emotional needs of students are best met in that type of environment. But being solely a math teacher, I do get to just dig in and focus on the nuance of the content.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Anthony’s partner teacher across the hall, Holley McArthur, teaching 50 students ELA and social studies is easier than having to teach 25 students math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is my thing: reading books, comprehending and finding answers, meeting their goals,” said McArthur, who has taught in both kinds of classrooms over three decades in education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While McArthur’s kids were at recess this mid-December day, the veteran teacher was grading their reading worksheets. A new student had transferred in from out of state midyear, and she was still evaluating his reading skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think you still get to know the kids, even if you just have them for three hours a day, because I’m not doing the hard math with them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"mailto:gilreath@hechingerreport.org\">\u003cem>gilreath@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/the-schools-where-even-young-children-change-classes/\">\u003cem>departmentalizing\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/weeklynewsletter/\">\u003cem>the Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>BATON ROUGE, La. — About two dozen second graders sat on the carpet at the front of Jacquelyn Anthony’s classroom, reviewing how to make tens. “Two needs eight!” the students yelled out together. “Six needs four!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The numbers may get a little trickier,” Anthony told them next. “But remember, the numbers we need to make 10 are still there.” The students then turned confidently to bigger calculations: Forty-six needs four ones to make a new number divisible by 10; 128 needs two to make 13 tens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the hour, the second graders slung on their backpacks, gathered their Chromebooks and lined up at the door before heading to English and social studies class across the hall. While most schools wait until middle school to transition students from one class to another, kids at Louisiana’s Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts do so starting at age 6 or 7. It’s part of a strategy known as departmentalizing, or platooning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anthony, rather than teaching all four core subjects, specializes in math. The school’s new facility, built in 2025, was designed with departmentalizing in mind: The classrooms have huge glass windows, so teachers can see their next class preparing to line up in the hallway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Teaching today is so different than it was a long time ago, and there are so many demands on them. And the demand to be an expert in your content area is very high,” said Sydney Hebert, magnet site coordinator for the art-focused public school in the East Baton Rouge Parish school district. “We want to make sure that our teachers are experts in what they’re teaching so that they can do a good job of teaching it to the kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As schools contend with a decades-long slump in math scores — exacerbated by the pandemic — some are turning to this classroom \u003ca href=\"https://www.the74million.org/article/why-the-kids-in-my-school-move-from-class-to-class-as-young-as-kindergarten/\">strategy even for very young students\u003c/a>. In recent years, \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/evaluations/evaluation-departmentalized-instruction-elementary-schools\">more e\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/evaluations/evaluation-departmentalized-instruction-elementary-schools\">lementary schools have opted to departmentalize\u003c/a> some grade levels in an attempt to boost academic achievement. The share of fourth and fifth grade classrooms operating on this schedule has doubled since the year 2000, from 15 percent to 30 percent in 2021. Often, that means educators will specialize in one or two subjects at most, such as fourth grade English language arts and social studies, or fifth grade math and science. The theory is that teachers who specialize will be more familiar with the content and better able to teach it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That may be particularly important for math: Studies have shown that some early \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/teachers-conquering-their-math-anxiety/\">elementary school teachers experience anxiety\u003c/a> about the subject and question their ability to teach it. Educators also say that the curriculum and standards for math and English in the early grades are changing rapidly in some districts and have become more complicated over time. In a departmentalized setup, it’s also far less likely that math instruction will get shortchanged by an educator who prefers spending time on other subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But while some schools swear by this model, the research on it is mixed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One prominent 2018 study on the practice in Houston public schools \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/two-studies-point-to-the-power-of-teacher-student-relationships-to-boost-learning/\">found it had\u003c/a> a negative effect on test scores, behavior and attendance. The study doesn’t explain why that was the case, but the researcher said it could be because teachers on this schedule spend less time with individual students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another \u003ca href=\"https://caldercenter.org/sites/default/files/2024-11/CALDER%20WP%20298-0424.pdf\">study published in 2024\u003c/a> analyzing Massachusetts schools had different outcomes: Researchers found moderate gains in academic achievement for ELA and a significant boost to science scores for students in departmentalized classes. The results in math, however, showed few gains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Generally, teachers specialize in the subject they are most comfortable teaching. When a school departmentalizes for the first time, principals typically look at each educator’s test score data over time to determine whether they should specialize in math or reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are some arguments that, at least if it’s someone who likes the subject, who is passionate about the subject, you have a greater chance of them doing a better job of delivering instruction,” said Latrenda Knighten, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “But you’ll find mixed reviews.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66049\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66049\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Woman teaches at front of classroom\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-2000x1334.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-1-2048x1366.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ms. Anthony teaches math and science at Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts on December 9, 2025 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. \u003ccite>(Annie Flanagan for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yet there are a few reasons why the strategy is typically reserved for students in older grades, according to school leaders: Spending all day with one teacher increases the bond between the teacher and student, which is important for younger children. In Baton Rouge, Anthony teaches 50 students throughout the day instead of the same 25 students all day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Teachers want to get to know their students,” said Dennis Willingham, superintendent of Walker County Schools in Alabama. The district departmentalized some fifth grade classrooms decades ago, but recently added third and fourth grade classes on this schedule. “You tend to see less departmentalization below third grade because of the nurturing element.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also generally more challenging for young students to quickly change classrooms, even for electives, which means lost instructional time. Smaller elementary schools may also struggle to hire enough teachers to schedule all of them on a departmentalized setup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But increasingly, schools that are satisfied with this approach for older grade levels are trying it out with their younger grades, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the pandemic, the San Tan Heights Elementary School in Arizona changed its curriculum to one that was more rigorous, and it became harder for the third grade educators to master the standards of all four subject areas, said Henry Saylor-Scheetz, principal at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He proposed that third graders be taught by separate math, English language arts and reading teachers. “I told them, let’s try it for a semester. If it doesn’t work at the end of the year, we’ll go back,” Saylor-Scheetz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ten days into the experiment, teachers told him they never wanted to return to the old schedule. In the subsequent years, the school added more classrooms on this model until, by 2023, all K-8 students were departmentalized. For the last few years, teacher retention at the school was 95 percent, according to Saylor-Scheetz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saylor-Scheetz, who last year became principal of a nearby middle school, credited the change for helping the school improve from a C rating on its state report card — a rating it had stagnated at every year since 2018 — to a B rating as of 2022. Since then, more schools in his Arizona school district have shifted to this schedule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d love to see this become something we do as a nation, but it is a paradigm shift,” Saylor-Scheetz said. “There’s merit in doing it, but there has to be a commitment to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts, students in first through third grades have two partner teachers, one for math and science and another for ELA and social studies. The school has been operating on this schedule for third through fifth grade students for more than a decade. Eight years ago, its leaders decided to try it for first and second grade students, too, and were pleased with the results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a December morning at the school, young students talked quietly with each other in the hall as they lined up to go from math class to English language arts. All told, the switch took less than five minutes. “We’re at the end of the second nine weeks, so we’ve had a lot of practice,” said GiGi Boudreaux, the assistant principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strategy has not always been successful, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the pandemic, administrators also attempted to departmentalize its kindergarten classes. It didn’t work as they’d hoped: It was a challenge to get the 5-year-olds to quickly change classes and focus on classwork again once they did. Parents also didn’t like it. The school then tried moving teachers from classroom to classroom instead of moving students, but the educators hated it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was too much, so we didn’t do it after that,” said Hebert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Baton Rouge school doesn’t have comparison data to show that students perform better in a departmentalized setup, but most educators in the school prefer it, Hebert said. Third grade test scores from 2015 — before the school departmentalized its younger grade levels — showed 73 percent scored “advanced” and “mastery” level on the state ELA test, and 56 percent scored advanced or mastery on the math test. In 2025, 80 percent of third grade students scored advanced or mastery in ELA and 55 percent in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that the teachers like it better, and the kids have adapted to it,” Hebert said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers meet weekly with their partner teachers and grade-level counterparts to discuss their classes and progress on the state standards. Once a quarter, all of the math teachers across the grades meet to talk about strategies and student performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Deer Valley Unified School District in Arizona, departmentalizing some classrooms has helped reduce teacher turnover, said Superintendent Curtis Finch, particularly for early career educators, who can find it challenging to master the content and standards of all four subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re not confident in your subject, then you don’t have good examples off the top of your head. You can’t control the room, can’t pull the students in,” Finch said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are drawbacks though, Finch acknowledged. In a self-contained classroom, teachers can more easily integrate their different lessons, so that a math lesson might refer back to a topic covered in reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66051\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1707px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66051\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Woman leaning on desk\" width=\"1707\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-2000x2999.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/01/k12-departmentalizing-math-2-1366x2048.jpg 1366w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1707px) 100vw, 1707px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ms. Anthony poses for a portrait at Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts on December 9, 2025 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. \u003ccite>(Annie Flanagan for The Hechinger Report)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And even though Anthony, the second grade math and science teacher in Baton Rouge, loves teaching math, she also misses the extra time she could spend with each student when she had the same 25 children in her class all day for the entire school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a joy for me to be self-contained and to build that little family,” Anthony said. “I think the social emotional needs of students are best met in that type of environment. But being solely a math teacher, I do get to just dig in and focus on the nuance of the content.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Anthony’s partner teacher across the hall, Holley McArthur, teaching 50 students ELA and social studies is easier than having to teach 25 students math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is my thing: reading books, comprehending and finding answers, meeting their goals,” said McArthur, who has taught in both kinds of classrooms over three decades in education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While McArthur’s kids were at recess this mid-December day, the veteran teacher was grading their reading worksheets. A new student had transferred in from out of state midyear, and she was still evaluating his reading skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think you still get to know the kids, even if you just have them for three hours a day, because I’m not doing the hard math with them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"mailto:gilreath@hechingerreport.org\">\u003cem>gilreath@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/the-schools-where-even-young-children-change-classes/\">\u003cem>departmentalizing\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/weeklynewsletter/\">\u003cem>the Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Like learning to read by third grade, taking eighth grade math is a pivotal moment in a child’s education. Students who pass Algebra 1 in eighth grade are more likely to sign up for more advanced math courses, and those who pass more advanced math courses are more likely to graduate from college and earn more money. “Algebra in eighth grade is a gateway to a lot of further opportunities,” said Dan Goldhaber, an economist who studies education at the American Institutes for Research, in a recent webinar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers are trying to understand why so few Black and Hispanic students and low-income students of all races are making it through this early gate. While 25 percent of white students passed algebra in eighth grade in 2021, only 13 percent of Black students did, according to the most recent \u003ca href=\"https://civilrightsdata.ed.gov/\">data from the U.S. Department of Education\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A collection of surveys of teachers and principals, conducted by the research organization RAND, suggests three problems at the poorest middle schools, which are disproportionately populated with Black and Hispanic students. Many don’t offer algebra at all. Their teachers have less training and math expertise, and they describe how they spend classroom time differently than teachers do at wealthier schools. That means the most advanced students at many middle schools in poor communities don’t have the opportunity to learn algebra, and many students at high-poverty schools aren’t receiving the kind of math lessons that could help them get ready for the subject.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2023 and 2024, RAND surveyed more than 3,000 school principals and almost 1,000 math teachers across the country. The educators are part of a specially constructed national sample, designed to reflect all public schools and the demographics of the U.S. student population. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA3554-1.html\">working paper\u003c/a> analyzing some of the survey findings was released in October 2024. (\u003cem>That analysis was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The poorest 25 percent of schools had vastly different course offerings and teachers than the wealthiest 25 percent. Most strikingly, nearly a quarter of the highest poverty schools didn’t offer algebra at all to any eighth graders, compared to only 6 percent of the wealthiest schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conversely, poor schools are much less likely to adopt an algebra-for-all policy for eighth graders. Nearly half of the wealthiest schools offered algebra to all of their eighth grade students, compared to about a third of the poorest schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_64982\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64982\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"527\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1-800x432.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1-160x86.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1-768x414.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Slide from a RAND webinar, “Racial and Socioeconomic Divides in Algebra Teaching and Learning,” presented in November 2024.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Math teachers at high-poverty schools tended to have weaker professional preparation. They were far more likely to have entered the profession without first earning a traditional education degree at a college or university, instead completing an alternative certification program on the job, often without student teaching under supervision. And they were less likely to have a graduate degree or hold a mathematics credential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_64983\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64983\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"535\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2-800x438.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2-160x88.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2-768x421.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Slide from a RAND webinar, “Racial and Socioeconomic Divides in Algebra Teaching and Learning,” presented in November 2024.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In surveys, a third of math teachers at high-poverty schools reported that they spent more than half of class time teaching topics that were below grade level, as well as managing student behavior and disciplining students. Lecture-style instruction, as opposed to classroom discussion, was far more common at the poorest schools compared to the wealthiest schools. RAND researchers also detected similar discrepancies in instructional patterns when they examined schools along racial and ethnic lines, with Black and Hispanic students receiving “less optimal” instruction than white students. But these discrepancies were stronger by income than by race, suggesting that poverty may be a bigger factor than bias.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_64984\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64984\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"541\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3-800x443.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3-160x89.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3-768x425.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3-672x372.png 672w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Slide from a RAND webinar, “Racial and Socioeconomic Divides in Algebra Teaching and Learning,” presented in November 2024.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Many communities have tried putting more eighth graders into algebra classes, but that has sometimes left unprepared students worse off. “Simply giving them an eighth grade algebra course is not a magic bullet,” said AIR’s Goldhaber, who commented on the RAND analysis during a Nov. 5 \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/events/2024/11/racial-and-socioeconomic-divides-in-algebra-teaching-and-learning/invite.html\">webinar\u003c/a>. Either the material is too challenging and the students fail or the course was “algebra” in name only and didn’t really cover the content. And without a college preparatory track of advanced math classes to take after algebra, the benefits of taking Algebra 1 in eighth grade are unlikely to accrue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also not economically practical for many low-income middle schools to offer an Algebra 1 course when only a handful of students are advanced enough to take it. A teacher would have to be hired even for a few students and those resources might be more effectively spent on something else that would benefit more students. That puts the most advanced students at low-income schools at a particular disadvantage. “It’s a difficult issue for schools to tackle on their own,” said Goldhaber.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Improving math teacher quality at the poorest schools is a critical first step. Some researchers have suggested paying strong math teachers more to work at high-poverty schools, but that would also require the renegotiation of union contracts in many cities. And, even with financial incentives, there is a shortage of math teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For students, AIR’s Goldhaber argues the time to intervene in math is in elementary school to make sure more low-income students have strong basic math skills. “Do it before middle school,” said Goldhaber. “For many students, middle school is too late.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-eighth-grade-algebra/\">\u003cem>eighth grade math\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Like learning to read by third grade, taking eighth grade math is a pivotal moment in a child’s education. Students who pass Algebra 1 in eighth grade are more likely to sign up for more advanced math courses, and those who pass more advanced math courses are more likely to graduate from college and earn more money. “Algebra in eighth grade is a gateway to a lot of further opportunities,” said Dan Goldhaber, an economist who studies education at the American Institutes for Research, in a recent webinar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers are trying to understand why so few Black and Hispanic students and low-income students of all races are making it through this early gate. While 25 percent of white students passed algebra in eighth grade in 2021, only 13 percent of Black students did, according to the most recent \u003ca href=\"https://civilrightsdata.ed.gov/\">data from the U.S. Department of Education\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A collection of surveys of teachers and principals, conducted by the research organization RAND, suggests three problems at the poorest middle schools, which are disproportionately populated with Black and Hispanic students. Many don’t offer algebra at all. Their teachers have less training and math expertise, and they describe how they spend classroom time differently than teachers do at wealthier schools. That means the most advanced students at many middle schools in poor communities don’t have the opportunity to learn algebra, and many students at high-poverty schools aren’t receiving the kind of math lessons that could help them get ready for the subject.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2023 and 2024, RAND surveyed more than 3,000 school principals and almost 1,000 math teachers across the country. The educators are part of a specially constructed national sample, designed to reflect all public schools and the demographics of the U.S. student population. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA3554-1.html\">working paper\u003c/a> analyzing some of the survey findings was released in October 2024. (\u003cem>That analysis was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The poorest 25 percent of schools had vastly different course offerings and teachers than the wealthiest 25 percent. Most strikingly, nearly a quarter of the highest poverty schools didn’t offer algebra at all to any eighth graders, compared to only 6 percent of the wealthiest schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conversely, poor schools are much less likely to adopt an algebra-for-all policy for eighth graders. Nearly half of the wealthiest schools offered algebra to all of their eighth grade students, compared to about a third of the poorest schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_64982\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64982\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"527\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1-800x432.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1-160x86.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-1-768x414.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Slide from a RAND webinar, “Racial and Socioeconomic Divides in Algebra Teaching and Learning,” presented in November 2024.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Math teachers at high-poverty schools tended to have weaker professional preparation. They were far more likely to have entered the profession without first earning a traditional education degree at a college or university, instead completing an alternative certification program on the job, often without student teaching under supervision. And they were less likely to have a graduate degree or hold a mathematics credential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_64983\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64983\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"535\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2-800x438.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2-160x88.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-2-768x421.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Slide from a RAND webinar, “Racial and Socioeconomic Divides in Algebra Teaching and Learning,” presented in November 2024.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In surveys, a third of math teachers at high-poverty schools reported that they spent more than half of class time teaching topics that were below grade level, as well as managing student behavior and disciplining students. Lecture-style instruction, as opposed to classroom discussion, was far more common at the poorest schools compared to the wealthiest schools. RAND researchers also detected similar discrepancies in instructional patterns when they examined schools along racial and ethnic lines, with Black and Hispanic students receiving “less optimal” instruction than white students. But these discrepancies were stronger by income than by race, suggesting that poverty may be a bigger factor than bias.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_64984\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64984\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"541\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3-800x443.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3-160x89.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3-768x425.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Hechinger-Rand-3-672x372.png 672w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Slide from a RAND webinar, “Racial and Socioeconomic Divides in Algebra Teaching and Learning,” presented in November 2024.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Many communities have tried putting more eighth graders into algebra classes, but that has sometimes left unprepared students worse off. “Simply giving them an eighth grade algebra course is not a magic bullet,” said AIR’s Goldhaber, who commented on the RAND analysis during a Nov. 5 \u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/events/2024/11/racial-and-socioeconomic-divides-in-algebra-teaching-and-learning/invite.html\">webinar\u003c/a>. Either the material is too challenging and the students fail or the course was “algebra” in name only and didn’t really cover the content. And without a college preparatory track of advanced math classes to take after algebra, the benefits of taking Algebra 1 in eighth grade are unlikely to accrue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also not economically practical for many low-income middle schools to offer an Algebra 1 course when only a handful of students are advanced enough to take it. A teacher would have to be hired even for a few students and those resources might be more effectively spent on something else that would benefit more students. That puts the most advanced students at low-income schools at a particular disadvantage. “It’s a difficult issue for schools to tackle on their own,” said Goldhaber.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Improving math teacher quality at the poorest schools is a critical first step. Some researchers have suggested paying strong math teachers more to work at high-poverty schools, but that would also require the renegotiation of union contracts in many cities. And, even with financial incentives, there is a shortage of math teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For students, AIR’s Goldhaber argues the time to intervene in math is in elementary school to make sure more low-income students have strong basic math skills. “Do it before middle school,” said Goldhaber. “For many students, middle school is too late.