Is LETRS-style training coming to math?

Wary experts say a seismic shift to math training might not be around the corner

Hello there, Bell Ringers! I’ve got a great story for you today: Considering national math scores are so low, is there LETRS-like math training—something big and comprehensive, explaining the science and research, as well as how to use it—coming to schools and districts? Could there be a “NMBRS” training coming to your school soon? Read on to find out—and if you want the whole story, consider becoming a paying subscriber.

Your support, at the cost of only one latte a month, provides the resources for me to produce important stories like this one. So thank you!

But first, what you might have missed:

Last week’s letter featured a new Tools for Practice from high school chemistry teacher Marcie Samayoa. She was kind enough to explain how she upended her high school chemistry labs to be more explicit—replacing inquiry-based labs suggested by the Next Gen Science Standards with background knowledge, vocabulary practice, and explicit instruction on how to conduct the lab as well as how to use the equipment.

Student labs in chemistry can often be a problem, Samayoa said. While NGSS standards claimed students would learn more from inquiry-based labs with little instruction or guidance, what Samayoa often saw in labs that led with discovery was student confusion and sometimes chaos. She didn’t believe that students were learning as much as they could.

Read on to find out how it’s going for students, but here’s a hint: student questions are deeper and more thoughtful, their ability to analyze and evaluate their evidence is stronger, and Samayoa’s early data shows their grades have improved. Get the story on an evidence-based chemistry lab here.

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Catch up on the science of learning:

• Explicit instruction

• Working memory

• The importance of practice

• Foundational books to read on cognitive science

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Meet me at researchED in New York City on March 29!

I’ll be speaking at this grassroots event focused on the evidence in teaching and learning with a lot of amazing educators, journalists and experts. (Check out the full list below.)

I’m hoping to have a Bell Ringer table at the pub after the conference Saturday night, so be sure to tell me if you’ll be there! Get your tickets here.

Can schools expect a LETRS-style training for math?

I’ve been thinking about what consultant and teacher trainer Rod Naquin told me last week about what’s behind Louisiana’s rising NAEP reading scores, at least at the classroom level:

“Things like LETRS and AIM are the rocket science of reading instruction. Teachers now have knowledge that underlies the materials they're asked to use, right?” Naquin told me. “So instead of saying, ‘Go use Core Knowledge in kinder through second grade,’ they're also growing their knowledge around the learning science that is supposed to be brought to life in those materials.”

There seems to be a similar success formula rising again and again in states where reading achievement has been historically low, like Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama, and is now improving: comprehensive teacher training in the science of reading that is then added to the classroom use of high-quality instructional materials (along with ongoing coaching, etc). What Naquin is saying, and what some of my reporting has also shown, is that those two items put together creates a significant foundation for positive change.

So as more states implement this formula in reading, will math follow suit? Could similar training in math be a key to turning around math achievement?

The most recent NAEP math scores suggest that math instruction is in need of an evidence-based rebirth. I’ve been reporting for the last year or so that math instruction has similar issues to reading—that it’s often not challenging enough for students to learn what they need to advance, there’s less help for kids who struggle with math compared to reading, and perhaps most importantly of all, there is significant research on math teaching and learning—a ‘science of math’—that looks somewhat different than the science of reading, but is still all but ignored by schools and policy makers.

As Tim Daly, executive director of EdNavigator, pointed out on his Substack, there’s good reason for alarm on the math front: the number of students scoring in the lowest NAEP category in math, “Below Basic,” has grown substantially since 2013—long before the pandemic shuttered schools.

Average math achievement has fallen so far that states that now boast the highest math scores like Massachusetts and Wisconsin would have been in the middle of the pack, average at best, a decade ago, according to Daly.

Should states follow their success in reading, and provide math teachers with intense, evidence-based training on how the brain learns math and the best teaching practices to support it, similar to a LETRS or AIM? Is that training in development, or already coming to states? Is that what we will see for teachers over the next couple of years?

I called experts, educators and researchers to find out the answer. Here’s what they told me: