We’re failing as a nation: 

"I'm not a math person" is a pervasive and destructive belief plaguing American schools and causing the US to place fortieth amongst developed nations (on the most recent international PISA assessment). Leaders, parents, teachers, and students alike have harmful beliefs about the fixed ability of a person to “do math.” 

Click here to learn more about Why Americans Stink at Math 

As Jo Boaler says, “it would be hard to overstate the number of people who walk on our planet who have been harmed by bad math teaching, but the negative ideas that prevail about math do not come only from harmful teaching practices.  They come from one idea...that math is a ‘gift’ that some people have and others don’t.” (Mathematical Mindsets, Boaler 2016). This idea - that math is a gift and not a learned skill - is missing from countries who are out performing the US in math (namely China and Japan). This flawed belief, however, is deeply embedded into our American cultural DNA and impacts the majority of students. It is particularly pertinent in perpetuating the achievement gap. 

This issue compounds in the increasing wage gap lived by low-income students. If we hope to support students coming from struggling financial situations, taking math courses matter. “Research studies have established that the more math classes students take, the higher their earnings ten years later, with advanced math courses predicting an increase in salary as high as 19.5% ten years after high school” (Rose & Betts, 2004). Without addressing this flawed belief and the resulting philosophy for teaching mathematics in schools, especially in low-income schools, we are directly perpetuating both the achievement gap and with it our students’ potential earnings. 

It is possible: 

Uri Treisman’s seminal research on the topic explores this mistaken belief further with students at the University of California Berkeley. He altered the way students were presented mathematics curriculum, feedback, and assessments and observed huge gains in mindset and academic outcomes, especially for low-income students of color. Jo Boaler, Jonathan Brendefur, Dan Meyer, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and countless others have continued this work in universities and schools to prove again and again that with the correct school culture, vision, and supports - all students are capable of “doing math.”  

Learn About Treisman’s Remarkable Approach

1. Shift the professional adult culture in your building. 

To get started with your crew, consider using/adapting our professional learning experience for creating a shared math vision.

Ensure that adults (all adults) explicitly:

• Discuss their own history and mindsets with mathematics education alongside the current research and current core practices.  (Share their “Math Stories”) 

• Take risks with mathematics tasks and grapple collectively (See Recommendation 5 and Recommendation 6 for example tasks and how to lead these PD sessions). 

• Build collective excitement around learning mathematics 

• Define the vision of instruction for the campus

  • Ensure that vision defines how conceptual understanding AND foundational fluency (the flexibility learners have with a concept that leads to increased efficiency) and how both will be taught. 

  • See Recommendation 5 for more information on defining the pedagogy (instructional practices) embedded in the vision.

2. Examine school wide structures for instruction 

• Use school-wide mathematics walk through tools to analyze current practices, school wide structures, and common language (see #3 for more information on these practices). 

• Use walk through tools and math bundle road map (in the works within EL Education) in order to determine future work plan implications for school wide instructional shifts. 

• See Recommendations 3, 4, and 6 for more information.

3. Rely on your Math Culture Lead

Recommendation #2 describes how to identify this individual and why their involvement is so critical.  Ideally this individual will be identified and on board prior to launching the steps above.  If they are or have been identified - they should be central in leading the work.