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-eighth-grade-algebra/\">\u003cem>eighth grade math\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>In the fall of 2019, four high schools in a San Francisco Bay Area district shook up many of their ninth grade math classes. Students had traditionally been separated into more than five math courses by achievement level, from remedial to very advanced, and the district wanted to test what would happen if they combined their bottom three levels into one. Half of the students in those levels were randomly assigned to learn together, and half remained in their traditional tracks so that researchers could compare the difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in the lowest level who were part of the experiment skipped remedial math and were able to learn algebra with the majority of ninth graders. The experiment also meant that average, grade-level students were learning alongside peers who lacked foundational math skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was risky. Students sometimes end up with \u003ca href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/43773511\">lower math scores\u003c/a> when they’re pushed to do work that is too advanced for them; that’s why California ended an eighth grade “algebra for all” initiative a decade ago. Grade-level students can also be harmed if teachers try to accommodate weaker students by making the material easier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if the heterogeneous class avoided those pitfalls, the new math placement would give hundreds of students with low test scores in seventh and eighth grades a better shot at progressing to advanced math courses and college. Too often, these students feel stigmatized and demoralized. “You’re giving students another ‘at bat’,” said Elizabeth Huffaker, a Stanford University researcher who studied this experiment for her doctoral dissertation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results were promising, according to \u003ca href=\"https://edworkingpapers.com/ai24-986\">a paper that was made public in October 2024\u003c/a>. Half of the remedial students in the mixed class passed the ninth grade algebra course and moved on to geometry with their classmates. The other half still had to retake algebra in 10th grade, which is when they would have taken it anyway, but their test scores in 11th grade were higher than similar students who had learned math in a separate remedial classroom in ninth grade. Eleventh grade math achievement for remedial students who had taken ninth grade algebra was so much higher that the difference was equivalent to an extra year’s worth of math, according to the researchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, average students appeared to be unharmed. Those who had been randomly assigned to the new mixed level class had test scores in 11th grade that were no worse than those who had learned Algebra 1 separately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some detracking advocates argue that everyone benefits from mixed ability classes, but there was no increase in test scores for higher achieving students in this experiment. The vast majority of students in the mixed-ability classrooms would have been assigned to Algebra 1 anyway and relatively few were low achievers. It’s possible that there’s a point at which the concentration of low-scoring students becomes so high that it does negatively affect peers, the researchers said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In between the bottom students and the regular Algebra 1 students, there was a middle group of students who scored just below the cutoff for placement in Algebra 1 and were traditionally assigned to a double dose of algebra in ninth grade. The results were more ambiguous for these students, whose instructional time was cut in half by giving them only a single dose of algebra in a mixed-level class. They were less likely to pass geometry in 10th grade, but they appeared not to be worse off later in 11th grade. “One interpretation is that this was a pretty successful experiment for most students, but if you paired it with more instructional time, it would be even more effective,” said Huffaker. It would be more costly, too, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sequoia Union High School District, where this experiment took place, educates a wide range of students. It includes wealthy neighborhoods in Redwood City, Menlo Park and East Palo Alto, and low-income neighborhoods. Roughly a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed-data.org/district/San-Mateo/Sequoia-Union-High/1000\">third of the students in the district are poor\u003c/a> enough to qualify for the federal subsidized lunch program, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed-data.org/district/San-Mateo/Sequoia-Union-High\">15 percent\u003c/a> are categorized as English learners. Almost half of the students are \u003ca href=\"https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqcensus/enrethlevels.aspx?agglevel=District&year=2023-24&cds=4169062\">Hispanic\u003c/a>, 11 percent are \u003ca href=\"https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqcensus/enrethlevels.aspx?agglevel=District&year=2023-24&cds=4169062\">Asian\u003c/a>, and a third are \u003ca href=\"https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqcensus/enrethlevels.aspx?agglevel=District&year=2023-24&cds=4169062\">white\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This experiment did not include more advanced students who had already taken algebra in eighth grade or earlier. More than a third of the 2,000 ninth graders continued to be taught in separate geometry or Algebra 2 classes. A handful of extremely accelerated freshmen were in precalculus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That enabled this limited detracking experiment to avoid the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sfusd-algebra-math-wars-stanford-study-17851567.php\">community uproar\u003c/a> that had engulfed San Francisco, where advanced students had been prevented from taking algebra in eighth grade and \u003ca href=\"https://www.educationnext.org/san-franciscos-detracking-experiment/\">everyone was put into the same ninth-grade math class\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tom Dee, a Stanford education professor who conducted the math study along with his former graduate student Huffaker, said that this study shows that there are smaller things that schools can do between the two extremes of forcing all students into advanced coursework or barring any students from advanced coursework in the name of equity. “If we accelerate everyone,” Dee said, “it could be harmful to kids who aren’t fully prepared for that acceleration. And if we decelerate everyone, it can be potentially harmful to the achievement of higher performing kids and cap the kinds of things they might do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But it’s not the only arrow in our quiver,” Dee said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dee emphasized that this was just one group of students in one school district and the results would need to be replicated in other places before he would recommend the elimination of high school remedial math as a national policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Inside the classroom\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to tell what might have been the key to success in this experiment. It’s possible that half of the remedial students never really needed remediation and they were incorrectly placed because of their middle school math scores. At the same time, the district changed the way it taught in these mixed-ability classes and it could be those changes that made the difference. Better teachers might have volunteered to teach them. These teachers had extra training, and were given an extra non-teaching period each day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school handled mixed abilities in an unusual way. Instead of differentiating instruction by giving different practice problems to different students, which is a common approach in U.S. classrooms, the teachers were trained to give the same problems to all students. Victoria Dye, Sequoia Union’s director of professional development and curriculum, told me that the district selected open-ended word problems that even a student with low skills could try, but that also provided a challenge to stronger students. (An analogy would be a game with simple rules, like Othello, which still provides a challenge to expert players.) Dye said that these “low-floor, high-ceiling” problems were selected to supplement the district’s curriculum, which emphasized procedural fluency and computations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Classroom math discussions took center stage so that students could discuss each other’s analysis. In one exercise, students each wrote down their reasoning and revised it several times. “It’s great because any kid can begin that and improve,” said Dye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make time for problem solving and discussion, teachers streamlined the curriculum to emphasize key concepts. That meant cutting some algebra topics. Teachers made their own decisions on how to weave in a review of middle school concepts that students needed for algebra. Dye described this review as happening briefly on a “just-in-time” basis, not a reteaching of a full unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, remedial math has been eliminated in the district’s main high schools and nearly all students are in ninth grade algebra or a more advanced class, except for students with severe disabilities. The elimination of remedial math doesn’t fix everything. Many struggling students are still failing the subject and need more help. And it doesn’t reduce the huge disparities in math achievement inside school buildings. But it might help a large chunk of the most behind kids, and that’s particularly relevant after the pandemic when even more teens are woefully behind in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-ninth-grade-algebra/\">\u003cem>ninth grade algebra\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In the fall of 2019, four high schools in a San Francisco Bay Area district shook up many of their ninth grade math classes. Students had traditionally been separated into more than five math courses by achievement level, from remedial to very advanced, and the district wanted to test what would happen if they combined their bottom three levels into one. Half of the students in those levels were randomly assigned to learn together, and half remained in their traditional tracks so that researchers could compare the difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in the lowest level who were part of the experiment skipped remedial math and were able to learn algebra with the majority of ninth graders. The experiment also meant that average, grade-level students were learning alongside peers who lacked foundational math skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was risky. Students sometimes end up with \u003ca href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/43773511\">lower math scores\u003c/a> when they’re pushed to do work that is too advanced for them; that’s why California ended an eighth grade “algebra for all” initiative a decade ago. Grade-level students can also be harmed if teachers try to accommodate weaker students by making the material easier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if the heterogeneous class avoided those pitfalls, the new math placement would give hundreds of students with low test scores in seventh and eighth grades a better shot at progressing to advanced math courses and college. Too often, these students feel stigmatized and demoralized. “You’re giving students another ‘at bat’,” said Elizabeth Huffaker, a Stanford University researcher who studied this experiment for her doctoral dissertation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results were promising, according to \u003ca href=\"https://edworkingpapers.com/ai24-986\">a paper that was made public in October 2024\u003c/a>. Half of the remedial students in the mixed class passed the ninth grade algebra course and moved on to geometry with their classmates. The other half still had to retake algebra in 10th grade, which is when they would have taken it anyway, but their test scores in 11th grade were higher than similar students who had learned math in a separate remedial classroom in ninth grade. Eleventh grade math achievement for remedial students who had taken ninth grade algebra was so much higher that the difference was equivalent to an extra year’s worth of math, according to the researchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, average students appeared to be unharmed. Those who had been randomly assigned to the new mixed level class had test scores in 11th grade that were no worse than those who had learned Algebra 1 separately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some detracking advocates argue that everyone benefits from mixed ability classes, but there was no increase in test scores for higher achieving students in this experiment. The vast majority of students in the mixed-ability classrooms would have been assigned to Algebra 1 anyway and relatively few were low achievers. It’s possible that there’s a point at which the concentration of low-scoring students becomes so high that it does negatively affect peers, the researchers said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In between the bottom students and the regular Algebra 1 students, there was a middle group of students who scored just below the cutoff for placement in Algebra 1 and were traditionally assigned to a double dose of algebra in ninth grade. The results were more ambiguous for these students, whose instructional time was cut in half by giving them only a single dose of algebra in a mixed-level class. They were less likely to pass geometry in 10th grade, but they appeared not to be worse off later in 11th grade. “One interpretation is that this was a pretty successful experiment for most students, but if you paired it with more instructional time, it would be even more effective,” said Huffaker. It would be more costly, too, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sequoia Union High School District, where this experiment took place, educates a wide range of students. It includes wealthy neighborhoods in Redwood City, Menlo Park and East Palo Alto, and low-income neighborhoods. Roughly a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed-data.org/district/San-Mateo/Sequoia-Union-High/1000\">third of the students in the district are poor\u003c/a> enough to qualify for the federal subsidized lunch program, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed-data.org/district/San-Mateo/Sequoia-Union-High\">15 percent\u003c/a> are categorized as English learners. Almost half of the students are \u003ca href=\"https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqcensus/enrethlevels.aspx?agglevel=District&year=2023-24&cds=4169062\">Hispanic\u003c/a>, 11 percent are \u003ca href=\"https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqcensus/enrethlevels.aspx?agglevel=District&year=2023-24&cds=4169062\">Asian\u003c/a>, and a third are \u003ca href=\"https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqcensus/enrethlevels.aspx?agglevel=District&year=2023-24&cds=4169062\">white\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This experiment did not include more advanced students who had already taken algebra in eighth grade or earlier. More than a third of the 2,000 ninth graders continued to be taught in separate geometry or Algebra 2 classes. A handful of extremely accelerated freshmen were in precalculus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That enabled this limited detracking experiment to avoid the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sfusd-algebra-math-wars-stanford-study-17851567.php\">community uproar\u003c/a> that had engulfed San Francisco, where advanced students had been prevented from taking algebra in eighth grade and \u003ca href=\"https://www.educationnext.org/san-franciscos-detracking-experiment/\">everyone was put into the same ninth-grade math class\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tom Dee, a Stanford education professor who conducted the math study along with his former graduate student Huffaker, said that this study shows that there are smaller things that schools can do between the two extremes of forcing all students into advanced coursework or barring any students from advanced coursework in the name of equity. “If we accelerate everyone,” Dee said, “it could be harmful to kids who aren’t fully prepared for that acceleration. And if we decelerate everyone, it can be potentially harmful to the achievement of higher performing kids and cap the kinds of things they might do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But it’s not the only arrow in our quiver,” Dee said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dee emphasized that this was just one group of students in one school district and the results would need to be replicated in other places before he would recommend the elimination of high school remedial math as a national policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Inside the classroom\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to tell what might have been the key to success in this experiment. It’s possible that half of the remedial students never really needed remediation and they were incorrectly placed because of their middle school math scores. At the same time, the district changed the way it taught in these mixed-ability classes and it could be those changes that made the difference. Better teachers might have volunteered to teach them. These teachers had extra training, and were given an extra non-teaching period each day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school handled mixed abilities in an unusual way. Instead of differentiating instruction by giving different practice problems to different students, which is a common approach in U.S. classrooms, the teachers were trained to give the same problems to all students. Victoria Dye, Sequoia Union’s director of professional development and curriculum, told me that the district selected open-ended word problems that even a student with low skills could try, but that also provided a challenge to stronger students. (An analogy would be a game with simple rules, like Othello, which still provides a challenge to expert players.) Dye said that these “low-floor, high-ceiling” problems were selected to supplement the district’s curriculum, which emphasized procedural fluency and computations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Classroom math discussions took center stage so that students could discuss each other’s analysis. In one exercise, students each wrote down their reasoning and revised it several times. “It’s great because any kid can begin that and improve,” said Dye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make time for problem solving and discussion, teachers streamlined the curriculum to emphasize key concepts. That meant cutting some algebra topics. Teachers made their own decisions on how to weave in a review of middle school concepts that students needed for algebra. Dye described this review as happening briefly on a “just-in-time” basis, not a reteaching of a full unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, remedial math has been eliminated in the district’s main high schools and nearly all students are in ninth grade algebra or a more advanced class, except for students with severe disabilities. The elimination of remedial math doesn’t fix everything. Many struggling students are still failing the subject and need more help. And it doesn’t reduce the huge disparities in math achievement inside school buildings. But it might help a large chunk of the most behind kids, and that’s particularly relevant after the pandemic when even more teens are woefully behind in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-ninth-grade-algebra/\">\u003cem>ninth grade algebra\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Stanford’s Jo Boaler Discusses Her New Book ‘MATH-ish’ and Takes On Her Critics",
"headTitle": "Stanford’s Jo Boaler Discusses Her New Book ‘MATH-ish’ and Takes On Her Critics | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jo Boaler is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education with a devoted following of teachers who cheer her call to make math education more exciting. But despite all her fans, she has sparked controversy at nearly every stage of her career. Critics say she misrepresents research to make her case and her ideas actually impede students. Now, with a new book coming out in May, provocatively titled “MATH-\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ish\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” Boaler is fighting back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This is a whole effort to shut me down, my research and my writing,” said Boaler. “I see it as a form of knowledge suppression.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Academic fights usually don’t make it beyond the ivory tower. But Boaler’s popularity and influence have made her a focal point in the current math wars, which also seem to reflect the broader culture wars. In the last few months, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2024/03/22/opinion/dei-math-ed-prof-who-helped-get-algebra-banned-in-frisco-is-accused-of-faulty-research/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">tabloids\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.piratewires.com/p/jo-boaler-misrepresented-citations\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">conservative publications\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> have turned Boaler into something of an education villain who’s captured the attention of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770663755149656458\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Elon Musk\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1770659605774786758\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Texas Sen. Ted Cruz\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on social media. Critics have even questioned Boaler’s association with a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.piratewires.com/p/yolande-beckles-scammer-california-education-system\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">former reality tv star\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I am the next target,” Boaler said, describing the death threats and abusive email she’s been receiving.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This controversy matters on a much larger level because there is a legitimate debate about how math should be taught in American schools. Cognitive science research suggests that students need a lot of practice and memorization to master math. And once students achieve success through practice, this success will motivate them to learn and enjoy math. In other words, success increases motivation at least as much as motivation produces success. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yet, from Boaler’s perspective, too many students feel like failures in math class and hate the subject. That leaves us with millions of Americans who are innumerate. Nearly 2 out of every 5 eighth graders don’t even have the most basic math skills, according to the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/mathematics/2022/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (NAEP). On the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-there-is-a-worldwide-problem-in-math-and-its-not-just-about-the-pandemic/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, American 15-year-olds rank toward the bottom of economically advanced nations in math achievement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler draws upon a different body of research about student motivation that looks at the root causes of why students don’t like math based on surveys and interviews. Students who are tracked into low-level classes feel discouraged. Struggling math students often describe feelings of anxiety from timed tests. Many students express frustration that math is just a collection of meaningless procedures. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler seeks to fix these root causes. She advocates for ending tracking by ability in math classes, getting rid of timed tests and starting with conceptual understanding before introducing procedures. Most importantly, she wants to elevate the work that students tackle in math classes with more interesting questions that spark genuine curiosity and encourage students to think and wonder. Her goal is to expose students to the beauty of mathematical thinking as mathematicians enjoy the subject. Whether students actually learn more math the Boaler way is where this dispute centers. In other words, how strong is the evidence base?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The latest battle over Boaler’s work began with an anonymous complaint published in March by the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://freebeacon.com/california/san-francisco-cited-this-professor-to-end-8th-grade-algebra-her-research-had-reckless-disregard-for-accuracy-complaint-alleges/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Washington Free Beacon\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the same conservative website that first surfaced plagiarism accusations against Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University. The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://drive.proton.me/urls/P7BYBG7E6R#VCfOpReAcH9F\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">complaint\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> accuses Boaler of a “reckless disregard for accuracy” by misrepresenting research citations 52 times and asks Stanford to discipline Boaler, a full professor with an endowed chair. Stanford has said it’s reviewing the complaint and hasn’t decided whether to open an investigation, according to news reports. Boaler \u003ca href=\"https://joboaler.people.stanford.edu/\">stands by her research\u003c/a> (other than one citation that she says has been fixed) and calls the anonymous complaint “bogus.” \u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">(\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>UPDATE: The Hechinger Report learned after this article was published that Stanford has decided \u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/7e_rCXDM32FOJLk3SkNtc7?domain=stanforddaily.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan style=\"font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>not to open an investigation\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">)\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They haven’t even got the courage to put their name on accusations like this,” Boaler said. “That tells us something.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler first drew fire from critics in 2005, when she presented new \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nrich.maths.org/content/id/7011/nrich%20paper.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research claiming that students at a low-income school\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> who were behind grade level had outperformed students at higher achieving schools when they were taught in classrooms that combined students of different math achievement levels. The supposed secret sauce was an unusual curriculum that emphasized group work and de-emphasized lectures. Critics disparaged the findings and hounded her to release her data. Math professors at Stanford and Cal State University \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Articles/v8n1.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">re-crunched the numbers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and declared they’d found the opposite result.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler, who is originally from England, retreated to an academic post back in the U.K., but returned to Stanford in 2010 with a fighting spirit. She had written a book, “What’s Math Got to Do with It?: How Parents and Teachers Can Help Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject,” which explained to a general audience why challenging, open-ended problems would help more children to embrace math and how the current approach of boring drills and formulas was turning too many kids off. Teachers loved it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler accused her earlier critics of academic \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/15/stanford-professor-goes-public-attacks-over-her-math-education-research\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bullying and harassment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But she didn’t address their legitimate research questions. Instead, she focused on changing classrooms. Tens of thousands of teachers and parents flocked to her 2013 online course on how to teach math. Building on this new fan base, she founded a nonprofit organization at Stanford called youcubed to train teachers, conduct research and spread her gospel. Boaler says a half million teachers now visit youcubed’s website each month.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler also saw math as a lever to promote social justice. She lamented that too many low-income Black and Hispanic children were stuck in discouraging, low-level math classes. She advocated for change. In 2014, San Francisco \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/19433?view_id=47&redirect=true\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">heeded that call\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, mixing different achievement levels in middle school classrooms and delaying algebra until ninth grade. Parents, especially in the city’s large Asian community, protested that delaying algebra was holding their children back. Without starting algebra in middle school, it was difficult to progress to high school calculus, an important course for college applications. Parents blamed Boaler, who applauded San Francisco for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-how-one-city-got-math-right/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">getting math right\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Ten years later, the city is slated to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/2024-02-14-sfusd-offer-algebra-1-8th-grade-beginning-2024-25-school-year#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20(February%2014%2C%202024,at%20its%20regular%20meeting%20Tuesday.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reinstate algebra for eighth graders\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> this fall. Boaler denies any involvement in the unpopular San Francisco reforms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before that math experiment unraveled in San Francisco, California education policymakers tapped Boaler to be one of the lead writers of a new math framework, which would guide math instruction throughout the state. The first draft discouraged tracking children into separate math classes by achievement levels, and proposed delaying algebra until high school. It emphasized “social justice” and suggested that students could take data science instead of advanced algebra in high school. Traditional math proponents worried that the document would water down math instruction in California, hinder advanced students and make it harder to pursue STEM careers. And they were concerned that California’s proposed reforms could spread across the nation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the battle to quash the framework, critics attacked Boaler for trying to institute “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://blog.independent.org/2023/07/10/californias-flawed-k-12-math-framework/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">woke\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” mathematics. The battle became personal, with some criticizing her \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oxnardsd.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=16044&ViewID=DEDCCD34-7C24-4AF2-812A-33C0075398BC&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=25705&PageID=10939&Tag=&Comments=true\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">$5,000-an-hour\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> consulting and speaking fees at public schools while sending her own children to private school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Critics also dug into the weeds of the framework document, which is how this also became a research story. A Stanford mathematics professor catalogued a list of what he saw as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sites.google.com/view/publiccommentsonthecmf/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research misrepresentations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Those citations, together with additional characterizations of research findings throughout Boaler’s writings, eventually grew into the anonymous complaint that’s now at Stanford.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the time the most recent complaint against Boaler was lodged, the framework had already been revised in substantial ways. Boaler’s critics had arguably won their main policy battles. College-bound students still need the traditional course sequence and cannot substitute data science for advanced algebra. California’s middle schools will continue to have the option to track children into separate classes and start algebra in eighth grade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the attacks on Boaler continue. In addition to seeking sanctions from Stanford, her anonymous critics have asked academic journals to pull down her papers, according to Boaler. They’ve written to conference organizers to stop Boaler from speaking and, she says, they’ve told her funders to stop giving money to her. At least one, the Valhalla Foundation, the family foundation of billionaire Scott Cook (co-founder of the software giant Intuit), stopped funding youcubed in 2024. In 2022 and 2023, it gave Boaler’s organization more than $560,000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler sees the continued salvos against her as part of the larger right-wing attack on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. She also sees a misogynistic pattern of taking down women who have power in education, such as Claudine Gay. “You’re basically hung, drawn and quartered by the court of Twitter,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From my perch as a journalist who covers education research, I see that Boaler has a tendency to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/march-13th-2019\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">overstate the implications\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of a narrow study. Sometimes she cites a theory that’s been written about in an academic journal but hasn’t been proven and labels it research. While technically true – most academic writing falls under the broad category of research – that’s not the same as evidence from a well-designed classroom experiment. And she tends not to factor in evidence that runs counter to her views or adjust her views as new studies arise. Some of her numerical claims seem grandiose. For example, she says one of her 18-lesson summer courses raised achievement by \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/pd/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2.8 years\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People have raised questions for a long time about the rigor and the care in which Jo makes claims related to both her own research and others,” said Jon Star, a professor of math education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Star says many other education researchers have done exactly the same, and the “liberties” Boaler takes are common in the field. “That’s not to suggest that taking these liberties is okay,” Star said, “but she is being called out for it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler is getting more scrutiny than her colleagues, he said, because she’s influential, has a large following of devoted teachers and has been involved in policy changes at schools. Many other scholars of math education share Boaler’s views. But Boaler has become the public face of nontraditional teaching ideas in math. And in today’s polarized political climate, that’s a dangerous public face to be.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The citation controversy reflects bigger issues with the state of education research. It’s often not as precise as the hard sciences or even social sciences like economics. Academic experts are prone to make wide, sweeping statements. And there are too few studies in real classrooms or randomized controlled trials that could settle some of the big debates. Star argues that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubs.nctm.org/view/journals/jrme/49/1/article-p98.xml\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more replication studies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> could improve the quality of evidence for math instruction. We can’t know which teaching methods are most effective unless the method can be reproduced in different settings with different students.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s also possible that more research may never settle these big math debates and we may continue to generate conflicting evidence. There’s the real possibility that traditional methods could be more effective for short-term achievement gains, while nontraditional methods might attract more students to the subject, and potentially lead to more creative problem solvers in the future. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even if \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://notepad.michaelpershan.com/youcubed-is-more-than-just-sloppy-about-research/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler is loose\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> with the details of research studies, she could still be right about the big picture. Maybe advanced students would be better off slowing down on the current racetrack to calculus to learn math with more depth and breadth. Her fun, hands-on approach to math might spark just enough motivation to inspire more kids to do their homework. Might we trade off a bit of short-term math achievement for a greater good of a numerate, civic society?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In her new book, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/math-ish-jo-boaler?variant=41226038083618\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MATH-\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ish\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” Boaler is doubling down on her approach to math with a title that seems to encourage inexactitude. She argues that approaching a problem in a “math-ish” way gives students the freedom to take a guess and make mistakes, to step back and think rather than jumping to numerical calculations. Boaler says she’s hearing from teachers that “ish” is far more fun than making estimates.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I’m hoping this book is going to be my salvation,” she said, “that I have something exciting to do and focus on and not focus on the thousands of abusive messages I’m getting.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-stanfords-jo-boaler-book-math-ish-critics/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jo Boaler\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jo Boaler is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education with a devoted following of teachers who cheer her call to make math education more exciting. But despite all her fans, she has sparked controversy at nearly every stage of her career. Critics say she misrepresents research to make her case and her ideas actually impede students. Now, with a new book coming out in May, provocatively titled “MATH-\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ish\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” Boaler is fighting back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“This is a whole effort to shut me down, my research and my writing,” said Boaler. “I see it as a form of knowledge suppression.