Improving Early Math Instruction and Outcomes

Background & Scan

The imperative to focus attention on what and how students in preschool and early elementary school are learning in math is especially clear in California: While the state has had some success improving student achievement in math over the past few years, its fourth‐grade students continue to significantly under‐perform those in most other states, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)².

With a longstanding commitment to strengthening early learning and improving outcomes for the state’s youngest children, the California‐based Heising Simons Foundation is directing new resources to help policymakers, education leaders and colleague funders address early math gaps. The longterm goal of its “Creating Coherent Early Math Instruction in California” initiative is to ensure that students from families with low incomes and children of color are appropriately challenged and supported in math instruction in the early years of school to reach proficiency by fourth grade.

To support its emerging work in this area, the foundation asked Education First in 2019 to prepare a series of research projects that map challenges and opportunities for improving early math in California, examine ways of better engaging parents as partners, and identify and describe promising initiatives to strengthen math foundations for young learners.

The foundation also invited Education First to identify implications of the research and make recommendations for steps state and local leaders and funders could take. To inform our analysis, we reviewed dozens of research papers and evaluations from the past decade, and we interviewed over 50 experts and practitioners in the field of early learning in general and early math in particular (both in California and around the country). Our research suggests strategies in five major categories can help improve early math outcomes for low‐income students and students of color:

1. Improve the effectiveness of leaders who influence the quality and content of teaching math in the early grades.
2. Better support and train the teacher workforce which—in early education—is generally poorly compensated and under‐prepared.
3. Involve families as authentic partners in building children’s early confidence and conceptual understanding in math, in school and out of school.
4. Create infrastructure and tools that support early math, including developmentally appropriate kindergarten readiness assessments, a strengthened process for rating the quality of early learning centers and helping them improve, and aligned PreK‐12 standards and curriculum.
5. Build coherence between PreK and K‐12 systems by better connecting standards, data and training between these systems and ensuring successful transitions for students between preschool and elementary school.

Our research scan identifies challenges to overcome in putting these strategies in place and existing opportunities on which to capitalize—and, while this analysis is targeted to California’s context, we know many of the same issues and possible solutions exist in other states. It also summarizes why early math is an important area of emphasis for those working to close achievement gaps, and it identifies California‐based networks, funders and organizations already advancing efforts to improve student outcomes in math and/or early learning outcomes.

Parent Engagement

Research has established that students with involved parents achieve better outcomes³: They are more likely to attend school regularly, perform better in school, develop strong social skills and go on to post‐secondary education. To improve learning in early math and address the performance gaps between racial and socio‐economic groups, parent and family engagement may be especially necessary, since so much learning for young children takes place at home and informal environments, such as in‐home child care.

Thus, as one potentially important approach to improving outcomes for early learners in mathematics, the Heising‐Simons Foundation is especially interested in the role parents and family members can play as partners with educators—and it asked Education First to learn more and offer observations. As part of our work, we reviewed existing efforts and research in California and interviewed leaders at nine organizations with strong reputations for improving parent involvement
in children’s’ learning (plus one school district with an exemplary parent engagement program).

Our research into parent engagement efforts and organizations in California posed these questions:

1. What are the promising practices in California for successfully engaging parents of younger migrant, dual language/immigrant, black, Latino or Asian/Pacific‐Islander students?
2. What are examples of California counties, school districts, early childhood education providers, networks and nonprofit organizations with a strong commitment to engaging parents of preschoolers and primary grade students?
3. What opportunities are there to strengthen family engagement, especially in math, in California counties with the greatest student needs?

We learned:

• Many see a compelling need for greater family engagement efforts focused on math, but specific math programming is limited in most organizations that focus on boosting parent involvement in California.
• The nine organizations supporting parent engagement in California that we examined operate primarily in or near the state’s larger cities and not in rural areas. Indeed, considered with a view to the distribution of poverty in California, many of the state’s highest‐need communities lack “highly regarded” or targeted family engagement activities.
• Three common approaches to effective family engagement (not in mathematics alone) also emerged across the organizations we interviewed: (1) Taking an asset‐based, culturally appropriate approach; (2) Building trust and relationships with families; and (3) Including social activities into engagement efforts.
• Finally, interviewees told us that tending to language differences is also essential to family engagement, although they typically do not otherwise differentiate activities for various ethnic communities.

Interviewees also identified five opportunities they see today in California to advance family engagement strategically.

Community Profiles

To help grantees, educators, policymakers and colleague foundation leaders understand ways to create a strong start in math for early learners, the Heising‐Simons Foundation asked Education First to profile noteworthy early math efforts already underway and identify implications for change in other communities.

In seeking out communities to profile, Education First looked for those that place an explicit emphasis on high quality mathematics instruction for all children, including their youngest learners, and for evidence (even if tentative) that educators’ efforts to improve early mathematics were contributing to improved student learning.

The three communities we selected showcase different leverage points for leading change in early mathematics: a county office of education, a single school district and a collaboration or network of multiple organizations:

• Our profile on the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools in central California describes its efforts—in partnership with other local organizations—to help educators who work with children younger than 5 (both in country‐run preschools and in private/in‐home settings) become more effective teachers.
• Our profile on the Hawthorne School District in the Los Angeles metro area examines its intensive coaching and ongoing professional development practices aligned to Common Core math standards that are helping elementary school teachers improve math achievement.
• Our profile on the school district collaboration in Washington state’s south King County showcases how educators are working to more authentically engage nonwhite parents and families, especially newly arrived immigrants with their own cultural histories, as active partners in their children’s early learning in mathematics.

A standalone introduction to the profiles summarizes the early math focus in each of the three communities and identifies their implications for policymakers, education leaders and funders interested in successfully replicating these sorts of efforts in other communities.

¹ See DREME Network (2019, ) EdSource (2013), Fine Motor Skills and Early Comprehension of the World: Two New School Readiness Indicators (2010), and School Readiness and Later Achievement (2007).

² See Nations Report Card (2018); note, the National Center for Education Statistics administers the NAEP assessment in math every two years to a sample of 4th and 8th graders in every state and territory.

³ See California PTA website (2019), and National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement website (2019).