Education writer Lauren Camera revives an overlooked report from last year showing the most effective thing educators can do to boost students’ later-in-life outcomes: improving math skills.
Specifically, the analysis shows that improving math scores by 0.5 standard deviation for children up to age 12 is associated with larger increases on earnings by age 30 than other equivalent improvements.
The impact also increases as children get older. For example, a half standard deviation increase in preschool math scores raises earnings by 2.5 percent, while a half standard deviation increase in middle childhood raises earnings by 3.5 percent. A 3.5 percent increase corresponds to about $1,200 a year in additional earnings for the average adult. Notably, girls see a greater increase in adulthood earnings from an improvement in math scores than boys – more than three-quarters of a percentage point at every life stage.
The same cannot be said for the earnings impact of improving reading scores, which actually diminishes as students get older, falling from 0.9 percent (about $300) to 0.5 percent (less than $200) from ages 5 to 11.
Math could be a crucial hinge point in the shift to a third era of public education.
It’s an area where school matters. Compared to, say, vocabulary or background knowledge, which students might pick up outside the classroom, math skills are closely tied to the instruction they receive, or don’t, in school. Math achievement appears to have suffered more than other subjects during the pandemic.
It benefits from direct instruction. A few years ago, I visited a rural school district in the Southeast that had created a microschool to pilot an interdisciplinary, project-based learning approach. One project fused math and history, requiring students to collect and analyze historical data on their community. The district quickly learned that to complete the project successfully, students needed direct instruction in math to make the project-based lessons effective.
It’s ruthlessly cumulative and sequential. Math skills systematically build on each other. Students need to master counting before they can add, multiplication and division before they can graph quadratic functions, and so on. Gaps in one skill can make it impossible to master another.
It’s in demand. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the coming years, “math occupations” are projected to command more than twice the earnings of other jobs, and to grow far more quickly.
Debates about math instructions tend to suffer from either-or thinking. Camera’s article quotes experts who advocate a shift away from “rote” and “procedural” instruction (like getting kids to memorize times tables) in favor of more focus on big-picture math concepts. This is supported by some evidence, but at odds with research on the value of working memory. It’s easier to simplify a polynomial expression if basic multiplication is second nature. Big-picture concepts and procedural practice both matter.
Supporting learning options that give every student access to effective math instruction is a critical challenge. But unlike in math itself, there aren’t always clear right or wrong answers.
In brief
Occasional conversations with parents applying math concepts in everyday life can be more effective than worksheets or drills in building children’s math skills.
Oakland community groups are recruiting people without formal educator training to help students in math. I had a front-row seat for an early iteration of this program that recruited literacy instructors, and the results should prompt a wider conversation about untapped talent in education.
Economists find that even after accounting for summers off, and health and retirement benefits, teachers suffer a 17% pay disparity compared to other occupations.
A new paper casts doubt on a sacred totem of American special education: the idea that more inclusion, in which students with disabilities spend time in classrooms learning alongside peers without disabilities, is always better. Anyone who’s seen the wealth of specialized learning environments springing up across high-choice states like Florida knows there are tradeoffs between inclusion and specialization. These tradeoffs look different for each child.
High school students are more likely to have access to career days or job shadowing than internships, apprenticeships, or other paid work-based learning opportunities. Some innovative schools are changing that:
Oakmont has developed relationships with employers in multiple industries, from construction to manufacturing to healthcare (and others) where their graduates can be placed for strong, entry-level jobs. Many of these students would have done some of their school-based work placements at these organizations, giving them essentially a multi-month trial period before getting hired. Because of these strong relationships, Oakmont graduates can command a wage $2-$4 dollars more per hour than typical first-time employees.
The New Yorker published an exposé on a multi-decade effort by politicians, political donors, and religious leaders to expand private school choice in Ohio, starting with small pilot programs aimed at low-income students in big cities, and expanding to serve all students. The narrative framing is a bit tired, repeating key plot points from a recent book on the supposed death of public education. But these events make sense through a different lens: Shifting money and decision-making power away from governments and into the hands of families takes decades, and yes, political muscle – just as efforts to assemble the policies that shaped the second era of public education did a century and a half ago.
In the coming year, Ed Week reports, keep an eye on these states for legal and legislative action on private school choice:
- Six states (Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas) that may create new private school choice programs.
- Six states (Georgia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) are weighing proposals to expand existing programs.
- Five states (Arkansas, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Utah) face ongoing constitutional lawsuits.
Chicago Public Schools is caught in a fiscal vise that is likely to snare other urban districts: Thousands of new hires, expiring federal funding, flat or declining enrollment, and now, escalating union demands.
The expiration of federal pandemic funding, combined with investor belt-tightening and impending mergers or acquisitions, led more than 40% of education companies to lay off employees last year. The actual rate of layoffs may be higher than that, because the figure doesn’t include the fourth quarter of the calendar year.
The Eduwonk Andrew Rotherham has his annual “in and out” list for 2025. So long, Smokin’ in the Boys Room.
Listening to the teacher wasn’t always my bag. But I will listen to your feedback. Is this an effective overview of the national headlines that point to our shift to a new era of public education? Please drop me a line and let me know what you think.