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Academic fights usually don’t make it beyond the ivory tower. But Boaler’s popularity and influence have made her a focal point in the current math wars, which also seem to reflect the broader culture wars. In the last few months, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2024/03/22/opinion/dei-math-ed-prof-who-helped-get-algebra-banned-in-frisco-is-accused-of-faulty-research/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">tabloids\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.piratewires.com/p/jo-boaler-misrepresented-citations\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">conservative publications\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> have turned Boaler into something of an education villain who’s captured the attention of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770663755149656458\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Elon Musk\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1770659605774786758\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Texas Sen. Ted Cruz\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on social media. Critics have even questioned Boaler’s association with a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.piratewires.com/p/yolande-beckles-scammer-california-education-system\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">former reality tv star\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I am the next target,” Boaler said, describing the death threats and abusive email she’s been receiving.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This controversy matters on a much larger level because there is a legitimate debate about how math should be taught in American schools. Cognitive science research suggests that students need a lot of practice and memorization to master math. And once students achieve success through practice, this success will motivate them to learn and enjoy math. In other words, success increases motivation at least as much as motivation produces success. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yet, from Boaler’s perspective, too many students feel like failures in math class and hate the subject. That leaves us with millions of Americans who are innumerate. Nearly 2 out of every 5 eighth graders don’t even have the most basic math skills, according to the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/mathematics/2022/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (NAEP). On the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-there-is-a-worldwide-problem-in-math-and-its-not-just-about-the-pandemic/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, American 15-year-olds rank toward the bottom of economically advanced nations in math achievement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler draws upon a different body of research about student motivation that looks at the root causes of why students don’t like math based on surveys and interviews. Students who are tracked into low-level classes feel discouraged. Struggling math students often describe feelings of anxiety from timed tests. Many students express frustration that math is just a collection of meaningless procedures. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler seeks to fix these root causes. She advocates for ending tracking by ability in math classes, getting rid of timed tests and starting with conceptual understanding before introducing procedures. Most importantly, she wants to elevate the work that students tackle in math classes with more interesting questions that spark genuine curiosity and encourage students to think and wonder. Her goal is to expose students to the beauty of mathematical thinking as mathematicians enjoy the subject. Whether students actually learn more math the Boaler way is where this dispute centers. In other words, how strong is the evidence base?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The latest battle over Boaler’s work began with an anonymous complaint published in March by the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://freebeacon.com/california/san-francisco-cited-this-professor-to-end-8th-grade-algebra-her-research-had-reckless-disregard-for-accuracy-complaint-alleges/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Washington Free Beacon\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the same conservative website that first surfaced plagiarism accusations against Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University. The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://drive.proton.me/urls/P7BYBG7E6R#VCfOpReAcH9F\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">complaint\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> accuses Boaler of a “reckless disregard for accuracy” by misrepresenting research citations 52 times and asks Stanford to discipline Boaler, a full professor with an endowed chair. Stanford has said it’s reviewing the complaint and hasn’t decided whether to open an investigation, according to news reports. Boaler \u003ca href=\"https://joboaler.people.stanford.edu/\">stands by her research\u003c/a> (other than one citation that she says has been fixed) and calls the anonymous complaint “bogus.” \u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">(\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>UPDATE: The Hechinger Report learned after this article was published that Stanford has decided \u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/7e_rCXDM32FOJLk3SkNtc7?domain=stanforddaily.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan style=\"font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>not to open an investigation\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">\u003ci>.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #111111;font-family: Tiempos,Georgia,serif;font-size: medium\">)\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They haven’t even got the courage to put their name on accusations like this,” Boaler said. “That tells us something.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler first drew fire from critics in 2005, when she presented new \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nrich.maths.org/content/id/7011/nrich%20paper.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research claiming that students at a low-income school\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> who were behind grade level had outperformed students at higher achieving schools when they were taught in classrooms that combined students of different math achievement levels. The supposed secret sauce was an unusual curriculum that emphasized group work and de-emphasized lectures. Critics disparaged the findings and hounded her to release her data. Math professors at Stanford and Cal State University \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Articles/v8n1.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">re-crunched the numbers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and declared they’d found the opposite result.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler, who is originally from England, retreated to an academic post back in the U.K., but returned to Stanford in 2010 with a fighting spirit. She had written a book, “What’s Math Got to Do with It?: How Parents and Teachers Can Help Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject,” which explained to a general audience why challenging, open-ended problems would help more children to embrace math and how the current approach of boring drills and formulas was turning too many kids off. Teachers loved it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler accused her earlier critics of academic \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/15/stanford-professor-goes-public-attacks-over-her-math-education-research\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bullying and harassment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But she didn’t address their legitimate research questions. Instead, she focused on changing classrooms. Tens of thousands of teachers and parents flocked to her 2013 online course on how to teach math. Building on this new fan base, she founded a nonprofit organization at Stanford called youcubed to train teachers, conduct research and spread her gospel. Boaler says a half million teachers now visit youcubed’s website each month.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler also saw math as a lever to promote social justice. She lamented that too many low-income Black and Hispanic children were stuck in discouraging, low-level math classes. She advocated for change. In 2014, San Francisco \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/19433?view_id=47&redirect=true\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">heeded that call\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, mixing different achievement levels in middle school classrooms and delaying algebra until ninth grade. Parents, especially in the city’s large Asian community, protested that delaying algebra was holding their children back. Without starting algebra in middle school, it was difficult to progress to high school calculus, an important course for college applications. Parents blamed Boaler, who applauded San Francisco for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-how-one-city-got-math-right/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">getting math right\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Ten years later, the city is slated to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/2024-02-14-sfusd-offer-algebra-1-8th-grade-beginning-2024-25-school-year#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20(February%2014%2C%202024,at%20its%20regular%20meeting%20Tuesday.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reinstate algebra for eighth graders\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> this fall. Boaler denies any involvement in the unpopular San Francisco reforms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before that math experiment unraveled in San Francisco, California education policymakers tapped Boaler to be one of the lead writers of a new math framework, which would guide math instruction throughout the state. The first draft discouraged tracking children into separate math classes by achievement levels, and proposed delaying algebra until high school. It emphasized “social justice” and suggested that students could take data science instead of advanced algebra in high school. Traditional math proponents worried that the document would water down math instruction in California, hinder advanced students and make it harder to pursue STEM careers. And they were concerned that California’s proposed reforms could spread across the nation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the battle to quash the framework, critics attacked Boaler for trying to institute “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://blog.independent.org/2023/07/10/californias-flawed-k-12-math-framework/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">woke\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” mathematics. The battle became personal, with some criticizing her \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oxnardsd.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=16044&ViewID=DEDCCD34-7C24-4AF2-812A-33C0075398BC&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=25705&PageID=10939&Tag=&Comments=true\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">$5,000-an-hour\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> consulting and speaking fees at public schools while sending her own children to private school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Critics also dug into the weeds of the framework document, which is how this also became a research story. A Stanford mathematics professor catalogued a list of what he saw as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sites.google.com/view/publiccommentsonthecmf/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research misrepresentations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Those citations, together with additional characterizations of research findings throughout Boaler’s writings, eventually grew into the anonymous complaint that’s now at Stanford.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the time the most recent complaint against Boaler was lodged, the framework had already been revised in substantial ways. Boaler’s critics had arguably won their main policy battles. College-bound students still need the traditional course sequence and cannot substitute data science for advanced algebra. California’s middle schools will continue to have the option to track children into separate classes and start algebra in eighth grade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the attacks on Boaler continue. In addition to seeking sanctions from Stanford, her anonymous critics have asked academic journals to pull down her papers, according to Boaler. They’ve written to conference organizers to stop Boaler from speaking and, she says, they’ve told her funders to stop giving money to her. At least one, the Valhalla Foundation, the family foundation of billionaire Scott Cook (co-founder of the software giant Intuit), stopped funding youcubed in 2024. In 2022 and 2023, it gave Boaler’s organization more than $560,000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler sees the continued salvos against her as part of the larger right-wing attack on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. She also sees a misogynistic pattern of taking down women who have power in education, such as Claudine Gay. “You’re basically hung, drawn and quartered by the court of Twitter,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From my perch as a journalist who covers education research, I see that Boaler has a tendency to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/march-13th-2019\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">overstate the implications\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of a narrow study. Sometimes she cites a theory that’s been written about in an academic journal but hasn’t been proven and labels it research. While technically true – most academic writing falls under the broad category of research – that’s not the same as evidence from a well-designed classroom experiment. And she tends not to factor in evidence that runs counter to her views or adjust her views as new studies arise. Some of her numerical claims seem grandiose. For example, she says one of her 18-lesson summer courses raised achievement by \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/pd/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2.8 years\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People have raised questions for a long time about the rigor and the care in which Jo makes claims related to both her own research and others,” said Jon Star, a professor of math education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Star says many other education researchers have done exactly the same, and the “liberties” Boaler takes are common in the field. “That’s not to suggest that taking these liberties is okay,” Star said, “but she is being called out for it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler is getting more scrutiny than her colleagues, he said, because she’s influential, has a large following of devoted teachers and has been involved in policy changes at schools. Many other scholars of math education share Boaler’s views. But Boaler has become the public face of nontraditional teaching ideas in math. And in today’s polarized political climate, that’s a dangerous public face to be.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The citation controversy reflects bigger issues with the state of education research. It’s often not as precise as the hard sciences or even social sciences like economics. Academic experts are prone to make wide, sweeping statements. And there are too few studies in real classrooms or randomized controlled trials that could settle some of the big debates. Star argues that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubs.nctm.org/view/journals/jrme/49/1/article-p98.xml\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more replication studies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> could improve the quality of evidence for math instruction. We can’t know which teaching methods are most effective unless the method can be reproduced in different settings with different students.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s also possible that more research may never settle these big math debates and we may continue to generate conflicting evidence. There’s the real possibility that traditional methods could be more effective for short-term achievement gains, while nontraditional methods might attract more students to the subject, and potentially lead to more creative problem solvers in the future. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even if \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://notepad.michaelpershan.com/youcubed-is-more-than-just-sloppy-about-research/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boaler is loose\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> with the details of research studies, she could still be right about the big picture. Maybe advanced students would be better off slowing down on the current racetrack to calculus to learn math with more depth and breadth. Her fun, hands-on approach to math might spark just enough motivation to inspire more kids to do their homework. Might we trade off a bit of short-term math achievement for a greater good of a numerate, civic society?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In her new book, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/math-ish-jo-boaler?variant=41226038083618\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MATH-\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ish\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” Boaler is doubling down on her approach to math with a title that seems to encourage inexactitude. She argues that approaching a problem in a “math-ish” way gives students the freedom to take a guess and make mistakes, to step back and think rather than jumping to numerical calculations. Boaler says she’s hearing from teachers that “ish” is far more fun than making estimates.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I’m hoping this book is going to be my salvation,” she said, “that I have something exciting to do and focus on and not focus on the thousands of abusive messages I’m getting.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-stanfords-jo-boaler-book-math-ish-critics/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jo Boaler\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Walking into her sophomore year math class, Taylor Paris was nervous. She’d had a rocky relationship with the subject ever since long division showed up in elementary school. “I knew I didn’t understand math concepts very well. I knew that it was something that took me a longer time (than classmates),” she recalled.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So she was pleasantly surprised when one of the first assignments from teacher Sarah Strong required no calculating. Instead, Strong asked the class to write a letter to math – as if it were a person. These \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60108/using-dear-math-letters-to-overcome-dread-in-math-class\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Dear Math” letters\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are a tool that Strong developed as a way to understand students’ relationship to math, which researchers call \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/jmetc/article/view/9187/4897\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">mathematical identity\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. What Strong learns from these letters informs how she teaches individual students and whole classes throughout the year. Often that means working to disrupt the negative beliefs that students hold about their math abilities, which tend to revolve around comparisons to classmates, like “fast” vs. “slow” or “math person” vs. “not a math person.”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Strong models the Dear Math activity by reading her own letter to math. Then she gives students prompts, such as:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is one of your greatest mathematical strengths?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you plan to engage with math in the future?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What would you like more of in math classrooms?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Paris, who is now 20, was excited to apply her writing skills in math, but also to unpack some of her deeply rooted emotions about math. “I was finally able to write all of the things that made me sad and things that made me mad, like everything into one letter, addressing math directly,” she said. Here’s what she wrote in 10th grade: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math, \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh, do I have some things to say to you. You’ve followed me through every school year, caused me the worst headaches, and given me numerous counts of anxiety just thinking about you … The memories of my seventh grade math teacher telling me ‘maybe you’re just not a math person’ still ringing in my head and the constant Bs and Cs are still imprinted in my mind. You’ve been a never ending challenge and struggle, and it’s always been hard to understand you. No matter how many times my friends and teachers explain you, I never grasp you completely.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Paris, having a teacher acknowledge emotions in math class was \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54980/why-teachers-want-math-with-more-human-ties\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">humanizing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “She recognized my experience as a part of this really big experience that so many other people have. And that was really validating,” Paris said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Strong devotes a few hours to reading the letters, making notes about broad patterns and individual details. “It’s the beginning of an ongoing story between you and the students and their math experience for that semester or year, and it’s really important to start by listening to them well,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Hierarchy in math education\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Strong teaches at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hightechhigh.org/about/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">High Tech High\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and its Graduate School of Education in San Diego. She developed the Dear Math routine almost a decade ago, and she published a book about it, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.10publications.com/dear-math\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math: Why Kids Hate Math And What Teachers Can Do About It\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, co-authored by her former\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">student Gigi Butterfield. In it, the teacher and former student reflect on the themes across hundreds of letters. One pervasive theme is hierarchy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Kids as young as kindergarten and first grade are defining themselves as good at math or not good at math,” said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/amynoelleparks\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Amy Parks\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, an elementary math education researcher at Michigan State University. Much of that definition comes from how they rank among classmates – from timed tests, to ‘high’ and ‘low’ groups, to subtle cues in teachers’ language. “I’ve been in classrooms where teachers have had kids line up by how many questions they answered or how many things they got right,” Parks said. “These hierarchies get reinforced so often and in so many different ways it’s almost overwhelming.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For many kids, the comparisons add up to a negative self-perception around math. And by the time they reach high school, that mathematical identity can feel immutable. But math class doesn’t have to be this way. “Teachers and parents can affect the way kids think about these things,” said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://mathematizing4all.com/about-the-author/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Lambert\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a professor and researcher at University of California, Santa Barbara.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a stubborn cultural \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54389/3-ways-to-shape-math-into-a-positive-experience\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">myth that some of us are “math people” and some of us aren’t\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. This idea gets repeated explicitly all the time, and often \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aah6524\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">implicitly with gendered and racialized associations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But neuroscience shows that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/resources/brain-science/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">everyone is capable of learning math\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and Lambert said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57997/how-to-build-students-math-confidence-with-culturally-sustaining-teaching-practices\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">it matters that kids hear that\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “Students connect subjects to teachers in a pretty intense way that I think as adults we often forget. So if they feel their math teacher believes in them as a human being and believes in their competence in mathematics, that can make a huge difference,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Strong’s classroom, listening to students’ stories is the first step toward disrupting those hierarchies. She also looks for ways to highlight students’ mathematical thinking on a daily basis. One way she does this is by having multiple students write their problem-solving ideas on the whiteboard and asking other students to comment on what they like about the strategies they see. Another routine is an exit ticket that asks students to share something they learned from a classmate that day. She might share the details the next day with a student who was mentioned or with the whole class if there’s a bigger lesson in it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Math is for everyone\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Isabela Avila, another of Strong’s former students, said these kinds of practices created a sense of community: “It was never even like a question of did you get it right or wrong. It just seemed like we were always just all learning together as a class.” She had Strong as a teacher twice and wrote Dear Math letters both times. In her letter as a sophomore, her self-doubts showed up in the first sentence:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math, I really like you, but you don’t come naturally to me. I have to work extra hard to understand and fully conceptualize what you have to offer.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In her letter as a senior, Avila wrote about her math growth over the prior two years:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I developed a sense of patience and open mindedness for the first time ever. … I know this will help me a lot in college and beyond, and I look forward to using it in the future.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Avila got to the highly competitive environment of Johns Hopkins University, however, the usual order of things returned. “I really struggled a lot with comparing myself, especially in math,” she said, discussing her freshman year. “And I just found that to be super, super counterproductive for both my learning and my self esteem.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Strong said her own math story has had a lot of highs and lows, too. Though she can’t protect students from the ways math is taught and talked about beyond her classroom, her hope is that before they leave high school, “they start to see themselves as mathematicians in new ways and that they start to see their peers as mathematically brilliant in new ways.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Avila, the persistence she developed in high school did pay off in the long, emotionally tough hours of college calculus. “I feel like how you think about yourself and how fast you are to get back up and keep trying is really, truly so much more important than if you can actually do the math,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fast and slow\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Paris, Strong’s former student who liked expressing her emotions in a Dear Math letter, still remembers the heart-racing stress that accompanied \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61712/do-math-drills-help-children-learn\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">timed multiplication tests\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in third grade. In Strong’s classroom, she said, there was never a timer. When Paris needed extra support, Strong brought out old algebra textbooks to reinforce foundational concepts. She designed projects where Paris could make connections between math and art – a subject that she already loved. Most importantly, Strong helped Paris learn how to break down complex problems into smaller steps. “Which is such a simple concept, but it didn’t even cross my mind that I could do that in math,” said Paris. “And that taking my time in math meant that I was being a mathematician.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Many students have this conception that they’re the only one who’s taking time to understand this concept, that everybody around them has already got it,” said Lambert, the UC Santa Barbara professor. Lambert suggested that teachers can reduce the rush of the pacing calendar by thinking of it not as going slowly but choosing where to invest time. “You can’t do every standard every year with your students. You have to figure out what is worth investment, and then spend more time with those topics so that students feel that they have enough time learning those things,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Strong’s view, this requires shifting away from math instruction that is built around the ideas the teacher wants to get to in a given period. Student-centered instruction requires a lot more listening, she said: “Listening first off to their stories and how they’re showing up to class, and then second off (listening to) the ways that they are thinking of and understanding and making sense of mathematical ideas.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Paris, who had Strong as a teacher for three years, said that time transformed her. She now works at a bridal shop, where she was recently promoted from stylist to sales manager – a role that involves a lot of math. “If I want to teach my stylists how to increase their productivity in their sales, then I need to think like a mathematician and come up with the ways that I can do that,” she explained. In tenth grade, that would have scared her. Not now. “There’s no reason for me to be afraid of math because I’ve proven to myself time and time again that I can do it,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8301605465&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Welcome to MindShift, where we explore the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Kara Newhouse.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’m Nimah Gobir.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today we’re talking about math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Because it involves numbers and formulas, we often think of math as straightforward and objective.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But learning math is actually packed with emotions. I met a high school teacher who starts the year with an unusual assignment. She has her students write a letter to math, describing their feelings about the subject. Here’s that teacher, Sarah Strong.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Dear Math letter is a letter that students write to math as if math were personified sitting across the table from them. … And it really helps inform teachers better understand the students stories and experiences that they’re coming to class with so that teachers can better design math experiences for students to thrive and flourish in math class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We’ll hear more from Sarah later in the episode. First, here’s part of a Dear Math letter from one of her former students, Taylor Paris.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reading letter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] Dear math, Oh, do I have some things to say to you. You’ve followed me throughout every school year, caused me the worst headaches, and given me numerous counts of anxiety just thinking about you … The memories of my seventh grade math teacher telling me, ‘Maybe you’re just not a math person’ still ringing in my head, and the constant Bs and Cs are still imprinted in my mind. You’ve been a never ending challenge and struggle, and it’s always been hard to understand you. No matter how many times my friends and teachers explain you, I never grasp you completely.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The anxiety and frustration that Taylor described in her letter are familiar feelings for many young people. And by the time students get to high school, it can feel like if they don’t understand math now, they never will.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But math doesn’t have to be this way.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When we get back from the break, we’ll hear more about Dear Math letters and how they help students like Taylor strengthen their mathematical identities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Taylor Paris graduated high school a few years ago, but she still remembers the first week of tenth grade math with her teacher Sarah Strong. That’s when students wrote letters to math, as if it were a person.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I remember being so excited because basically you’re writing in math, and that’s never the case.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Interdisciplinary learning allows students to think about a subject from new perspectives. For Taylor, writing the Dear Math letter gave her a chance to reflect on how her early school years shaped her relationship to math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I remember, my first, like, scariness of math was long division, because it was like so abstract to me, and everyone around me understood it and was just like, ‘Yeah, well that’s just the way it is and that’s totally fine.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Writing about those memories was cathartic. It also helped Taylor feel connected to her teacher.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have never had a math teacher talk about emotions behind math ever. Like, truly ever … She recognized my experience as a part of this really big experience that so many other people have. And that was really validating.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her teacher, Sarah Strong, also made it clear that it was okay for those feelings to surface throughout the year. Which made it possible for Taylor to focus on actually learning math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She did a great job at making me feel like I could take a really complex problem and break it down to the bare bones of it, which is such a simple concept. But it didn’t even cross my mind that I could do that in math and that taking my time in math meant that I was being a mathematician. And that’s what mathematicians did, was take their time and work on problems slowly to really understand every aspect.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I met Taylor, she had just been promoted from a stylist to a sales manager at a bridal shop in San Diego. That’s a fashion job that involves a lot of math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So stylists are responsible for obviously, you know, the customer service side of things, but on the sales side, there is a certain goal that you need to meet or would ideally meet day to day and kind of week to day, month to day. …\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so when you think about it, sales is like one big math problem every day because there’s a question, there’s an answer that you have to get to, and then there’s variables that go into, you know, the answer to your problem, essentially.