It’s a question that high school and middle school math teachers have heard many times. Some educators think it’s because math instruction is stuck in a rut. Procedural, boring and, in some cases, ...

Few elementary education programs give future teachers enough exposure to foundational math concepts, like number sense and algebraic reasoning, before they reach the classroom. That’s the upshot of a ...

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 ...

Far too many students enter math class expecting to fail. For them, math isn’t just a subject–it’s a source of anxiety that chips away at their confidence and makes them question their abilities. A ...

At the beginning of a recent math class, students spent six minutes discussing a topic they knew well: themselves. What’s their favorite food? Answers came in English and Spanish—“todo” (everything), ...

Math is often the most challenging class in a student’s course load. But it doesn’t have to be. Follow these tips to prevent ...

West Virginia University researchers are changing how college mathematics is taught by evaluating and sharing a model for problem-solving that supports what students learn in other courses like ...

Math will look and feel a lot different in San Francisco schools this year and that seems evident by the picture of the chilled-out chimpanzee on the cover of the new kindergarten textbook, with ...