During the day, I teach Algebra I classes to high school freshmen in Springfield, Missouri. One night per week, I teach preservice elementary school teachers who serve as paraprofessionals at K-12 ...

A key part—though surely not the only part—of early-grades math is ensuring students get the basic arithmetic functions down and, beyond that, making sure they’re able to swiftly and automatically ...

Dylan Kane likes his math curriculum. But there’s one important piece missing, he says. The 7th grade math teacher in Leadville, Colo., uses a program that teaches math skills through real-world ...

As a mathematics education researcher, I study how math instruction impacts students' learning, from following standard math procedures to understanding mathematical concepts. Focusing on the latter, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Linda Darling-Hammond is an expert on education research and policy. This blog was updated on June 24, 2026 to clarify a statistic ...

A 1956 New York Times article details a report from the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, revealing that in elementary and secondary school, mathematics earned the title of “the most hated ...

Kayla Thuemler, a first grade teacher in Milwaukee, shows other teachers how she solved a subtraction problem during a professional development session on math teaching. Credit: Abby J. McFarland for ...

Imagine if you enrolled your child in swimming lessons but instead of a qualified swimming instructor, they were taught freestyle technique by a soccer coach. Something similar is happening in ...