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Taylor is 20. Not that long ago, doing a math-related job would have been unimaginable to her.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you told sophomore year Taylor that I would be doing something that was directly correlated with math and numbers all the time, I would be terrified and probably laugh.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taylor had Sarah Strong as a math teacher from 10th grade through 12th grade. She said that those years totally changed her view of math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so while I may have been scared to take a sales manager position at, you know, in my sophomore year, it makes a ton of sense for me now because what I do is help people find their wedding dress. And who would have thought that math was in finding a wedding dress?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taylor now sees herself as a doer of math. This is what’s called mathematical identity.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We did an episode featuring Chris Emdin, who talked about students’ STEM identities. Mathematical identity is one form of a STEM identity.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mathematical identity is a way that students see themselves as a mathematician, and therefore it connects to the ways that they enter into mathematical spaces and connect with other mathematicians around them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s teacher Sarah Strong again. She created the Dear Math activity during a bigger project where students were exploring their mathematical identities. They were using different types of math as metaphors for their experiences. And Sarah wanted to add a writing component to that project.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And one of my colleagues shared with me the idea of writing letters to a thing like books or basketball, and how she’d heard of that practice. And she thought I could do Dear Math letters, and I thought that was an amazing idea. So I ran with it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The letters were powerful. And Sarah realized that having students write them at the beginning of the year could help her teach each class better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s how she does it now. She introduces the assignment during the first week of school. She reads her own Dear Math letter as a model, because most students aren’t used to writing in math class. Hearing her letter also lets them know that even though she teaches math, it hasn’t always been easy for her.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After reading her letter, Sarah gives her students prompts for writing their own. Questions like…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is one of your greatest mathematical strengths?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you plan to engage with math in the future?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What would you like more of in math classrooms?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They spend 15 to 30 minutes writing in class. Anyone who wants to write more can finish at home.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then Sarah reads the letters on her own. She says this is the most important step.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">‘Cause it’s the beginning of an ongoing story between you and the students and their math experience for that semester or year, and it’s really important to start by listening to them well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She first looks for broad patterns across the class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If I’ve got a disproportionate amount of students that hate math, don’t think they’re mathematicians, that I have to be really intentional about my class design, where I am regularly noticing and calling out their mathematical strengths and giving them opportunities to see themselves as mathematicians and see each other as mathematicians.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or do I have a lot of students who, who feel like ‘I am a really strong mathematician. Ever since I was young, I get all the right answers. I’m really fast.’ Then I can note that that’s a trend in the class and be thinking how I can continue to push those students while also broadening their understanding of how they are mathematical and how important it is to also listen to other students’ ways of being mathematical.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She also reads the letters for individual details about things students love and things that trip them up. She might make a few notes and …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Check in with students like, ‘Gosh, I remember you said that you had a really hard time with the idea of percents and like whenever percents come up, you panic. Well, tomorrow we’re going to need some percents in our work with exponential functions. And so I wanted to make sure that you knew that I believe that you’ve got this. If you want to do a little practice beforehand, we can do that because I want you to feel confident. I don’t want some story from sixth grade impacting your confidence in what we’re working on right now.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sarah said that getting to know students was always important to her. Even before she created the Dear Math assignment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would often try to connect with them in a variety of ways and I would hear their comments here and there that were both positive and negative. And I always tried to be a really good listener and understand my students’ feelings.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But she wasn’t always getting a full picture.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometimes I think I was being a little delusional before I got to hear their whole stories because I would think, ‘Oh, they had really negative experiences. They don’t like math, but now that they’re in my class, everything’s going to be fine.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The letters helped her take off her rose-colored glasses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It wasn’t until I started having them write Dear Math letters that I got to hear more complete stories and gain a bigger picture for their previous experience and how those experiences were informing the ways they were showing up to my class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That knowledge enables her to help students grow as math learners throughout the year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My biggest hope is that they start to see themselves as mathematicians in new ways and that they start to see their peers as mathematically brilliant in new ways.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nimah, it would be great if writing a Dear Math letter helped all students see themselves as capable of doing math – the way it did for Taylor Paris.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It would. But of course not every student’s math story is linear.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No… Some math stories go up and down over time, like a periodic function. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, nice math analogy! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I got that one from Sarah Strong. She described her own math story that way. It also applies to another of her former students, Isabela Avila. Here’s the start of a Dear Math letter Isabela wrote in tenth grade.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reading letter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] Dear Math, I really like you, but you don’t come naturally to me. I have to work extra hard to understand and fully conceptualize what you have to offer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In previous math classes, Isabela felt pressure to always be fast and have the right answer. But she told me that expectation wasn’t there in Sarah Strong’s class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was never even like a question of like, did you get it right or wrong? It was just seemed like we were always just all learning together, as a class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That sense of togetherness mattered. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And like, I think that really helped me like number one, like, think highly of myself as like a problem solver and also … be confident in my ideas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Isabela had Sarah Strong as a teacher twice, and she wrote a Dear Math letter both times. You can hear her increased confidence in the letter she wrote as a senior.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reading letter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] The most mathematical growth I feel I have ever experienced was during my junior year. I felt confident in my algebra skills for the first time ever. … My mindset also shifted drastically. I developed a sense of patience and open mindedness for the first time ever. … I know this will help me a lot in college and beyond, and I look forward to using it in the future. Sincerely, Isabela Avila.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Isabela actually got to college, the transition was rocky. She’s a pre-med major at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our like math department is known for being like notoriously hard.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> All around her, Isabela saw classmates who had come from elite high schools and seemed to understand calculus more easily than she did.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really struggled a lot with like comparing myself, especially in math. And I just found that to be super, super counter-productive for both my learning and like my self esteem.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometimes she would break down crying while doing homework, which could take eight hours to complete. In class, she didn’t participate as much as she had hoped to.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I just really didn’t want to sound like I didn’t know what I was talking about or like, not that I don’t belong there, but I don’t know. It was just, everyone around me was so smart. And I know, like, tests don’t define you, but everyone around me, like, even if they were starting in calc one, they, like, got fives on like the AP calc exams and did exceptionally well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Back in high school, Isabela had written in one of her letters that she’d had a lot of highs and lows with math. Freshman year of college was definitely another low.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I talked to her during her sophomore year at Johns Hopkins, being a premed major was still very stressful. Something that helped, though, was making friends who didn’t talk about grades.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We don’t talk about, like, what score we got. We don’t talk about how we’re doing in the class. We don’t talk about — honestly we don’t talk that much about like our actual like school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And she said the persistence that she developed in high school did help her get through calculus.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Especially in math here in college, like, I feel like how you think about yourself and like how fast you are to like, get back up and keep trying is really, truly so much more important than if you can actually do the math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Kara, the way Isabela compared herself to her calculus classmates isn’t unique to being at a university full of high achievers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That’s right. Sarah Strong said those comparisons have been pervasive in students’ Dear Math letters. And according to experts, this kind of thinking starts early.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Researchers say even kindergarteners start to notice their spot in the pecking order of math ability.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It often starts with those one-minute math quizzes that so many of us remember.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of pencils scribbling and slamming down\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students might hear their classmates furiously scribbling answers and slamming their pencils down when they finish. They equate that with being “good” at math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there are lots of other ways in school that students are ranked and sorted. In younger grades, teachers often group students by ability when they’re practicing math. In upper grades, students may get tracked into ‘regular’ and ‘advanced’ classes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some teachers will even publicly display kids’ progress in certain math skills. This can look like a bulletin board that uses paper ice cream scoops to represent how many multiplication facts each student knows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One researcher I talked to had a lot of ideas about how to disrupt hierarchies in math education. This is Rachel Lambert, from University of California, Santa Barbara.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think if there’s one one thing I’d like to communicate, it’s that teachers and parents can affect the way kids think about these things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel shared five tips that teachers can use to help kids stop comparing themselves to others in math. The first tip is to change the narrative about who can do math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students would tell me how much it mattered to them to hear their teacher say, ‘There is no difference in who can be good at math.’ Like very clear messages around race and gender and the clear message that there is no one group of people that is better in math than other people, those students told me that was helpful to them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Changing the narrative isn’t just about what we say to kids. It’s also about how teachers talk to each other. And how they group students in class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We might think as teachers – and I was a teacher for over 10 years – that kids don’t know that we might be calling them low kids or high kids when we’re having lunch with other teachers. … But they know, they always know and they know how they’re being grouped and classified and seen. … If we decide that kids are going to do well in mathematics, we do a lot of things in our teaching to set them up for success day after day. If we think kids will fail when we hand them a mathematical task, we’re doing subtle things to set them up for failure every single time we do that. So if we put them in groups that never change, we’re teaching them who they are and we’re also affecting who they become, because we’re only allowing them opportunities to do things quote-unquote at their level. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel’s second tip for teachers is to stop focusing on speed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Think of it not as a matter of going slow. Think of it as investing in certain things. So you can’t hit everything on your pacing calendar. You can’t do every standard every year with your students. You have to figure out what is worth investment and what is worth extra time, and then spend more time with those topics so that students feel that they have enough time learning those things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her third tip is to normalize mistakes. It can help students learn from each other’s thinking when you have them share their mistakes. Rachel told me about a teacher who did this.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She would even put a little heart next to a mistake and she’d be, ‘This was my favorite mistake of the day.’ And she drew a little heart next to it. And the kids would go, ‘awww.’ It’s adorable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Tip number four is to give students problems that can be approached from multiple angles.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I see that some kids really love to engage in the visual aspect of a problem. Other students like to make, say, an organized list. And that doesn’t mean – there’s no such thing as learning styles; it doesn’t mean that that’s the way they’re going to approach every problem, but it does mean that a problem that draws on multiple ways of engaging can be more rich mathematically and also disrupt ideas of who’s the best at math and who isn’t.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Lambert’s fifth and final tip is to make supports available to everyone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is the one of the simplest interventions you can do in math to make it more equitable … And it doesn’t send any negative messages to kids because they are choosing if they want to use a calculator. They are choosing if they want to hear the directions a second time. They are choosing if they use manipulatives.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Making these resources available to everyone takes the teacher’s assumptions out of the equation. And it helps kids develop the skills to recognize what they need to succeed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kara, there are some people who say math teachers should just focus on content. That activities like writing letters to math are more about self-esteem than learning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These goals don’t have to be separate. Direct instruction and problem-solving practice are essential parts of math education. But like we said at the beginning, doing math involves emotions. Although we’ve heard a lot about the frustrating parts of math, it can also evoke positive emotions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kids who are absorbed in math problem-solving often express wonder and excitement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Listening to young people’s stories and honoring all of these emotions allows students to be more human in math class. And that doesn’t just make them \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">believe \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in their math abilities, it empowers them to learn math and to do math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode would not have been possible without Sarah Strong. To learn more about Dear Math letters, you can read the book she wrote with her former student, Gigi Butterfield. The book is called, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math: Why Kids Hate Math and What Teachers Can Do About It.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks also to Taylor Paris, Isabela Avila, Rachel Lambert and Amy Parks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The MindShift team includes Nimah Gobir, Ki Sung, Marlena Jackson-Retondo and me, Kara Newhouse.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our editor is Chris Hambrick. Chris Hoff engineered this episode.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldaña and Holly Kernan.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MindShift is supported in part by the generosity of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and members of KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you love MindShift, and enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. We really appreciate it. You can also read more or subscribe to our newsletter at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/mindshift\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">kqed.org/mindshift\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Thank you for listening to Season 8 of the MindShift podcast. That’s it for these deep dive episodes. We’re taking a little break, but we’ll be back soon with new episodes featuring conversations about big ideas in education. Be sure to follow the show or subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Walking into her sophomore year math class, Taylor Paris was nervous. She’d had a rocky relationship with the subject ever since long division showed up in elementary school. “I knew I didn’t understand math concepts very well. I knew that it was something that took me a longer time (than classmates),” she recalled.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So she was pleasantly surprised when one of the first assignments from teacher Sarah Strong required no calculating. Instead, Strong asked the class to write a letter to math – as if it were a person. These \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60108/using-dear-math-letters-to-overcome-dread-in-math-class\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Dear Math” letters\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are a tool that Strong developed as a way to understand students’ relationship to math, which researchers call \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/jmetc/article/view/9187/4897\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">mathematical identity\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. What Strong learns from these letters informs how she teaches individual students and whole classes throughout the year. Often that means working to disrupt the negative beliefs that students hold about their math abilities, which tend to revolve around comparisons to classmates, like “fast” vs. “slow” or “math person” vs. “not a math person.”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Strong models the Dear Math activity by reading her own letter to math. Then she gives students prompts, such as:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is one of your greatest mathematical strengths?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you plan to engage with math in the future?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What would you like more of in math classrooms?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Paris, who is now 20, was excited to apply her writing skills in math, but also to unpack some of her deeply rooted emotions about math. “I was finally able to write all of the things that made me sad and things that made me mad, like everything into one letter, addressing math directly,” she said. Here’s what she wrote in 10th grade: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math, \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh, do I have some things to say to you. You’ve followed me through every school year, caused me the worst headaches, and given me numerous counts of anxiety just thinking about you … The memories of my seventh grade math teacher telling me ‘maybe you’re just not a math person’ still ringing in my head and the constant Bs and Cs are still imprinted in my mind. You’ve been a never ending challenge and struggle, and it’s always been hard to understand you. No matter how many times my friends and teachers explain you, I never grasp you completely.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Paris, having a teacher acknowledge emotions in math class was \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54980/why-teachers-want-math-with-more-human-ties\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">humanizing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “She recognized my experience as a part of this really big experience that so many other people have. And that was really validating,” Paris said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Strong devotes a few hours to reading the letters, making notes about broad patterns and individual details. “It’s the beginning of an ongoing story between you and the students and their math experience for that semester or year, and it’s really important to start by listening to them well,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Hierarchy in math education\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Strong teaches at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hightechhigh.org/about/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">High Tech High\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and its Graduate School of Education in San Diego. She developed the Dear Math routine almost a decade ago, and she published a book about it, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.10publications.com/dear-math\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math: Why Kids Hate Math And What Teachers Can Do About It\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, co-authored by her former\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">student Gigi Butterfield. In it, the teacher and former student reflect on the themes across hundreds of letters. One pervasive theme is hierarchy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Kids as young as kindergarten and first grade are defining themselves as good at math or not good at math,” said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/amynoelleparks\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Amy Parks\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, an elementary math education researcher at Michigan State University. Much of that definition comes from how they rank among classmates – from timed tests, to ‘high’ and ‘low’ groups, to subtle cues in teachers’ language. “I’ve been in classrooms where teachers have had kids line up by how many questions they answered or how many things they got right,” Parks said. “These hierarchies get reinforced so often and in so many different ways it’s almost overwhelming.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For many kids, the comparisons add up to a negative self-perception around math. And by the time they reach high school, that mathematical identity can feel immutable. But math class doesn’t have to be this way. “Teachers and parents can affect the way kids think about these things,” said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://mathematizing4all.com/about-the-author/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Lambert\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a professor and researcher at University of California, Santa Barbara.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a stubborn cultural \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54389/3-ways-to-shape-math-into-a-positive-experience\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">myth that some of us are “math people” and some of us aren’t\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. This idea gets repeated explicitly all the time, and often \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aah6524\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">implicitly with gendered and racialized associations\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But neuroscience shows that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/resources/brain-science/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">everyone is capable of learning math\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and Lambert said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57997/how-to-build-students-math-confidence-with-culturally-sustaining-teaching-practices\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">it matters that kids hear that\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “Students connect subjects to teachers in a pretty intense way that I think as adults we often forget. So if they feel their math teacher believes in them as a human being and believes in their competence in mathematics, that can make a huge difference,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Strong’s classroom, listening to students’ stories is the first step toward disrupting those hierarchies. She also looks for ways to highlight students’ mathematical thinking on a daily basis. One way she does this is by having multiple students write their problem-solving ideas on the whiteboard and asking other students to comment on what they like about the strategies they see. Another routine is an exit ticket that asks students to share something they learned from a classmate that day. She might share the details the next day with a student who was mentioned or with the whole class if there’s a bigger lesson in it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Math is for everyone\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Isabela Avila, another of Strong’s former students, said these kinds of practices created a sense of community: “It was never even like a question of did you get it right or wrong. It just seemed like we were always just all learning together as a class.” She had Strong as a teacher twice and wrote Dear Math letters both times. In her letter as a sophomore, her self-doubts showed up in the first sentence:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math, I really like you, but you don’t come naturally to me. I have to work extra hard to understand and fully conceptualize what you have to offer.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In her letter as a senior, Avila wrote about her math growth over the prior two years:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I developed a sense of patience and open mindedness for the first time ever. … I know this will help me a lot in college and beyond, and I look forward to using it in the future.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Avila got to the highly competitive environment of Johns Hopkins University, however, the usual order of things returned. “I really struggled a lot with comparing myself, especially in math,” she said, discussing her freshman year. “And I just found that to be super, super counterproductive for both my learning and my self esteem.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Strong said her own math story has had a lot of highs and lows, too. Though she can’t protect students from the ways math is taught and talked about beyond her classroom, her hope is that before they leave high school, “they start to see themselves as mathematicians in new ways and that they start to see their peers as mathematically brilliant in new ways.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Avila, the persistence she developed in high school did pay off in the long, emotionally tough hours of college calculus. “I feel like how you think about yourself and how fast you are to get back up and keep trying is really, truly so much more important than if you can actually do the math,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fast and slow\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Paris, Strong’s former student who liked expressing her emotions in a Dear Math letter, still remembers the heart-racing stress that accompanied \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61712/do-math-drills-help-children-learn\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">timed multiplication tests\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in third grade. In Strong’s classroom, she said, there was never a timer. When Paris needed extra support, Strong brought out old algebra textbooks to reinforce foundational concepts. She designed projects where Paris could make connections between math and art – a subject that she already loved. Most importantly, Strong helped Paris learn how to break down complex problems into smaller steps. “Which is such a simple concept, but it didn’t even cross my mind that I could do that in math,” said Paris. “And that taking my time in math meant that I was being a mathematician.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Many students have this conception that they’re the only one who’s taking time to understand this concept, that everybody around them has already got it,” said Lambert, the UC Santa Barbara professor. Lambert suggested that teachers can reduce the rush of the pacing calendar by thinking of it not as going slowly but choosing where to invest time. “You can’t do every standard every year with your students. You have to figure out what is worth investment, and then spend more time with those topics so that students feel that they have enough time learning those things,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Strong’s view, this requires shifting away from math instruction that is built around the ideas the teacher wants to get to in a given period. Student-centered instruction requires a lot more listening, she said: “Listening first off to their stories and how they’re showing up to class, and then second off (listening to) the ways that they are thinking of and understanding and making sense of mathematical ideas.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Paris, who had Strong as a teacher for three years, said that time transformed her. She now works at a bridal shop, where she was recently promoted from stylist to sales manager – a role that involves a lot of math. “If I want to teach my stylists how to increase their productivity in their sales, then I need to think like a mathematician and come up with the ways that I can do that,” she explained. In tenth grade, that would have scared her. Not now. “There’s no reason for me to be afraid of math because I’ve proven to myself time and time again that I can do it,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8301605465&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Welcome to MindShift, where we explore the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Kara Newhouse.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’m Nimah Gobir.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today we’re talking about math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Because it involves numbers and formulas, we often think of math as straightforward and objective.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But learning math is actually packed with emotions. I met a high school teacher who starts the year with an unusual assignment. She has her students write a letter to math, describing their feelings about the subject. Here’s that teacher, Sarah Strong.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Dear Math letter is a letter that students write to math as if math were personified sitting across the table from them. … And it really helps inform teachers better understand the students stories and experiences that they’re coming to class with so that teachers can better design math experiences for students to thrive and flourish in math class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We’ll hear more from Sarah later in the episode. First, here’s part of a Dear Math letter from one of her former students, Taylor Paris.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reading letter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] Dear math, Oh, do I have some things to say to you. You’ve followed me throughout every school year, caused me the worst headaches, and given me numerous counts of anxiety just thinking about you … The memories of my seventh grade math teacher telling me, ‘Maybe you’re just not a math person’ still ringing in my head, and the constant Bs and Cs are still imprinted in my mind. You’ve been a never ending challenge and struggle, and it’s always been hard to understand you. No matter how many times my friends and teachers explain you, I never grasp you completely.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The anxiety and frustration that Taylor described in her letter are familiar feelings for many young people. And by the time students get to high school, it can feel like if they don’t understand math now, they never will.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But math doesn’t have to be this way.