Don't count on kids with math difficulties

Nancy Jordan has noticed that many adults, perhaps remembering the dreaded “word problems” of their own school days, seem to think that a person either has a natural talent for math or will never be adept with numbers.

“A lot of people believe that math is something you’re either good at or not good at, but research has shown that’s just not true,” says Jordan, a professor of education who studies how children learn math. “With the right strategies, children can develop their math skills.”

Standardized testing in Delaware and nationally has found that, as a group, children might hold their own in learning math through elementary school, but in middle school, their math scores begin to decline, Jordan says. She attributes much of that problem to a lack of intervention in the early grades for children with math disabilities or difficulties.

“Elementary schools spend a lot of time addressing literacy—which of course is extremely important—but they really don’t spend a lot of time on math,” she says.

In the spring of 2003, Jordan and her former UD colleague David Kaplan received a five-year grant of $1.7 million from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study children at risk for learning difficulties in mathematics.

The goal was to identify ways to predict future achievement, and the researchers devised a test to be given in kindergarten and first grade that would assess children’s number sense—their basic understanding of numerical concepts.

Flash forward to 2008 when national studies are reporting dismal findings on U.S. students’ math aptitudes, and it seems that Jordan was on the leading curve of forestalling troublesome learning trends.

Now at work on fine-tuning the test that screens elementary school children for dyscalculia, or math disabilities, Jordan believes that early intervention is a key factor for instilling the solid number sense that’s critical for higher math skills, and, ultimately, for future workforce competence.

“The instrument is still in development, and we have the research findings, but putting it together as something that’s useful for school personnel will take some time and is ongoing,” she says.

Jordan cites some early predictors of math learning difficulties, including a weak number sense in preschool and kindergarten, poor ability to remember numerical information, trouble becoming fluent in such “facts” as addition and subtraction combinations, reading and language difficulties, inadequate early experiences with numbers and attention weaknesses.

In terms of actual fieldwork—work that required five years of careful research in a sampling of local classrooms—Jordan and several graduate assistants under her direction have secured much of the data that will produce the useful screening tool.

“When the...grant started, we began with kindergartners, and we were able to follow the same students in our target classrooms throughout the Christina School District for as long as they stayed in district schools,” Jordan says. She adds that while the study cut across demographic lines and included both city and suburban schools, it especially focused on high-risk children from low-income areas.

One of the findings was that low-income children are four times more likely than their more affluent peers to be among those students who begin kindergarten with poor math skills and continue in that low-achieving group. With the right instruction and intervention at that young age, Jordan says, those children can catch up.

“We want to move them up,” she says. “We want to level the playing field by the time they’re in first grade.”
Research collected over the five years of the study yielded such solid data, Jordan says, that she published her findings in an article, “The Need for Number Sense,” in the October issue of Educational Leadership, a monthly periodical aimed at educators, researchers, school psychologists, administrators and policymakers.

“Many educators assume that learners with math difficulties and disabilities have trouble memorizing facts,” she wrote. “As a result, special instruction often focuses on drill.”

Instead, she wrote, the instruction should concentrate on helping students develop their basic number sense.
According to Jordan, the response to that article has been encouraging—and widespread.

“I was amazed by the reaction, because so many times you write research articles for a specific audience and you spend so much time and never hear very much,” she says. “But this article was aimed at practitioners, and I was really surprised at both the response and need in this area.”

Jordan emphasizes that math skills are key in today’s technological society and that “competence in basic math is very important, both for pursuing advanced math, which is a gateway for all kinds of professions, and for preparing students for the general workforce.”

She adds that because of state testing and measures relating to No Child Left Behind sanctioning, the push for boosting math competency is now on.

“There’s now a national math panel and, from the National Academies of Science, a seminal early math panel,” Jordan says. “People are realizing that if we intervene and help children early on, they will more likely do better; and people also are realizing that this area has not received a lot of attention.”

— Becca Hutchinson and Ann Manser, AS ’73