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When we get back from the break, we’ll hear more about Dear Math letters and how they help students like Taylor strengthen their mathematical identities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Taylor Paris graduated high school a few years ago, but she still remembers the first week of tenth grade math with her teacher Sarah Strong. That’s when students wrote letters to math, as if it were a person.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I remember being so excited because basically you’re writing in math, and that’s never the case.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Interdisciplinary learning allows students to think about a subject from new perspectives. For Taylor, writing the Dear Math letter gave her a chance to reflect on how her early school years shaped her relationship to math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I remember, my first, like, scariness of math was long division, because it was like so abstract to me, and everyone around me understood it and was just like, ‘Yeah, well that’s just the way it is and that’s totally fine.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Writing about those memories was cathartic. It also helped Taylor feel connected to her teacher.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have never had a math teacher talk about emotions behind math ever. Like, truly ever … She recognized my experience as a part of this really big experience that so many other people have. And that was really validating.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her teacher, Sarah Strong, also made it clear that it was okay for those feelings to surface throughout the year. Which made it possible for Taylor to focus on actually learning math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She did a great job at making me feel like I could take a really complex problem and break it down to the bare bones of it, which is such a simple concept. But it didn’t even cross my mind that I could do that in math and that taking my time in math meant that I was being a mathematician. And that’s what mathematicians did, was take their time and work on problems slowly to really understand every aspect.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I met Taylor, she had just been promoted from a stylist to a sales manager at a bridal shop in San Diego. That’s a fashion job that involves a lot of math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So stylists are responsible for obviously, you know, the customer service side of things, but on the sales side, there is a certain goal that you need to meet or would ideally meet day to day and kind of week to day, month to day. …\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so when you think about it, sales is like one big math problem every day because there’s a question, there’s an answer that you have to get to, and then there’s variables that go into, you know, the answer to your problem, essentially.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Taylor is 20. Not that long ago, doing a math-related job would have been unimaginable to her.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you told sophomore year Taylor that I would be doing something that was directly correlated with math and numbers all the time, I would be terrified and probably laugh.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taylor had Sarah Strong as a math teacher from 10th grade through 12th grade. She said that those years totally changed her view of math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Taylor Paris: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so while I may have been scared to take a sales manager position at, you know, in my sophomore year, it makes a ton of sense for me now because what I do is help people find their wedding dress. And who would have thought that math was in finding a wedding dress?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taylor now sees herself as a doer of math. This is what’s called mathematical identity.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We did an episode featuring Chris Emdin, who talked about students’ STEM identities. Mathematical identity is one form of a STEM identity.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mathematical identity is a way that students see themselves as a mathematician, and therefore it connects to the ways that they enter into mathematical spaces and connect with other mathematicians around them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s teacher Sarah Strong again. She created the Dear Math activity during a bigger project where students were exploring their mathematical identities. They were using different types of math as metaphors for their experiences. And Sarah wanted to add a writing component to that project.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And one of my colleagues shared with me the idea of writing letters to a thing like books or basketball, and how she’d heard of that practice. And she thought I could do Dear Math letters, and I thought that was an amazing idea. So I ran with it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The letters were powerful. And Sarah realized that having students write them at the beginning of the year could help her teach each class better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s how she does it now. She introduces the assignment during the first week of school. She reads her own Dear Math letter as a model, because most students aren’t used to writing in math class. Hearing her letter also lets them know that even though she teaches math, it hasn’t always been easy for her.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After reading her letter, Sarah gives her students prompts for writing their own. Questions like…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is one of your greatest mathematical strengths?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you plan to engage with math in the future?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What would you like more of in math classrooms?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They spend 15 to 30 minutes writing in class. Anyone who wants to write more can finish at home.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then Sarah reads the letters on her own. She says this is the most important step.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">‘Cause it’s the beginning of an ongoing story between you and the students and their math experience for that semester or year, and it’s really important to start by listening to them well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She first looks for broad patterns across the class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If I’ve got a disproportionate amount of students that hate math, don’t think they’re mathematicians, that I have to be really intentional about my class design, where I am regularly noticing and calling out their mathematical strengths and giving them opportunities to see themselves as mathematicians and see each other as mathematicians.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or do I have a lot of students who, who feel like ‘I am a really strong mathematician. Ever since I was young, I get all the right answers. I’m really fast.’ Then I can note that that’s a trend in the class and be thinking how I can continue to push those students while also broadening their understanding of how they are mathematical and how important it is to also listen to other students’ ways of being mathematical.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She also reads the letters for individual details about things students love and things that trip them up. She might make a few notes and …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Check in with students like, ‘Gosh, I remember you said that you had a really hard time with the idea of percents and like whenever percents come up, you panic. Well, tomorrow we’re going to need some percents in our work with exponential functions. And so I wanted to make sure that you knew that I believe that you’ve got this. If you want to do a little practice beforehand, we can do that because I want you to feel confident. I don’t want some story from sixth grade impacting your confidence in what we’re working on right now.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sarah said that getting to know students was always important to her. Even before she created the Dear Math assignment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would often try to connect with them in a variety of ways and I would hear their comments here and there that were both positive and negative. And I always tried to be a really good listener and understand my students’ feelings.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But she wasn’t always getting a full picture.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometimes I think I was being a little delusional before I got to hear their whole stories because I would think, ‘Oh, they had really negative experiences. They don’t like math, but now that they’re in my class, everything’s going to be fine.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The letters helped her take off her rose-colored glasses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It wasn’t until I started having them write Dear Math letters that I got to hear more complete stories and gain a bigger picture for their previous experience and how those experiences were informing the ways they were showing up to my class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That knowledge enables her to help students grow as math learners throughout the year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Strong:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My biggest hope is that they start to see themselves as mathematicians in new ways and that they start to see their peers as mathematically brilliant in new ways.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nimah, it would be great if writing a Dear Math letter helped all students see themselves as capable of doing math – the way it did for Taylor Paris.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It would. But of course not every student’s math story is linear.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No… Some math stories go up and down over time, like a periodic function. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, nice math analogy! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I got that one from Sarah Strong. She described her own math story that way. It also applies to another of her former students, Isabela Avila. Here’s the start of a Dear Math letter Isabela wrote in tenth grade.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reading letter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] Dear Math, I really like you, but you don’t come naturally to me. I have to work extra hard to understand and fully conceptualize what you have to offer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In previous math classes, Isabela felt pressure to always be fast and have the right answer. But she told me that expectation wasn’t there in Sarah Strong’s class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was never even like a question of like, did you get it right or wrong? It was just seemed like we were always just all learning together, as a class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That sense of togetherness mattered. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And like, I think that really helped me like number one, like, think highly of myself as like a problem solver and also … be confident in my ideas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Isabela had Sarah Strong as a teacher twice, and she wrote a Dear Math letter both times. You can hear her increased confidence in the letter she wrote as a senior.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reading letter\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">] The most mathematical growth I feel I have ever experienced was during my junior year. I felt confident in my algebra skills for the first time ever. … My mindset also shifted drastically. I developed a sense of patience and open mindedness for the first time ever. … I know this will help me a lot in college and beyond, and I look forward to using it in the future. Sincerely, Isabela Avila.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Isabela actually got to college, the transition was rocky. She’s a pre-med major at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our like math department is known for being like notoriously hard.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> All around her, Isabela saw classmates who had come from elite high schools and seemed to understand calculus more easily than she did.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really struggled a lot with like comparing myself, especially in math. And I just found that to be super, super counter-productive for both my learning and like my self esteem.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometimes she would break down crying while doing homework, which could take eight hours to complete. In class, she didn’t participate as much as she had hoped to.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I just really didn’t want to sound like I didn’t know what I was talking about or like, not that I don’t belong there, but I don’t know. It was just, everyone around me was so smart. And I know, like, tests don’t define you, but everyone around me, like, even if they were starting in calc one, they, like, got fives on like the AP calc exams and did exceptionally well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Back in high school, Isabela had written in one of her letters that she’d had a lot of highs and lows with math. Freshman year of college was definitely another low.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I talked to her during her sophomore year at Johns Hopkins, being a premed major was still very stressful. Something that helped, though, was making friends who didn’t talk about grades.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We don’t talk about, like, what score we got. We don’t talk about how we’re doing in the class. We don’t talk about — honestly we don’t talk that much about like our actual like school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And she said the persistence that she developed in high school did help her get through calculus.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Isabela Avila:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Especially in math here in college, like, I feel like how you think about yourself and like how fast you are to like, get back up and keep trying is really, truly so much more important than if you can actually do the math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Kara, the way Isabela compared herself to her calculus classmates isn’t unique to being at a university full of high achievers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That’s right. Sarah Strong said those comparisons have been pervasive in students’ Dear Math letters. And according to experts, this kind of thinking starts early.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Researchers say even kindergarteners start to notice their spot in the pecking order of math ability.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It often starts with those one-minute math quizzes that so many of us remember.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of pencils scribbling and slamming down\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students might hear their classmates furiously scribbling answers and slamming their pencils down when they finish. They equate that with being “good” at math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there are lots of other ways in school that students are ranked and sorted. In younger grades, teachers often group students by ability when they’re practicing math. In upper grades, students may get tracked into ‘regular’ and ‘advanced’ classes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some teachers will even publicly display kids’ progress in certain math skills. This can look like a bulletin board that uses paper ice cream scoops to represent how many multiplication facts each student knows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One researcher I talked to had a lot of ideas about how to disrupt hierarchies in math education. This is Rachel Lambert, from University of California, Santa Barbara.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think if there’s one one thing I’d like to communicate, it’s that teachers and parents can affect the way kids think about these things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel shared five tips that teachers can use to help kids stop comparing themselves to others in math. The first tip is to change the narrative about who can do math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students would tell me how much it mattered to them to hear their teacher say, ‘There is no difference in who can be good at math.’ Like very clear messages around race and gender and the clear message that there is no one group of people that is better in math than other people, those students told me that was helpful to them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Changing the narrative isn’t just about what we say to kids. It’s also about how teachers talk to each other. And how they group students in class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We might think as teachers – and I was a teacher for over 10 years – that kids don’t know that we might be calling them low kids or high kids when we’re having lunch with other teachers. … But they know, they always know and they know how they’re being grouped and classified and seen. … If we decide that kids are going to do well in mathematics, we do a lot of things in our teaching to set them up for success day after day. If we think kids will fail when we hand them a mathematical task, we’re doing subtle things to set them up for failure every single time we do that. So if we put them in groups that never change, we’re teaching them who they are and we’re also affecting who they become, because we’re only allowing them opportunities to do things quote-unquote at their level. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel’s second tip for teachers is to stop focusing on speed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Think of it not as a matter of going slow. Think of it as investing in certain things. So you can’t hit everything on your pacing calendar. You can’t do every standard every year with your students. You have to figure out what is worth investment and what is worth extra time, and then spend more time with those topics so that students feel that they have enough time learning those things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her third tip is to normalize mistakes. It can help students learn from each other’s thinking when you have them share their mistakes. Rachel told me about a teacher who did this.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She would even put a little heart next to a mistake and she’d be, ‘This was my favorite mistake of the day.’ And she drew a little heart next to it. And the kids would go, ‘awww.’ It’s adorable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Tip number four is to give students problems that can be approached from multiple angles.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I see that some kids really love to engage in the visual aspect of a problem. Other students like to make, say, an organized list. And that doesn’t mean – there’s no such thing as learning styles; it doesn’t mean that that’s the way they’re going to approach every problem, but it does mean that a problem that draws on multiple ways of engaging can be more rich mathematically and also disrupt ideas of who’s the best at math and who isn’t.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Lambert’s fifth and final tip is to make supports available to everyone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachel Lambert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That is the one of the simplest interventions you can do in math to make it more equitable … And it doesn’t send any negative messages to kids because they are choosing if they want to use a calculator. They are choosing if they want to hear the directions a second time. They are choosing if they use manipulatives.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Making these resources available to everyone takes the teacher’s assumptions out of the equation. And it helps kids develop the skills to recognize what they need to succeed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kara, there are some people who say math teachers should just focus on content. That activities like writing letters to math are more about self-esteem than learning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These goals don’t have to be separate. Direct instruction and problem-solving practice are essential parts of math education. But like we said at the beginning, doing math involves emotions. Although we’ve heard a lot about the frustrating parts of math, it can also evoke positive emotions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kids who are absorbed in math problem-solving often express wonder and excitement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Listening to young people’s stories and honoring all of these emotions allows students to be more human in math class. And that doesn’t just make them \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">believe \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in their math abilities, it empowers them to learn math and to do math.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode would not have been possible without Sarah Strong. To learn more about Dear Math letters, you can read the book she wrote with her former student, Gigi Butterfield. The book is called, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math: Why Kids Hate Math and What Teachers Can Do About It.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks also to Taylor Paris, Isabela Avila, Rachel Lambert and Amy Parks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The MindShift team includes Nimah Gobir, Ki Sung, Marlena Jackson-Retondo and me, Kara Newhouse.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our editor is Chris Hambrick. Chris Hoff engineered this episode.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldaña and Holly Kernan.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MindShift is supported in part by the generosity of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and members of KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you love MindShift, and enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. We really appreciate it. You can also read more or subscribe to our newsletter at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/mindshift\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">kqed.org/mindshift\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kara Newhouse:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Thank you for listening to Season 8 of the MindShift podcast. That’s it for these deep dive episodes. We’re taking a little break, but we’ll be back soon with new episodes featuring conversations about big ideas in education. Be sure to follow the show or subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the most hotly contested teaching practices concerns a single minute of math class. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Should teachers pull out their stopwatches and administer one-page worksheets in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division? Speed drills are such a routine part of the weekly rhythms of many math classrooms that they’re often called Mad Minute Mondays. Critics say these timed drills aren’t useful and instead provoke math anxiety in many children. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics urges teachers to “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Standards_and_Positions/Position_Statements/PROCEDURAL_FLUENCY.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">avoid” timed tests\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But advocates insist that these tests, which last one to five minutes, help children memorize math facts, freeing up their brains to tackle more challenging math problems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This long-running debate captured my attention again because a group of more than a dozen education researchers, who founded an organization they call the “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thescienceofmath.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Science of Math\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” declared that the stopwatch skeptics are wrong. The researchers built an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thescienceofmath.com/timed-tests-cause-math-anxiety\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">entire webpage\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to set the record straight and devoted a section of a 2022 paper to explaining why it’s a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cis.org.au/publication/myths-that-undermine-maths-teaching/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">myth that timed tests cause anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. A few readers contacted me after I first wrote about the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-how-a-debate-over-the-science-of-math-could-reignite-the-math-wars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Science of Math movement\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> earlier in May 2023, urging me to look at the group’s claims about timed tests. After looking at the research, I think the evidence is not quite as clear as the Science of Math group indicates. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The group argues there is no evidence that timed tests cause math anxiety. They also contend that timed tests improve math performance. Some researchers contest both points.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Time tests don’t cause math anxiety?” said Jo Boaler, an education professor at Stanford University who is a prominent opponent of timed tests. “I could counter their studies with many more that show the opposite. And yes, you could conclude it’s a contested field, that there’s different evidence. But you can’t conclude that this is a myth.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Dueling evidence\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There isn’t much dispute about the lack of empirical evidence. I interviewed more than a half dozen math experts who confirmed there aren’t well-designed experiments that prove timed tests cause math anxiety. The Science of Math group could find only \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2806671/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">two experimental studies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that have attempted to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10864-016-9251-6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">test the hypothesis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and neither concluded that tests produce anxiety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Math anxiety is difficult to measure, and even children who enjoy timed drills may experience an elevated heart rate, an aspect of anxiety, as they race through a sheet of sums. Distinguishing productive adrenaline rush from detrimental anxiety isn’t easy. It’s also complicated to disentangle whether timed tests are making matters worse for children who already have math anxiety from other causes. There’s \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://news.uchicago.edu/story/math-anxiety-causes-trouble-students-early-first-grade\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">evidence for and against\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> even within studies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ideally, you would need to design a multi-year study — where some children were randomly given speed drills and others not, but were all taught the same way — and see what their math achievement and math anxiety levels were at the end of high school. That study doesn’t exist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What does exist are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of studies that document the stories of people who describe how much they hated timed tests. Interview excerpts like this one from a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA62839422&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=01463934&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=nysl_oweb&isGeoAuthType=true&aty=geo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">1999 study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of college students who were training to become math teachers are typical:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If I am timed, I get nervous and forget everything. I do the ones I know, but then I get stressed that I’m not thinking fast enough and forget. I worry about finishing, and I can’t remember it even if I do know it. It is horrible. I get nervous just thinking about it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Others explained how they decided they weren’t a “math person” during these time-pressured moments and lost interest in the subject. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First-person testimonials are sufficient evidence for some that timed tests are harmful. For others, subjective reflections like this, no matter how many and how emotionally compelling, still fall short of scientific proof. At the same time, we also don’t have compelling scientific evidence to prove that timed tests aren’t harming children. I think it remains unknown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Citation clash\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Several math education experts questioned the Science of Math group’s scientific evidence on their second claim, that “timed tactics improve math performance.” One critic, Rachel Lambert, an associate professor in both special education and mathematics education at University of California Santa Barbara, had one of her classes analyze the group’s citations about timed tests, as an assignment on how to analyze education research. She showed me a spreadsheet of instances where the citations didn’t back their claims. In some cases, the studies contradicted their claims and found that students performed worse under timed conditions. “They’re calling themselves the Science of Math,” said Lambert. “But they’re not being careful in their citations.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I found several of the citations confusing, too. Corey Peltier, an assistant professor of special education at the University of Oklahoma and one of the founders of the Science of Math group, explained that the primary purpose of the webpage and the article was to dispel the myth that timed tests and other timed activities cause anxiety. “We weren’t writing about how timing affects math performance,” he said via email. “Rather we were writing about whether timing causes math anxiety.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Confusing citations or not, the more pressing question for math teachers and parents is whether there is evidence in favor of timed tests. The U.S. Department of Education seems to side with the Science of Math folks and against the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/PracticeGuide/WWC2021006-Math-PG.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2021 guide for teachers on how to assist elementary school students who struggle with math\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> recommends regular timed activities – not necessarily tests – to help children build fluency with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The What Works Clearinghouse, a unit of the Department of Education that vets research, and an expert panel found 27 studies to back timed practice and called that a “strong” level of evidence.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Games vs. the stopwatch\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These 27 studies suggest that timed activities – not in isolation, but in conjunction with larger interventions – help children learn math. In one 2013 \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779611/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, struggling first graders received math tutoring three times a week and were split into two groups. One played untimed games to reinforce the lessons. The other was subjected to speed practice, where the children worked in groups to try to answer as many math flashcards correctly as possible within 60 seconds. Each time they were encouraged to “meet or beat” their previous score. After 16 weeks, the children in the speed practice group had much higher math achievement than the children who had played untimed games.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Children in the speed group answered more math facts correctly each day, the researchers found. The sheer volume of correct responses helped the children commit more math facts to long-term memory, according to Lynn Fuchs, who led the study. Cognitive scientists call that spaced retrieval practice, a proven way of building long-term memories, and children in the speed group got more of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“That gives children an advantage as they progress through the math curriculum,” said Fuchs, a professor of education at Vanderbilt University. “A lot of kids will develop fluency on their own without any fluency building practice. But to say we can’t do that in classrooms is to deny the opportunity to develop fluency for a significant portion of children.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fuchs and other advocates question why timed practice is so controversial in math when it’s common in other fields. Musicians repeat scales by the rapid tick of a metronome and athletes do speed drills to build muscle memory. “In all walks of life, the strongest musicians, the most skillful athletes, they do drills and practice, drill and practice,” said Fuchs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Opponents of timed tests also want children to automatically know that seven times eight is 56 instead of conceptually thinking it out each time (7+7+7+7+7+7+7+7), but they say that there are games and other less stressful ways to do it. Fuchs’s study is one of the few to directly test timed versus untimed conditions and we need more studies to replicate her findings before we can conclude that speed is considerably more effective and harmless to children.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Both sides of this debate are concerned with working memory, the ability to temporarily hold information in your head in order to process it, think and solve. One side worries that timed tests can produce so much anxiety that it overwhelms the working memory and prevents a child from learning. The other side wants to free up working memory to handle more complicated math problems by making basic arithmetic calculations automatic, and it believes the most effective road to automaticity is through speed drills. While the causes of math anxiety are debated and mysterious, many in the pro-drill camp suspect that children might feel less math anxiety if they became more proficient in the subject, which is something that drills might help accomplish.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Advice for math teachers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What can classroom teachers take away from this debate? I turned to a veteran researcher, Art Baroody, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who spent his career studying the best ways to teach counting, numbers and arithmetic concepts to young children.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He agrees that timed tests can be used effectively, but he is apprehensive about a blanket recommendation for teachers to use them. “Timed tests are an educational tool and like any tool can be used to good, no, or bad effect,” he said. “Unfortunately, the tool is often misused with poor or even devastating results. I have seen the damage timed tests can do to some children.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Baroody thinks it’s critical that children first understand conceptually what addition and subtraction mean and develop number sense before they are given timed tests. Too often students are taught mathematical operations through rote memorization, like random numbers, he said, and arithmetic learned this way is easily forgotten, no matter how much it’s drilled.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But once a child understands the math, he believes that timed worksheets are beneficial. Baroody said that if he were teaching in an elementary school classroom, he would administer timed tests at least once a week, and even more often depending on the topic and how much children have learned.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fuchs is even more circumspect in her advice to teachers on how to use timed tests effectively without harming children in the process. Not only should students first master concepts, they should have already demonstrated that they know the correct answers in an untimed setting. “You don’t want to give students a page full of problems and they’re kind of lost,” said Fuchs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Immediate feedback is important too. “When you make an error, your teacher or your partner can say, ‘Hey, let’s fix that’,” said Fuchs. “You want to stop a student when they make an error because what you’re trying to do is practice correct responses. You don’t want students to practice incorrect responses.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Advocates of timed practice disagree about the details. Some say students should be given long lists of calculations so that no one can finish in time and slam their pencils down, which leaves slower children feeling bad about themselves. However, Fuchs favors flashcards because she fears the sight of a long list of problems overwhelms some children. This is an area that needs more research to guide teachers on best practices.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Science of Math group concurs that not all timed practice is good, and says the research shows that timed activities or tests shouldn’t start until after a child can calculate accurately. They also say that teachers should never count these tests toward students’ grades; the tests should be low-stakes practice.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Much like any instructional activity, if it is used inappropriately, it will yield minimal benefits and in some cases could be harmful,” said Peltier. Timing students on “a skill they don’t know – not only is this a waste of time, it also can be demoralizing and harmful. Imagine being timed to parallel park a car at the age of 16!” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-do-math-drills-help-children-learn/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">math drills\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and other \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hechinger newsletters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the most hotly contested teaching practices concerns a single minute of math class. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Should teachers pull out their stopwatches and administer one-page worksheets in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division? Speed drills are such a routine part of the weekly rhythms of many math classrooms that they’re often called Mad Minute Mondays. Critics say these timed drills aren’t useful and instead provoke math anxiety in many children. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics urges teachers to “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Standards_and_Positions/Position_Statements/PROCEDURAL_FLUENCY.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">avoid” timed tests\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But advocates insist that these tests, which last one to five minutes, help children memorize math facts, freeing up their brains to tackle more challenging math problems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This long-running debate captured my attention again because a group of more than a dozen education researchers, who founded an organization they call the “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thescienceofmath.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Science of Math\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” declared that the stopwatch skeptics are wrong. The researchers built an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thescienceofmath.com/timed-tests-cause-math-anxiety\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">entire webpage\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to set the record straight and devoted a section of a 2022 paper to explaining why it’s a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cis.org.au/publication/myths-that-undermine-maths-teaching/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">myth that timed tests cause anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. A few readers contacted me after I first wrote about the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-how-a-debate-over-the-science-of-math-could-reignite-the-math-wars/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Science of Math movement\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> earlier in May 2023, urging me to look at the group’s claims about timed tests. After looking at the research, I think the evidence is not quite as clear as the Science of Math group indicates. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The group argues there is no evidence that timed tests cause math anxiety. They also contend that timed tests improve math performance. Some researchers contest both points.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Time tests don’t cause math anxiety?” said Jo Boaler, an education professor at Stanford University who is a prominent opponent of timed tests. “I could counter their studies with many more that show the opposite. And yes, you could conclude it’s a contested field, that there’s different evidence. But you can’t conclude that this is a myth.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Dueling evidence\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There isn’t much dispute about the lack of empirical evidence. I interviewed more than a half dozen math experts who confirmed there aren’t well-designed experiments that prove timed tests cause math anxiety. The Science of Math group could find only \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2806671/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">two experimental studies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that have attempted to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10864-016-9251-6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">test the hypothesis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and neither concluded that tests produce anxiety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Math anxiety is difficult to measure, and even children who enjoy timed drills may experience an elevated heart rate, an aspect of anxiety, as they race through a sheet of sums. Distinguishing productive adrenaline rush from detrimental anxiety isn’t easy. It’s also complicated to disentangle whether timed tests are making matters worse for children who already have math anxiety from other causes. There’s \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://news.uchicago.edu/story/math-anxiety-causes-trouble-students-early-first-grade\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">evidence for and against\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> even within studies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ideally, you would need to design a multi-year study — where some children were randomly given speed drills and others not, but were all taught the same way — and see what their math achievement and math anxiety levels were at the end of high school. That study doesn’t exist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What does exist are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of studies that document the stories of people who describe how much they hated timed tests. Interview excerpts like this one from a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA62839422&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=01463934&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=nysl_oweb&isGeoAuthType=true&aty=geo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">1999 study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of college students who were training to become math teachers are typical:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“If I am timed, I get nervous and forget everything. I do the ones I know, but then I get stressed that I’m not thinking fast enough and forget. I worry about finishing, and I can’t remember it even if I do know it. It is horrible. I get nervous just thinking about it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Others explained how they decided they weren’t a “math person” during these time-pressured moments and lost interest in the subject. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First-person testimonials are sufficient evidence for some that timed tests are harmful. For others, subjective reflections like this, no matter how many and how emotionally compelling, still fall short of scientific proof. At the same time, we also don’t have compelling scientific evidence to prove that timed tests aren’t harming children. I think it remains unknown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Citation clash\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Several math education experts questioned the Science of Math group’s scientific evidence on their second claim, that “timed tactics improve math performance.” One critic, Rachel Lambert, an associate professor in both special education and mathematics education at University of California Santa Barbara, had one of her classes analyze the group’s citations about timed tests, as an assignment on how to analyze education research. She showed me a spreadsheet of instances where the citations didn’t back their claims. In some cases, the studies contradicted their claims and found that students performed worse under timed conditions. “They’re calling themselves the Science of Math,” said Lambert. “But they’re not being careful in their citations.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I found several of the citations confusing, too. Corey Peltier, an assistant professor of special education at the University of Oklahoma and one of the founders of the Science of Math group, explained that the primary purpose of the webpage and the article was to dispel the myth that timed tests and other timed activities cause anxiety. “We weren’t writing about how timing affects math performance,” he said via email. “Rather we were writing about whether timing causes math anxiety.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Confusing citations or not, the more pressing question for math teachers and parents is whether there is evidence in favor of timed tests. The U.S. Department of Education seems to side with the Science of Math folks and against the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/PracticeGuide/WWC2021006-Math-PG.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2021 guide for teachers on how to assist elementary school students who struggle with math\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> recommends regular timed activities – not necessarily tests – to help children build fluency with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The What Works Clearinghouse, a unit of the Department of Education that vets research, and an expert panel found 27 studies to back timed practice and called that a “strong” level of evidence.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Games vs. the stopwatch\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These 27 studies suggest that timed activities – not in isolation, but in conjunction with larger interventions – help children learn math. In one 2013 \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779611/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, struggling first graders received math tutoring three times a week and were split into two groups. One played untimed games to reinforce the lessons. The other was subjected to speed practice, where the children worked in groups to try to answer as many math flashcards correctly as possible within 60 seconds. Each time they were encouraged to “meet or beat” their previous score. After 16 weeks, the children in the speed practice group had much higher math achievement than the children who had played untimed games.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Children in the speed group answered more math facts correctly each day, the researchers found. The sheer volume of correct responses helped the children commit more math facts to long-term memory, according to Lynn Fuchs, who led the study. Cognitive scientists call that spaced retrieval practice, a proven way of building long-term memories, and children in the speed group got more of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“That gives children an advantage as they progress through the math curriculum,” said Fuchs, a professor of education at Vanderbilt University. “A lot of kids will develop fluency on their own without any fluency building practice. But to say we can’t do that in classrooms is to deny the opportunity to develop fluency for a significant portion of children.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fuchs and other advocates question why timed practice is so controversial in math when it’s common in other fields. Musicians repeat scales by the rapid tick of a metronome and athletes do speed drills to build muscle memory. “In all walks of life, the strongest musicians, the most skillful athletes, they do drills and practice, drill and practice,” said Fuchs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Opponents of timed tests also want children to automatically know that seven times eight is 56 instead of conceptually thinking it out each time (7+7+7+7+7+7+7+7), but they say that there are games and other less stressful ways to do it. Fuchs’s study is one of the few to directly test timed versus untimed conditions and we need more studies to replicate her findings before we can conclude that speed is considerably more effective and harmless to children.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Both sides of this debate are concerned with working memory, the ability to temporarily hold information in your head in order to process it, think and solve. One side worries that timed tests can produce so much anxiety that it overwhelms the working memory and prevents a child from learning. The other side wants to free up working memory to handle more complicated math problems by making basic arithmetic calculations automatic, and it believes the most effective road to automaticity is through speed drills. While the causes of math anxiety are debated and mysterious, many in the pro-drill camp suspect that children might feel less math anxiety if they became more proficient in the subject, which is something that drills might help accomplish.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Advice for math teachers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What can classroom teachers take away from this debate? I turned to a veteran researcher, Art Baroody, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who spent his career studying the best ways to teach counting, numbers and arithmetic concepts to young children.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He agrees that timed tests can be used effectively, but he is apprehensive about a blanket recommendation for teachers to use them. “Timed tests are an educational tool and like any tool can be used to good, no, or bad effect,” he said. “Unfortunately, the tool is often misused with poor or even devastating results. I have seen the damage timed tests can do to some children.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Baroody thinks it’s critical that children first understand conceptually what addition and subtraction mean and develop number sense before they are given timed tests. Too often students are taught mathematical operations through rote memorization, like random numbers, he said, and arithmetic learned this way is easily forgotten, no matter how much it’s drilled.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But once a child understands the math, he believes that timed worksheets are beneficial. Baroody said that if he were teaching in an elementary school classroom, he would administer timed tests at least once a week, and even more often depending on the topic and how much children have learned.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fuchs is even more circumspect in her advice to teachers on how to use timed tests effectively without harming children in the process. Not only should students first master concepts, they should have already demonstrated that they know the correct answers in an untimed setting. “You don’t want to give students a page full of problems and they’re kind of lost,” said Fuchs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Immediate feedback is important too. “When you make an error, your teacher or your partner can say, ‘Hey, let’s fix that’,” said Fuchs. “You want to stop a student when they make an error because what you’re trying to do is practice correct responses. You don’t want students to practice incorrect responses.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Advocates of timed practice disagree about the details. Some say students should be given long lists of calculations so that no one can finish in time and slam their pencils down, which leaves slower children feeling bad about themselves. However, Fuchs favors flashcards because she fears the sight of a long list of problems overwhelms some children. This is an area that needs more research to guide teachers on best practices.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Science of Math group concurs that not all timed practice is good, and says the research shows that timed activities or tests shouldn’t start until after a child can calculate accurately. They also say that teachers should never count these tests toward students’ grades; the tests should be low-stakes practice.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Much like any instructional activity, if it is used inappropriately, it will yield minimal benefits and in some cases could be harmful,” said Peltier. Timing students on “a skill they don’t know – not only is this a waste of time, it also can be demoralizing and harmful. Imagine being timed to parallel park a car at the age of 16!” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-do-math-drills-help-children-learn/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">math drills\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Proof Points\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and other \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hechinger newsletters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Using “Dear Math” letters to overcome dread in math class",
"headTitle": "Using “Dear Math” letters to overcome dread in math class | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Excerpted from \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.10publications.com/dear-math\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math: Why Kids Hate Math And What Teachers Can Do About It \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">by Sarah Strong and Gigi Butterfield. Published by Times 10 Publications.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The importance of mathematical identity work\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As learning theorist Yrjo Engestrom (1995) stated, “Identity work is never ‘done,’ it is always ongoing. Although a person’s identity is not determinable, neither is the meaning-making involved in identity work entirely free but, instead, is mediated by the discourse and practices of people’s communal social activity systems.” Because of this, we create space for students to share the stories that formed them and for the possibility of evolution in those stories over the course of the year. The possibility of evolving is related to the idea of a growth mindset, and, while it’s not the only point, believing that success can be found is an important step. Even day to day, the ways students feel about themselves as mathematicians can shift dramatically, but we can design a class where they can flourish when we tune our eyes and ears to their stories and ways of being in a math class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Dear Math, I have hated math ever since third grade; it’s annoying and unenjoyable. It used to be that I liked math, but that all changed in third grade when we had to learn our times tables, and I was always stressing. I like normal multiplication, the kind where you can ACTUALLY take your time, but not this.” — Andrea, seventh grade\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Overcoming dread in the classroom\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-60190\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath-800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\">Isabela and I met when I was her teacher in her freshman year. As a student, she seemed driven and justice-oriented. As a mathematician, she was brilliant at organizing information and she asked many questions, yet she lacked confidence. One of the first times we met, she told me that she had test anxiety, and as we worked together, I noticed that her anxiety was pervasive in her work. She would rush to an answer, second-guess her thinking, and then her brain would “shut off” (her words), and her emotions would take over. In her sophomore year, she wrote a Dear Math letter in which she unpacked this anxiety and the resulting feeling of dread that was now a part of her heading to math class. Her letter that year read:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I really like you. But you don’t come naturally to me. I have to work extra hard to understand and really conceptualize what you have to offer. There have been times where I have felt discouraged, frustrated, and exasperated, especially on tests, which is where I believe I can never fully express all of the things I know in a way that helps me be successful.” \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By reading and responding to her Dear Math letter and giving her space to unpack her story and mathematical identity, Isabela’s teachers were able to dig deep into what was blocking her achievement and connections, and they highlighted her strengths. From there, they helped Isabela build a new story for herself about who she was as a mathematician.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I had the opportunity to teach Isabela again her senior year, and, as we always do, Isabela wrote another Dear Math letter, reflecting on her mindset growth and identity during her high school experience. She wrote:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“While the term ‘math growth’ might inherently imply academic growth, I think for me it’s a lot more about a shift in attitude and my reactions when I am faced with challenges. I developed a sense of patience and open-mindedness for the first time ever. I no longer got as frustrated with myself when I didn’t understand something and would allow myself to take my time. As I reflect on my past experiences and emotions related to math, I can confidently say that I have a strong foundation. And this is a great amount of growth for me because two years ago when I wrote this letter as a sophomore, I could not say that I felt like I had a strong foundation in math.”\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Questions for prompting Dear Math letters:\u003c/h2>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Tell me about a time in elementary school when you felt successful in math class. What happened?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Tell me about a time in elementary school when you struggled in math class. What happened?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When your friends talk about math, what do they say or do?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What is one way that math has helped you grow?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What is one of your greatest mathematical strengths?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What is one of your greatest mathematical challenges?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How do you plan to engage with math in the future? (Going into a STEM field? Using math in your career? In your life? Tackling complex problems in a systematic way?)\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What can you thank math for?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How would you change math classrooms?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What would you like more of in math classes?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/sstrong57\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cem>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-60170 alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-800x1198.jpg\" alt=\"Sarah Strong\" width=\"250\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-800x1198.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-1020x1528.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-768x1150.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-1025x1536.jpg 1025w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-1367x2048.jpg 1367w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-scaled.jpg 1709w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\">Sarah Strong\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> loves creating spaces for her children and adult students to share their math stories. She has taught math to students in grades 6-12 at High Tech High in San Diego and also to preservice math teachers in Math Methods and Deeper Learning in Math courses through the HTH Graduate School of Education. In all of these settings, she has found value in opening up her questioning to allow students to share their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in service of a more whole math community. Sarah has consulted with schools and districts around the country as they detrack their math programs and redesign their math classrooms to be more inclusive and center student thinking through practices like project-based learning. Sarah has presented at both CMC and NCTM multiple times on Math & PBL and Student Centered Assessment in math classes. She has authored a few journal articles (Improving Math at HTH with Improvement Science and Deeper Learning in Common Core Math Projects) and an EdWeek blog post on the impacts of traditional grading systems on student math identity development (Making Math about more than the numbers). She also authored a chapter of the book Hands and Minds on assessment. She recently founded a company called Mathematical Wholeness that works with individual clients and teachers in schools to help them unpack their math traumas and forge new relationships with mathematics. \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-60194 alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Gigi-Headshot.jpg\" alt=\"Gigi Butterfield\" width=\"222\" height=\"232\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Gigi-Headshot.jpg 222w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Gigi-Headshot-160x167.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px\">Gigi Butterfield is currently a freshman at Loyola Marymount University and attended Gary and Jeri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High in San Diego, CA for High School. She is recovering from her fraudulent fondness of mathematics and thrives in situations where she can explore math deeply and ask thoughtful questions of her peers and her teachers. She attended project based learning schools from age of five to eighteen, and is passionate about how PBL plays an integral role in revitalizing heavily antiquated math pedagogies. In HS, she was captain of the basketball team, head of student ambassadors, leader of model united nations, member of student senate, and is still a Jeopardy fanatic hoping to go into comedy writing in her future. No better start to a comedy career than with a dissertation on the reimagining of math education!\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Math anxiety is prevalent in American classrooms. In their book \"Dear Math,\" Sarah Strong and Gigi Butterfield share how writing letters to math can start conversations that help teachers unpack students' feelings about the subject.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Excerpted from \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.10publications.com/dear-math\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dear Math: Why Kids Hate Math And What Teachers Can Do About It \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">by Sarah Strong and Gigi Butterfield. Published by Times 10 Publications.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The importance of mathematical identity work\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As learning theorist Yrjo Engestrom (1995) stated, “Identity work is never ‘done,’ it is always ongoing. Although a person’s identity is not determinable, neither is the meaning-making involved in identity work entirely free but, instead, is mediated by the discourse and practices of people’s communal social activity systems.” Because of this, we create space for students to share the stories that formed them and for the possibility of evolution in those stories over the course of the year. The possibility of evolving is related to the idea of a growth mindset, and, while it’s not the only point, believing that success can be found is an important step. Even day to day, the ways students feel about themselves as mathematicians can shift dramatically, but we can design a class where they can flourish when we tune our eyes and ears to their stories and ways of being in a math class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Dear Math, I have hated math ever since third grade; it’s annoying and unenjoyable. It used to be that I liked math, but that all changed in third grade when we had to learn our times tables, and I was always stressing. I like normal multiplication, the kind where you can ACTUALLY take your time, but not this.” — Andrea, seventh grade\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Overcoming dread in the classroom\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-60190\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath-800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/dearmath.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\">Isabela and I met when I was her teacher in her freshman year. As a student, she seemed driven and justice-oriented. As a mathematician, she was brilliant at organizing information and she asked many questions, yet she lacked confidence. One of the first times we met, she told me that she had test anxiety, and as we worked together, I noticed that her anxiety was pervasive in her work. She would rush to an answer, second-guess her thinking, and then her brain would “shut off” (her words), and her emotions would take over. In her sophomore year, she wrote a Dear Math letter in which she unpacked this anxiety and the resulting feeling of dread that was now a part of her heading to math class. Her letter that year read:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I really like you. But you don’t come naturally to me. I have to work extra hard to understand and really conceptualize what you have to offer. There have been times where I have felt discouraged, frustrated, and exasperated, especially on tests, which is where I believe I can never fully express all of the things I know in a way that helps me be successful.” \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By reading and responding to her Dear Math letter and giving her space to unpack her story and mathematical identity, Isabela’s teachers were able to dig deep into what was blocking her achievement and connections, and they highlighted her strengths. From there, they helped Isabela build a new story for herself about who she was as a mathematician.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I had the opportunity to teach Isabela again her senior year, and, as we always do, Isabela wrote another Dear Math letter, reflecting on her mindset growth and identity during her high school experience. She wrote:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“While the term ‘math growth’ might inherently imply academic growth, I think for me it’s a lot more about a shift in attitude and my reactions when I am faced with challenges. I developed a sense of patience and open-mindedness for the first time ever. I no longer got as frustrated with myself when I didn’t understand something and would allow myself to take my time. As I reflect on my past experiences and emotions related to math, I can confidently say that I have a strong foundation. And this is a great amount of growth for me because two years ago when I wrote this letter as a sophomore, I could not say that I felt like I had a strong foundation in math.”\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Questions for prompting Dear Math letters:\u003c/h2>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Tell me about a time in elementary school when you felt successful in math class. What happened?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Tell me about a time in elementary school when you struggled in math class. What happened?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When your friends talk about math, what do they say or do?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What is one way that math has helped you grow?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What is one of your greatest mathematical strengths?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What is one of your greatest mathematical challenges?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How do you plan to engage with math in the future? (Going into a STEM field? Using math in your career? In your life? Tackling complex problems in a systematic way?)\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What can you thank math for?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How would you change math classrooms?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What would you like more of in math classes?\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/sstrong57\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cem>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-60170 alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-800x1198.jpg\" alt=\"Sarah Strong\" width=\"250\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-800x1198.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-1020x1528.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-768x1150.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-1025x1536.jpg 1025w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-1367x2048.jpg 1367w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Sarah-Strong-scaled.jpg 1709w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\">Sarah Strong\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> loves creating spaces for her children and adult students to share their math stories. She has taught math to students in grades 6-12 at High Tech High in San Diego and also to preservice math teachers in Math Methods and Deeper Learning in Math courses through the HTH Graduate School of Education. In all of these settings, she has found value in opening up her questioning to allow students to share their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in service of a more whole math community. Sarah has consulted with schools and districts around the country as they detrack their math programs and redesign their math classrooms to be more inclusive and center student thinking through practices like project-based learning. Sarah has presented at both CMC and NCTM multiple times on Math & PBL and Student Centered Assessment in math classes. She has authored a few journal articles (Improving Math at HTH with Improvement Science and Deeper Learning in Common Core Math Projects) and an EdWeek blog post on the impacts of traditional grading systems on student math identity development (Making Math about more than the numbers). She also authored a chapter of the book Hands and Minds on assessment. She recently founded a company called Mathematical Wholeness that works with individual clients and teachers in schools to help them unpack their math traumas and forge new relationships with mathematics. \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-60194 alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Gigi-Headshot.jpg\" alt=\"Gigi Butterfield\" width=\"222\" height=\"232\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Gigi-Headshot.jpg 222w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2022/11/Gigi-Headshot-160x167.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px\">Gigi Butterfield is currently a freshman at Loyola Marymount University and attended Gary and Jeri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High in San Diego, CA for High School. She is recovering from her fraudulent fondness of mathematics and thrives in situations where she can explore math deeply and ask thoughtful questions of her peers and her teachers. She attended project based learning schools from age of five to eighteen, and is passionate about how PBL plays an integral role in revitalizing heavily antiquated math pedagogies. In HS, she was captain of the basketball team, head of student ambassadors, leader of model united nations, member of student senate, and is still a Jeopardy fanatic hoping to go into comedy writing in her future. No better start to a comedy career than with a dissertation on the reimagining of math education!\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>The following is an excerpt from \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/STEM-STEAM-Make-Dream-Reimagining/dp/1328034283/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=stem%2C+steam%2C+make%2C+dream&qid=1652797003&sprefix=STEM%2C+ST%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1\">STEM, STEAM, Make, Dream: Reimagining the Culture of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics\"\u003c/a> by Christopher Emdin, Ph.D. Copyright 2021 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>STEM ability is distributed evenly across the populace. STEM identity is created when that natural ability is fostered by human activity. We are at our very core scientific creatures, but we believe in our STEM selves when the world reinforces what we are. When you think about a baby being born, the very first set of knowledge they are using is scientific knowledge. They are smelling their environment and making observations in the world. They are not using English. They are not using history. They are using math and science. They are making observations, identifying patterns, testing hypotheses, and drawing conclusions. Once they start associating language with what they are seeing, they start expressing what is unfolding before them. There is magic in that unleashing, that revealing. This process is the foundation of STEM. This is what we need to build on in classrooms. Unfortunately, it is not what contemporary STEM education focuses on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, if we ask young people, STEM is not about giving voice or language to observations and questions. The only thing it unleashes or reveals is that it is hard and not for everybody. Hundreds of interviews I have held with young people from urban classrooms about science reveal that many students simply believe that “science is hard.” Many of these students, particularly those who were not doing well in science or mathematics classrooms, also believe that the reason they are not doing well is that they are not “smart enough.” This idea of the “hardness” of science and, by proxy, STEM is important to deconstruct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many, the hardness of STEM is associated with it being academically challenging and with folks not being able to engage with it. In reality, the hardness is about the inflexibility of STEM and the fact that it does not bend to the needs of the person engaging with it. If I attempt to engage with a topic and find it hard, I blame myself without considering that there is something about the subject that is unapproachable. The perception is that the fault cannot possibly be with the academic subject or the methods used to teach it. This flawed approach to thinking about STEM does not consider the more expansive view of the concept of hardness and the notion that if the subject bends to me or my interests, I can forge a relationship to it that increases my desire to spend more time with it. Time spent equals familiarity. And familiarity eventually equals fluency in the language of the “hard” subject. What is hard becomes malleable enough to wrap around you once you are familiar with the language it speaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Make no mistake: this is not an argument for making subjects easier or less rigorous. Instead, it is an argument for making STEM subjects easier to embrace. It is about recognizing the traumas we create when we convince otherwise intelligent people that there are subjects too mentally challenging for them. This misstep overshadows the real issue, which is that the subject was likely presented poorly, spilling over with meanings attached to words like smart or hard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_59421\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 138px\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-59421\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"138\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-160x240.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-1920x2880.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 138px) 100vw, 138px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author photo by Laura Yost (Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Christopher Emdin is professor and program director of Science Education in the Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he also serves as associate director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education. The creator of the #HipHopEd social media movement and the Science Genius program, he is the author of the New York Times bestseller \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/237679/for-white-folks-who-teach-in-the-hood-and-the-rest-of-yall-too-by-christopher-emdin/\">For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood . . . and the Rest of Y’all Too\u003c/a>\" and \"\u003ca href=\"https://chrisemdin.com/product/urban-science-education-for-the-hip-hop-generation-cultural-and-historical-perspectives-on-science-education/\">Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation\u003c/a>.\" You can follow him on Twitter at \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/chrisemdin?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\">@chrisemdin\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The following is an excerpt from \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/STEM-STEAM-Make-Dream-Reimagining/dp/1328034283/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=stem%2C+steam%2C+make%2C+dream&qid=1652797003&sprefix=STEM%2C+ST%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1\">STEM, STEAM, Make, Dream: Reimagining the Culture of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics\"\u003c/a> by Christopher Emdin, Ph.D. Copyright 2021 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>STEM ability is distributed evenly across the populace. STEM identity is created when that natural ability is fostered by human activity. We are at our very core scientific creatures, but we believe in our STEM selves when the world reinforces what we are. When you think about a baby being born, the very first set of knowledge they are using is scientific knowledge. They are smelling their environment and making observations in the world. They are not using English. They are not using history. They are using math and science. They are making observations, identifying patterns, testing hypotheses, and drawing conclusions. Once they start associating language with what they are seeing, they start expressing what is unfolding before them. There is magic in that unleashing, that revealing. This process is the foundation of STEM. This is what we need to build on in classrooms. Unfortunately, it is not what contemporary STEM education focuses on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, if we ask young people, STEM is not about giving voice or language to observations and questions. The only thing it unleashes or reveals is that it is hard and not for everybody. Hundreds of interviews I have held with young people from urban classrooms about science reveal that many students simply believe that “science is hard.” Many of these students, particularly those who were not doing well in science or mathematics classrooms, also believe that the reason they are not doing well is that they are not “smart enough.” This idea of the “hardness” of science and, by proxy, STEM is important to deconstruct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many, the hardness of STEM is associated with it being academically challenging and with folks not being able to engage with it. In reality, the hardness is about the inflexibility of STEM and the fact that it does not bend to the needs of the person engaging with it. If I attempt to engage with a topic and find it hard, I blame myself without considering that there is something about the subject that is unapproachable. The perception is that the fault cannot possibly be with the academic subject or the methods used to teach it. This flawed approach to thinking about STEM does not consider the more expansive view of the concept of hardness and the notion that if the subject bends to me or my interests, I can forge a relationship to it that increases my desire to spend more time with it. Time spent equals familiarity. And familiarity eventually equals fluency in the language of the “hard” subject. What is hard becomes malleable enough to wrap around you once you are familiar with the language it speaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Make no mistake: this is not an argument for making subjects easier or less rigorous. Instead, it is an argument for making STEM subjects easier to embrace. It is about recognizing the traumas we create when we convince otherwise intelligent people that there are subjects too mentally challenging for them. This misstep overshadows the real issue, which is that the subject was likely presented poorly, spilling over with meanings attached to words like smart or hard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_59421\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 138px\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-59421\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"138\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-160x240.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-1920x2880.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/05/99Fig10-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 138px) 100vw, 138px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author photo by Laura Yost (Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Christopher Emdin is professor and program director of Science Education in the Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he also serves as associate director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education. The creator of the #HipHopEd social media movement and the Science Genius program, he is the author of the New York Times bestseller \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/237679/for-white-folks-who-teach-in-the-hood-and-the-rest-of-yall-too-by-christopher-emdin/\">For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood . . . and the Rest of Y’all Too\u003c/a>\" and \"\u003ca href=\"https://chrisemdin.com/product/urban-science-education-for-the-hip-hop-generation-cultural-and-historical-perspectives-on-science-education/\">Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation\u003c/a>.\" You can follow him on Twitter at \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/chrisemdin?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\">@chrisemdin\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Could Data Science Diversify the STEM Field? Why Courses Designed This Century Feel so Relevant to All Students",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>You can listen to this episode of the MindShift Podcast on \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/could-data-science-diversify-the-stem-field/id1078765985?i=1000532256214\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5/episode/NjA5YWUxMDAtMTRkNS0xMWVjLTkyZGQtZmJmZThkOWZiZGY5?sa=X&ved=0CAcQkfYCahcKEwigsp2Qp__yAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQcQ&hl=en\">Google Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast\">NPR One\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/episode/2HCGMMmYrXNYHTl0Hro7DW?si=VTdbD-qCSZmoHdSJ0IFcUw&dl_branch=1\">Spotify\u003c/a>, \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.stitcher.com/show/stories-teachers-share/episode/could-data-science-diversify-the-stem-field-86155696\">\u003cstrong>Stitcher\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> or wherever you get your podcasts.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are many reasons students don’t like math: stressful timed tests, right and wrong answers, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/45012/how-a-strengths-based-approach-to-math-redefines-who-is-smart\">isolated work\u003c/a>, math \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52749/how-to-make-sure-your-math-anxiety-doesnt-make-your-kids-hate-math\">anxiety\u003c/a> learned from adults around you.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A 2012 PISA \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA2012-Vol3-Chap4.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">survey\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> found that one third of high school students feel helpless and emotionally stressed when doing math. And if you don’t see people who look like you succeeding in a subject or a field, it can be isolating, especially for young people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Something that’s really important, particularly for adolescents and high school students, is that they feel a sense of belonging inside STEM,” said Stanford maths education professor Jo Boaler. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hewlett.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Academic_Mindsets_as_a_Critical_Component_of_Deeper_Learning_CAMILLE_FARRINGTON_April_20_2013.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">R\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hewlett.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Academic_Mindsets_as_a_Critical_Component_of_Deeper_Learning_CAMILLE_FARRINGTON_April_20_2013.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">esearchers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> have found that a sense of belonging helps students succeed, in part because feeling like you’re a part of a community of learners is a powerful motivator to do well. “And unfortunately, a lot of students do not feel that they belong inside traditional high school maths classes,” said Boaler.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But there is one subject that students, including those who are math confident, enjoy learning: data science. As of 2020, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2020/university-of-california-expands-list-of-courses-that-meet-math-requirement-for-admission/643173\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">data science is accepted math coursework\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for University of California and Cal State University’s A-G requirements, so students might see it offered in more schools.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over the last decade, teams of teachers, researchers and academics have been developing data science curriculum and tools for the classroom, and having a modern approach to teaching is resonating with students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s kind of a unique opportunity because there wasn’t a high school data science course before,” said Suyen Machado, director of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.idsucla.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Introduction to Data Science\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> program, which was started as a partnership between UCLA and the Los Angeles Unified School District nearly ten years ago. The program was funded with a National Science Foundation grant to increase the amount of students going into STEM careers and to bring computational and statistical thinking to underrepresented high school students, according to Machado. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1092079008\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Engaging lessons that are inquiry driven, student driven and collaborative are really well suited for underrepresented groups, and you will find all of that in our \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://curriculum.idsucla.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">curriculum\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. And they’re good for students in general,” Machado said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>REAL WORLD USES\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The data science curriculum gives students opportunities to look at real data instead of abstract formulas. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s just so much fun,” said \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">James Molyneux, a professor at Oregon State University who was involved in the development of IDS. For example, students can collect their data and compare themselves to larger government data sets, like the American \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time Use Survey\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Students can measure how much time they spend grooming, eating, being with family and consuming social media, according to Molyneux. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58333\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-58333\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"629\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804-800x491.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804-1020x627.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804-160x98.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804-768x472.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A snapshot of students in Ding-ay Tadena’s class. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ding-ay Tadena)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Among students, there’s a growing interest in data sets, such as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56450/how-culturally-relevant-teaching-can-build-relationships-while-students-are-home\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">pollution\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://iase-web.org/documents/papers/rt2016/Gould.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">school communities\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and which \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://curriculum.idsucla.org/unit2/lab2e/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">gender\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> character is most likely to survive a horror film. For IDS participants, the most popular data project involves \u003ca href=\"https://curriculum.idsucla.org/unit1/lesson6/\">snacks\u003c/a>. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It honestly made me more aware of what I was taking in and putting in my body,” said student Linda Solares of Leuzinger High School of the snack project. Not to worry, the unit is not about encouraging weight loss or anything. Students used the IDS app to track information like the amount of salt, sugar content, cost, number of ingredients or their reasons for eating.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re in quarantine, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">we’re eating a lot more out of boredom and stuff. So honestly, it really helped me,” said Solares. “After I finished the survey, I was like, whoa,” she said, “I was really eating not so healthy.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1Nho2Ty0ZnYbE5wT1FCU2RtZExSN290WVJsM0htc0NqbzFn/view?resourcekey=0-VL7HSox62czWW_XB9gGXYw\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Surveys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of IDS students in LAUSD found that coding was the most challenging part of the course, but also, the most important skill students learned. Using programming tools, like RStudio, they persisted by trying over and over again to get their code right. And that helped boost confidence in their ability to problem solve. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The lab is a lesson for us to learn about the codes and how we can implement them in certain situations,” said Leuzinger student Peter Tran, who would \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://curriculum.idsucla.org/table/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">test\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> different variables against one another, like finding the most common time of day students ate unhealthy snacks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An important part of the data science curriculum is understanding privacy matters, and knowing how data is collected about people and used against them. This knowledge can help develop a person’s media literacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” said Boaler. “Having students develop a critical perspective – that’s one of the things we can teach in data science. Be skeptical of data that’s put in front of you, ask questions of it, think about who put that data together, what purpose did they have for it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>LEARNING GETS MESSY\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The messiness of the data sets is part of the appeal for students; it’s what engages them in learning and not shying away from unknown outcomes, according to \u003ca href=\"https://concord.org/data-fluency/\">Concord Consortium\u003c/a>’s Chad Dorsey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s almost sort of pre-chewed and preordained,” said Dorsey of traditional curriculum that doesn’t engage students. “And when we do that, we take a lot of the discovery away. We’re finding the value in putting students into the place of needing to ask and answer questions with data that might be ambiguous or that might have a missing value,” said Dorsey. As part of an NSF grant, the group developed the free CODAP tool so teachers can integrate data skills into their classes, such as science. The group also provides teachers with professional development. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re finding the value of putting students in the driver’s seat to do the exploration themselves, to uncover new things in the data that maybe the teachers didn’t understand was there in the first place and where students are finding something different than their neighbors,” said Dorsey.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAwu2x6HPNg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Leuzinger High School IDS t\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">eacher Ding-ay Tadena, that has meant giving students agency over the topics they want to investigate, such as sports. “They learn how to think deeper and then use these math skills and eventually they love it,” says Tadena, who has seen students of all math levels succeed in data science. She says that in data science class, students see themselves as more than the math track they’re in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It taught them how to dream bigger rather than just being profiled as lower performing in terms of math,” she said. “And that is the beauty of it because you teach them how to code, how to do this data, how to scrape data from the internet and push it in R in the field that interests them.” Tadena, who has been teaching math for about two decades, says data science is in many ways a re\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">spite for math teachers like herself who are looking for ways to engage their students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The students are so interested,” Tadena said. “They’re so into it.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For science teacher \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://concord.org/blog/never-stop-learning/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emerlyn Gatchalian\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, having Concord Consortium’s CODAP tool makes understanding the periodic table easier for some of her students. “They’re looking at the different properties of elements in the periodic table using data like the atomic size, ionic size,” she said. “Because they’re using data using CODAP, it’s so easy for them to look for patterns and trends and make them feel that they can actually understand and interpret data instead of using all the equations that they’re learning in math.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For high school special education teacher \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://concord.org/blog/the-science-teacher-accessible-physics-for-all/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Michelle Murtha\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, students’ ability to graph their data using digital tools helped them understand it. “Sometimes, graphing itself is so hard for the students. But because the program helps them through it,” she said, “they’re able to actually see the graph. And for us, that’s more important, so they can actually analyze the data versus, ‘can you plot this point?’”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>REDEFINING HIGH SCHOOL\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Emilio Jaime was a student at Phineas Banning High School, he was on track to take AP Calculus his senior year. He had been confident about math throughout school, but decided to take IDS based on a teacher’s suggestion. Plus, one less AP class would help ease his senior year course load. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>“I decided to let go of calculus and took on IDS, which I’m so glad I did, because I guess I was just scared because it wasn’t the norm that students were doing,\u003cem>” \u003c/em>said Jaime, who graduated from UC Berkeley last spring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58348\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1136px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-58348\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1136\" height=\"1702\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2.png 1136w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-800x1199.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-1020x1528.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-160x240.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-768x1151.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-1025x1536.png 1025w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1136px) 100vw, 1136px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Emilio Jaime \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Emilio Jaime)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What he liked about data science was the ability to play with formulas and not feel limited by right and wrong answers that were the hallmark of his math education. “This is how the formula is, and this is the answer, and there is a wrong answer,” he said of his earlier relationship to math. But data science was more fluid. “On our projects, I tried so many different graphs and so many different solutions to try to create so many different conclusions.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I think IDS and data science really allows students to try different things without being scared to fail,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">IDS trains teachers across the country and abroad on how to teach data science as a course. It’s one of several programs, including ones operated by the \u003ca href=\"https://concord.org/data-fluency/\">Concord Consortium\u003c/a> and Boaler’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/resource/data-literacy/\">YouCubed\u003c/a>. The outcome of getting more underrepresented students in the STEM field has yet to be seen. But for now, these educators are shifting students’ experiences with STEM to increase the odds that they’ll stay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58330\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-58330\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9812.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9812.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9812-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9812-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students in Ding-ay Tadena’s data science class. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ding-ay Tadena)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these skills will hopefully help students become better informed members of society. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1092079008\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I think that’s the biggest gift that we can give students right now – no matter how we’re doing it – is to help them understand that there are data all around them, that those data have answers, that they come from people, and that the things that they are doing are generating data all over, and to give them the ability to start to feel empowered to work with this data themselves,” said Dorsey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Subscribe to the MindShift Podcast in your favorite podcast app so you won’t miss a single episode. You can listen on \u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/I4hhfs3azg3avjzbuowzeal5sze\">Google Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast\">NPR One\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/show/0MxSpNYZKNprFLCl7eEtyx\">Spotify\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share\">Stitcher\u003c/a> or wherever you get your podcasts. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>You can listen to this episode of the MindShift Podcast on \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/could-data-science-diversify-the-stem-field/id1078765985?i=1000532256214\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5/episode/NjA5YWUxMDAtMTRkNS0xMWVjLTkyZGQtZmJmZThkOWZiZGY5?sa=X&ved=0CAcQkfYCahcKEwigsp2Qp__yAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQcQ&hl=en\">Google Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast\">NPR One\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/episode/2HCGMMmYrXNYHTl0Hro7DW?si=VTdbD-qCSZmoHdSJ0IFcUw&dl_branch=1\">Spotify\u003c/a>, \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.stitcher.com/show/stories-teachers-share/episode/could-data-science-diversify-the-stem-field-86155696\">\u003cstrong>Stitcher\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> or wherever you get your podcasts.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are many reasons students don’t like math: stressful timed tests, right and wrong answers, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/45012/how-a-strengths-based-approach-to-math-redefines-who-is-smart\">isolated work\u003c/a>, math \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52749/how-to-make-sure-your-math-anxiety-doesnt-make-your-kids-hate-math\">anxiety\u003c/a> learned from adults around you.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A 2012 PISA \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA2012-Vol3-Chap4.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">survey\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> found that one third of high school students feel helpless and emotionally stressed when doing math. And if you don’t see people who look like you succeeding in a subject or a field, it can be isolating, especially for young people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Something that’s really important, particularly for adolescents and high school students, is that they feel a sense of belonging inside STEM,” said Stanford maths education professor Jo Boaler. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hewlett.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Academic_Mindsets_as_a_Critical_Component_of_Deeper_Learning_CAMILLE_FARRINGTON_April_20_2013.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">R\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hewlett.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Academic_Mindsets_as_a_Critical_Component_of_Deeper_Learning_CAMILLE_FARRINGTON_April_20_2013.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">esearchers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> have found that a sense of belonging helps students succeed, in part because feeling like you’re a part of a community of learners is a powerful motivator to do well. “And unfortunately, a lot of students do not feel that they belong inside traditional high school maths classes,” said Boaler.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But there is one subject that students, including those who are math confident, enjoy learning: data science. As of 2020, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2020/university-of-california-expands-list-of-courses-that-meet-math-requirement-for-admission/643173\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">data science is accepted math coursework\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for University of California and Cal State University’s A-G requirements, so students might see it offered in more schools.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over the last decade, teams of teachers, researchers and academics have been developing data science curriculum and tools for the classroom, and having a modern approach to teaching is resonating with students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s kind of a unique opportunity because there wasn’t a high school data science course before,” said Suyen Machado, director of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.idsucla.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Introduction to Data Science\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> program, which was started as a partnership between UCLA and the Los Angeles Unified School District nearly ten years ago. The program was funded with a National Science Foundation grant to increase the amount of students going into STEM careers and to bring computational and statistical thinking to underrepresented high school students, according to Machado. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1092079008\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Engaging lessons that are inquiry driven, student driven and collaborative are really well suited for underrepresented groups, and you will find all of that in our \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://curriculum.idsucla.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">curriculum\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. And they’re good for students in general,” Machado said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>REAL WORLD USES\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The data science curriculum gives students opportunities to look at real data instead of abstract formulas. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s just so much fun,” said \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">James Molyneux, a professor at Oregon State University who was involved in the development of IDS. For example, students can collect their data and compare themselves to larger government data sets, like the American \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time Use Survey\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Students can measure how much time they spend grooming, eating, being with family and consuming social media, according to Molyneux. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58333\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-58333\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"629\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804-800x491.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804-1020x627.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804-160x98.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9804-768x472.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A snapshot of students in Ding-ay Tadena’s class. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ding-ay Tadena)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Among students, there’s a growing interest in data sets, such as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56450/how-culturally-relevant-teaching-can-build-relationships-while-students-are-home\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">pollution\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://iase-web.org/documents/papers/rt2016/Gould.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">school communities\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and which \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://curriculum.idsucla.org/unit2/lab2e/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">gender\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> character is most likely to survive a horror film. For IDS participants, the most popular data project involves \u003ca href=\"https://curriculum.idsucla.org/unit1/lesson6/\">snacks\u003c/a>. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It honestly made me more aware of what I was taking in and putting in my body,” said student Linda Solares of Leuzinger High School of the snack project. Not to worry, the unit is not about encouraging weight loss or anything. Students used the IDS app to track information like the amount of salt, sugar content, cost, number of ingredients or their reasons for eating.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re in quarantine, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">we’re eating a lot more out of boredom and stuff. So honestly, it really helped me,” said Solares. “After I finished the survey, I was like, whoa,” she said, “I was really eating not so healthy.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1Nho2Ty0ZnYbE5wT1FCU2RtZExSN290WVJsM0htc0NqbzFn/view?resourcekey=0-VL7HSox62czWW_XB9gGXYw\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Surveys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of IDS students in LAUSD found that coding was the most challenging part of the course, but also, the most important skill students learned. Using programming tools, like RStudio, they persisted by trying over and over again to get their code right. And that helped boost confidence in their ability to problem solve. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The lab is a lesson for us to learn about the codes and how we can implement them in certain situations,” said Leuzinger student Peter Tran, who would \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://curriculum.idsucla.org/table/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">test\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> different variables against one another, like finding the most common time of day students ate unhealthy snacks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An important part of the data science curriculum is understanding privacy matters, and knowing how data is collected about people and used against them. This knowledge can help develop a person’s media literacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” said Boaler. “Having students develop a critical perspective – that’s one of the things we can teach in data science. Be skeptical of data that’s put in front of you, ask questions of it, think about who put that data together, what purpose did they have for it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>LEARNING GETS MESSY\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The messiness of the data sets is part of the appeal for students; it’s what engages them in learning and not shying away from unknown outcomes, according to \u003ca href=\"https://concord.org/data-fluency/\">Concord Consortium\u003c/a>’s Chad Dorsey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s almost sort of pre-chewed and preordained,” said Dorsey of traditional curriculum that doesn’t engage students. “And when we do that, we take a lot of the discovery away. We’re finding the value in putting students into the place of needing to ask and answer questions with data that might be ambiguous or that might have a missing value,” said Dorsey. As part of an NSF grant, the group developed the free CODAP tool so teachers can integrate data skills into their classes, such as science. The group also provides teachers with professional development. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re finding the value of putting students in the driver’s seat to do the exploration themselves, to uncover new things in the data that maybe the teachers didn’t understand was there in the first place and where students are finding something different than their neighbors,” said Dorsey.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/nAwu2x6HPNg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/nAwu2x6HPNg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Leuzinger High School IDS t\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">eacher Ding-ay Tadena, that has meant giving students agency over the topics they want to investigate, such as sports. “They learn how to think deeper and then use these math skills and eventually they love it,” says Tadena, who has seen students of all math levels succeed in data science. She says that in data science class, students see themselves as more than the math track they’re in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It taught them how to dream bigger rather than just being profiled as lower performing in terms of math,” she said. “And that is the beauty of it because you teach them how to code, how to do this data, how to scrape data from the internet and push it in R in the field that interests them.” Tadena, who has been teaching math for about two decades, says data science is in many ways a re\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">spite for math teachers like herself who are looking for ways to engage their students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The students are so interested,” Tadena said. “They’re so into it.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For science teacher \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://concord.org/blog/never-stop-learning/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emerlyn Gatchalian\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, having Concord Consortium’s CODAP tool makes understanding the periodic table easier for some of her students. “They’re looking at the different properties of elements in the periodic table using data like the atomic size, ionic size,” she said. “Because they’re using data using CODAP, it’s so easy for them to look for patterns and trends and make them feel that they can actually understand and interpret data instead of using all the equations that they’re learning in math.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For high school special education teacher \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://concord.org/blog/the-science-teacher-accessible-physics-for-all/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Michelle Murtha\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, students’ ability to graph their data using digital tools helped them understand it. “Sometimes, graphing itself is so hard for the students. But because the program helps them through it,” she said, “they’re able to actually see the graph. And for us, that’s more important, so they can actually analyze the data versus, ‘can you plot this point?’”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>REDEFINING HIGH SCHOOL\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Emilio Jaime was a student at Phineas Banning High School, he was on track to take AP Calculus his senior year. He had been confident about math throughout school, but decided to take IDS based on a teacher’s suggestion. Plus, one less AP class would help ease his senior year course load. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>“I decided to let go of calculus and took on IDS, which I’m so glad I did, because I guess I was just scared because it wasn’t the norm that students were doing,\u003cem>” \u003c/em>said Jaime, who graduated from UC Berkeley last spring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58348\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1136px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-58348\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1136\" height=\"1702\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2.png 1136w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-800x1199.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-1020x1528.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-160x240.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-768x1151.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/Emilio-Jaime-2-1025x1536.png 1025w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1136px) 100vw, 1136px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Emilio Jaime \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Emilio Jaime)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What he liked about data science was the ability to play with formulas and not feel limited by right and wrong answers that were the hallmark of his math education. “This is how the formula is, and this is the answer, and there is a wrong answer,” he said of his earlier relationship to math. But data science was more fluid. “On our projects, I tried so many different graphs and so many different solutions to try to create so many different conclusions.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I think IDS and data science really allows students to try different things without being scared to fail,” he said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">IDS trains teachers across the country and abroad on how to teach data science as a course. It’s one of several programs, including ones operated by the \u003ca href=\"https://concord.org/data-fluency/\">Concord Consortium\u003c/a> and Boaler’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/resource/data-literacy/\">YouCubed\u003c/a>. The outcome of getting more underrepresented students in the STEM field has yet to be seen. But for now, these educators are shifting students’ experiences with STEM to increase the odds that they’ll stay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58330\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-58330\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9812.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9812.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9812-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/IMG_9812-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students in Ding-ay Tadena’s data science class. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ding-ay Tadena)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these skills will hopefully help students become better informed members of society. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1092079008\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I think that’s the biggest gift that we can give students right now – no matter how we’re doing it – is to help them understand that there are data all around them, that those data have answers, that they come from people, and that the things that they are doing are generating data all over, and to give them the ability to start to feel empowered to work with this data themselves,” said Dorsey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Subscribe to the MindShift Podcast in your favorite podcast app so you won’t miss a single episode. You can listen on \u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/I4hhfs3azg3avjzbuowzeal5sze\">Google Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast\">NPR One\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/show/0MxSpNYZKNprFLCl7eEtyx\">Spotify\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share\">Stitcher\u003c/a> or wherever you get your podcasts. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "How to Build Students’ Math Confidence With Culturally Sustaining Teaching Practices",
"headTitle": "How to Build Students’ Math Confidence With Culturally Sustaining Teaching Practices | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“I’m not a math person.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s something that educators hear from students in classes, children express to caregivers as they start homework and even adults say to each other when it’s time to calculate the tip for lunch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where did all of these “not math people” come from?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“There’s a lot of people right now who have been given permission to be innumerate because society has deemed innumeracy as OK,” says New York-based math educator José\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Vilson. “Because as long as you’re not a math person, then it’s perfectly fine to fail at math.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Cathery Yeh believes people began distancing themselves from math when they started associating math with memorization. She taught elementary school in Los Angeles and currently teaches graduate education students at Chapman University. “When I ask anybody to close their eyes and think about what math means, they’ll often say the timed test that they started taking in third grade,” says Yeh. “It was really around speed and doing a lot of problems repeatedly.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Yeh, these tests and other teaching techniques that rely on memorization give children a very narrow view of what math is. When math seems disconnected from everyday life, it makes it easy for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56637/math-anxiety-is-real-heres-how-to-help-your-child-avoid-it\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">students to claim it’s not their thing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Instead, highlighting math’s connection to concrete examples and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/55961/how-sidewalk-math-cultivates-a-playful-curious-attitude-towards-math\">students’ everyday context\u003c/a> communicates that math is all over the place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done in the way of trying to make sure that people understand how critical math is because math really is everywhere,” says Vilson. “It’s just a matter of how we contextualize it in our society.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58017\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-58017\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-800x600.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-1920x1440.jpeg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Transforming the math classroom into a learning lab \u003ccite>(Cathery Yeh)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learning isn’t linear, it’s embedded\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Math can be intimidating to students because it seems like if they fall behind it’s nearly impossible to catch up. On top of that, Vilson says that many teachers suggest that students drop classes if they are not keeping up with the pace of the curriculum. Instead, he encourages teachers to rethink how students learn. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Learning is not linear,” says Vilson. “So much of how we discuss math assumes that everybody picked up every single standard along the way.” Most schools have students progress through math courses in stages – algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2 and trigonometry. However, Yeh says this means teachers are missing out on opportunities for students to understand how math principles naturally work together.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Adding fractions is a fourth grade goal and multiplying fractions is a fifth grade goal. If they’re both doing it and you’re connecting across the two, that allows everybody access to grade level content. They get to see the integrated connection between these two operations.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeh also relies on culturally sustaining pedagogy to help students see how math principles work together and are intertwined with their everyday lives. During the first week of school, Yeh encourages Chapman teachers to ask students to interview a member of their family in their native language about how they use math in their daily life. When children bring these answers back to school, Yeh and student teachers create math lessons that align how the parents used math with what students were learning in class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Students were able to broaden their idea of who can be a mathematician and what mathematics can be. Yeh would even invite family and community members to come to co-teach math lessons from their authentic experience.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sopa de Números\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/cAH1ESiy_bU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Using mini-scaffolds to build confidence\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In order to meet students where they are at in their learning, Vilson uses a ground up approach to find where learners need support. When he gives an assignment based on a new concept, he’ll walk around the classroom to identify students that need help. Then, he’ll ask students questions starting with “Tell me what you know.” He calls this finding “mini-scaffolds.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“The bottom is ‘I don’t get it at all,’” says Vilson of when he’s working with a student that isn’t yet able to fully grasp foundational concepts. “If that’s the case. Then I build from there. But \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m asking questions that continually go down until I get to that point,” he says. He walks away when students no longer need help so that students build confidence as they finish completing the problem on their own.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, Vilson has a favorite activity where students construct a model and calculate scale to figure out how planets are positioned in outer space. Students will start out by making estimates based on what they already know. After introducing some of the principles of scientific notation, Vilson will give students a few numbers to work from. As students rethink what the solar system looks like based on new numbers, he’ll guide students who need extra support with questions like “Are the planets all evenly spaced out?” and “How big are the planets compared to one another?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Kids can get closer and closer to the actual true right answer if we just keep working with them and allow them to get to that,” says Vilson. “You don’t hear things like ‘I don’t get it.’ You hear things like ‘Oh, we’ll figure it out together’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Additionally, Vilson is always trying to model how to react to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57413/how-some-mistakes-can-be-generative-for-teachers-and-students-alike\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">wrong answers and mistakes\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. “If a kid tells you something like ‘Two thirds is equal to three fourths because I added one above and below.’ I say, ‘I see that you’re trying to make a pattern here.’ And then you start interrogating.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He’ll ask the class \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/44726/how-productive-failure-for-students-can-help-lessons-stick\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">questions about the problem that will lead them towards the right answer\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In this case, he may even guide the students through making different representations of two thirds and three fourths, by drawing it out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“It’s not like I told them it was wrong. I said, ‘Here’s a different path that you may consider.’”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pathways for discussing math\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Developing confidence in the math classroom helps students apply math principles anywhere they go. “I think those experiences allow for people to say math is wherever you need it to be. And is it exactly the same math? No, not exactly. But it activates the part of your brain that allows you to move around the world pretty quickly,” says Vilson.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s easy to dwell on bad experiences, but most people have felt the magical lightbulb moment in their brain when they’ve figured out how to solve a math problem. Vilson wants math educators to identify pathways that help math click for more students so that they no longer feel as if their race, class or gender has any bearing on their math ability. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When the subject matter starts to feel abstract, Vilson works with his students to identify models that can be replicated in other contexts. He tells students to take their geometry knowledge into looking at maps or navigating public transportation in new cities and encourages students to think of how many math principles they rely on to calculate a 20 percent tip. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vilson says,“They’re able to participate in a whole different way. They’re able to articulate their answers in a different way. They feel empowered by the things that they’re doing.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58016\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 794px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-58016\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/Number-String.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"794\" height=\"756\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/Number-String.jpeg 794w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/Number-String-160x152.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/Number-String-768x731.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 794px) 100vw, 794px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poster of number strings from one of Cathery Yeh’s student teachers \u003ccite>(Cathery Yeh)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeh relies on real life examples to engage students. If she’s working on dividing by fractions with students, she won’t just ask, “What is two divided by one half?” Instead she might say something like, “The family has two loaves of bread and they only want to eat half a day. How many days would two loaves last?” Students appreciate this accessible entry point into what is sometimes a tricky math unit.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“They get to do math and problem solve, then we go and connect it to the equation itself. Those things are ensuring deep learning and also responsive learning,” says Yeh. “I’m valuing and honoring students’ experiences and also applying mathematics to understanding and investigating meaningful situations in their lives.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>MindShift is part of KQED, a non-profit NPR and PBS member station in San Francisco, CA. The text of this specific article is available to republish for noncommercial purposes under a Creative Commons \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">CC BY-NC-ND 4.0\u003c/a> license, thanks to support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Educators José Vilson and Dr. Cathery Yeh invite teachers to reimagine the way math is taught. They provide teaching techniques that focus on using students’ everyday contexts to find pathways for engaging math learning.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“I’m not a math person.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s something that educators hear from students in classes, children express to caregivers as they start homework and even adults say to each other when it’s time to calculate the tip for lunch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where did all of these “not math people” come from?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“There’s a lot of people right now who have been given permission to be innumerate because society has deemed innumeracy as OK,” says New York-based math educator José\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Vilson. “Because as long as you’re not a math person, then it’s perfectly fine to fail at math.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Cathery Yeh believes people began distancing themselves from math when they started associating math with memorization. She taught elementary school in Los Angeles and currently teaches graduate education students at Chapman University. “When I ask anybody to close their eyes and think about what math means, they’ll often say the timed test that they started taking in third grade,” says Yeh. “It was really around speed and doing a lot of problems repeatedly.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Yeh, these tests and other teaching techniques that rely on memorization give children a very narrow view of what math is. When math seems disconnected from everyday life, it makes it easy for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56637/math-anxiety-is-real-heres-how-to-help-your-child-avoid-it\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">students to claim it’s not their thing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Instead, highlighting math’s connection to concrete examples and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/55961/how-sidewalk-math-cultivates-a-playful-curious-attitude-towards-math\">students’ everyday context\u003c/a> communicates that math is all over the place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done in the way of trying to make sure that people understand how critical math is because math really is everywhere,” says Vilson. “It’s just a matter of how we contextualize it in our society.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58017\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-58017\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-800x600.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab-1920x1440.jpeg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/math-classrooms-as-a-learning-lab.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Transforming the math classroom into a learning lab \u003ccite>(Cathery Yeh)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learning isn’t linear, it’s embedded\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Math can be intimidating to students because it seems like if they fall behind it’s nearly impossible to catch up. On top of that, Vilson says that many teachers suggest that students drop classes if they are not keeping up with the pace of the curriculum. Instead, he encourages teachers to rethink how students learn. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Learning is not linear,” says Vilson. “So much of how we discuss math assumes that everybody picked up every single standard along the way.” Most schools have students progress through math courses in stages – algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2 and trigonometry. However, Yeh says this means teachers are missing out on opportunities for students to understand how math principles naturally work together.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Adding fractions is a fourth grade goal and multiplying fractions is a fifth grade goal. If they’re both doing it and you’re connecting across the two, that allows everybody access to grade level content. They get to see the integrated connection between these two operations.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeh also relies on culturally sustaining pedagogy to help students see how math principles work together and are intertwined with their everyday lives. During the first week of school, Yeh encourages Chapman teachers to ask students to interview a member of their family in their native language about how they use math in their daily life. When children bring these answers back to school, Yeh and student teachers create math lessons that align how the parents used math with what students were learning in class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Students were able to broaden their idea of who can be a mathematician and what mathematics can be. Yeh would even invite family and community members to come to co-teach math lessons from their authentic experience.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sopa de Números\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/cAH1ESiy_bU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Using mini-scaffolds to build confidence\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In order to meet students where they are at in their learning, Vilson uses a ground up approach to find where learners need support. When he gives an assignment based on a new concept, he’ll walk around the classroom to identify students that need help. Then, he’ll ask students questions starting with “Tell me what you know.” He calls this finding “mini-scaffolds.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“The bottom is ‘I don’t get it at all,’” says Vilson of when he’s working with a student that isn’t yet able to fully grasp foundational concepts. “If that’s the case. Then I build from there. But \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m asking questions that continually go down until I get to that point,” he says. He walks away when students no longer need help so that students build confidence as they finish completing the problem on their own.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, Vilson has a favorite activity where students construct a model and calculate scale to figure out how planets are positioned in outer space. Students will start out by making estimates based on what they already know. After introducing some of the principles of scientific notation, Vilson will give students a few numbers to work from. As students rethink what the solar system looks like based on new numbers, he’ll guide students who need extra support with questions like “Are the planets all evenly spaced out?” and “How big are the planets compared to one another?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Kids can get closer and closer to the actual true right answer if we just keep working with them and allow them to get to that,” says Vilson. “You don’t hear things like ‘I don’t get it.’ You hear things like ‘Oh, we’ll figure it out together’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Additionally, Vilson is always trying to model how to react to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57413/how-some-mistakes-can-be-generative-for-teachers-and-students-alike\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">wrong answers and mistakes\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. “If a kid tells you something like ‘Two thirds is equal to three fourths because I added one above and below.’ I say, ‘I see that you’re trying to make a pattern here.’ And then you start interrogating.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He’ll ask the class \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/44726/how-productive-failure-for-students-can-help-lessons-stick\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">questions about the problem that will lead them towards the right answer\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In this case, he may even guide the students through making different representations of two thirds and three fourths, by drawing it out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“It’s not like I told them it was wrong. I said, ‘Here’s a different path that you may consider.’”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pathways for discussing math\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Developing confidence in the math classroom helps students apply math principles anywhere they go. “I think those experiences allow for people to say math is wherever you need it to be. And is it exactly the same math? No, not exactly. But it activates the part of your brain that allows you to move around the world pretty quickly,” says Vilson.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s easy to dwell on bad experiences, but most people have felt the magical lightbulb moment in their brain when they’ve figured out how to solve a math problem. Vilson wants math educators to identify pathways that help math click for more students so that they no longer feel as if their race, class or gender has any bearing on their math ability. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When the subject matter starts to feel abstract, Vilson works with his students to identify models that can be replicated in other contexts. He tells students to take their geometry knowledge into looking at maps or navigating public transportation in new cities and encourages students to think of how many math principles they rely on to calculate a 20 percent tip. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vilson says,“They’re able to participate in a whole different way. They’re able to articulate their answers in a different way. They feel empowered by the things that they’re doing.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58016\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 794px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-58016\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/Number-String.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"794\" height=\"756\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/Number-String.jpeg 794w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/Number-String-160x152.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/06/Number-String-768x731.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 794px) 100vw, 794px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poster of number strings from one of Cathery Yeh’s student teachers \u003ccite>(Cathery Yeh)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeh relies on real life examples to engage students. If she’s working on dividing by fractions with students, she won’t just ask, “What is two divided by one half?” Instead she might say something like, “The family has two loaves of bread and they only want to eat half a day. How many days would two loaves last?” Students appreciate this accessible entry point into what is sometimes a tricky math unit.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“They get to do math and problem solve, then we go and connect it to the equation itself. Those things are ensuring deep learning and also responsive learning,” says Yeh. “I’m valuing and honoring students’ experiences and also applying mathematics to understanding and investigating meaningful situations in their lives.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"soldout": {
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