You don’t have to be a math whiz to help readers understand the subject’s vital importance to student success.
By Colin Hogan, New Bedford Light
After “Sold a Story” and some of the journalism about reading instruction that followed, the publishing market upended. School districts rewrote their policies, and some states even re-wrote their laws.
Math has yet to have its “Sold a Story” moment, but the subject is ripe for it. Between a third and half of teachers — yes, the teachers themselves — who responded to an EdWeek survey said they had one semester or less learning the math concepts they now impart to the next generation. Among the most common responses was that teachers didn’t even remember if they had learned those topics.
If anything is most under-covered, math might just be it.
If anything is most under-covered, math might just be it.
The task of reporting a wide range of math stories that grab readers and affect change can be daunting. Journalists’ tendency toward math phobia has skewed their coverage toward the decisions of school boards and administrators, rather than focusing on the classrooms and content driving those public debates. As a result, math journalism tends to confuse educational issues with policy issues.
To help readers understand the problems facing students, parents, and teachers, focus on the content that most troubles students (hint: it’s fractions), interrogate how teachers and curriculums attempt to address those troubles, and depict students as they learn — both in their struggles and triumphs.
Before I became an education journalist at the New Bedford Light, I worked as a high school math teacher in Mississippi and New York City, teaching everything from Algebra I to AP Calculus. I became a reporter to help people understand what’s happening in the classroom, but math coverage too often fails to help readers understand why policy interventions are necessary or how they might work.
Math coverage too often fails to help readers understand why policy interventions are necessary or how they might work.
Understand the root issue: fractions
Journalism’s failure to identify the root causes of mathematics difficulty means that districts and states are failing to meaningfully solve their problems, especially related to “tracking” and algebra.
The biggest story in K-12 math education over the past few years has been “tracking,” or placing students into a planned progression of math courses. The debate has narrowed in on students’ access to Algebra I — the fork where students’ trajectories usually diverge, either toward or away from higher-level classes that can open doors to college and career.
But algebra itself isn’t the cause of the swirling debate around algebra classes. Research suggests that the important kernel of math knowledge happens earlier. Fractions, it turns out, are the basis for why algebra classes are often thought to underlie math success, and understanding fractions as early as fifth grade is the most predictive metric for math success in future years.
Robert Siegler, a psychologist and leading researcher of the predictive power of fractions, explains that Americans struggle with fractions for two reasons, which he categorizes as “inherent” and “culturally contingent.”
The inherent difficulty of fractions is straightforward: they are a relationship of two numbers and have different steps for adding/subtracting and multiplying/dividing. That’s weird!
The cultural difficulty is weird, too, but perfect for language-loving journos. In Mandarin and Korean, a fraction such as “3/4” is expressed as “out of four, three.” This is clearer than English’s “three fourths” and can affect teachers’ ability to explain fractions clearly. The increased difficulty may have further ramifications, as Siegler claims that American textbooks feature fewer problems with fractional division than Chinese and Korean textbooks do.
In short, an idiosyncrasy of language could mean that teachers and curriculum are ever-so-slightly curating American education for their own ease, rather than for the needs of students.
Some journalists might prefer to forget their fifth-grade fractions, but they could be the key. Without them, students won’t have much luck understanding slope, an essential concept in algebra. And without a solid foundation in algebra, they won’t have the grammar to understand more complex ideas in calculus and beyond.
And while such root causes of math difficulty remain under-covered, policy responses will remain ineffective or counterproductive. So tracking continues to deny many students of color the opportunity to take rigorous coursework. More often, those rigorous classes simply aren’t offered in majority minority schools.
Watch what teachers do, especially with manipulatives
Because editors and readers might not have the patience for math lingo, journalists need to write with personal details and tangible stakes.
Mandy McLaren and Naomi Martin, who wrote the Boston Globe’s “Lost in a world of words” series, produced high-impact journalism by showing exactly how kids learned specific reading concepts. The series’ opening scene illustrates a key concept of the piece: “Rosalinda begrudgingly reads aloud at the kitchen table, skipping words she doesn’t know. When [her mom] pauses to help, Rosalinda slams her book shut.”
McLaren and Martin use the scene to describe a child’s frustrating experience with “balanced literacy,” a largely outdated approach to reading instruction. Later, they quote directly from classroom texts to demonstrate the difference between competing pedagogical approaches.
As a result, readers of the Globe — parents and policymakers alike — understood what students were seeing on the pages of their books. They got to interact with the same terms and concepts that curriculum designers and educators use to discuss their classrooms.
These stories unveiled the meaning behind the phrase “the science of reading,” rather than relying on it to draw attention.
To cover math well, journalists need to enter the classroom — or wherever learning takes place. Simple observation can elevate stories with characters and scenes. But engaging with the ways those classrooms operate — what teachers and students are thinking and doing — is the real point. Without understanding the importance of the content and its consequences, parents and policymakers do not have the same opportunity to push for effective, informed changes — nor any reason to do so.
In math, something that reporters can look for in every classroom from kindergarten through calculus is how teachers help students represent abstract thoughts.
As soon as students learn the concept of a number, they are building a bridge between what they observe in the world and its representation. Five apples on a table are different from the concept of a number five. That’s a leap of abstraction humans didn’t achieve for millennia, but which every student must master before turning six.
Math “manipulatives” are how teachers in every grade make math more interesting and help students grasp abstract concepts — from adding to integrals. “Manipulative” is a broad term, but it just means anything that helps physically represent math operations — and manipulatives are proven to be effective.
For young ages, manipulatives might be blocks, cubes, or beads. Older students might toss a ball to represent a graph’s arc or demonstrate exponential properties with physical squares and cubes.
When journalists enter the classroom, they don’t need to be an expert in algebraic processes or long division. But they can interrogate how teachers — and the materials they employ — communicate to students. Just as letters represent bits of language, numbers are little more than a representation of quantities.
Even without having nailed their own high school tests, journalists have the skills to observe how teachers communicate to students and help them conceptualize ideas.
Journalists have the skills to observe how teachers communicate to students and help them conceptualize ideas.
Math education is primed for groundbreaking, jaw-dropping, “what is going on here” journalism. Readers want to know why post-pandemic math scores saw historic declines that outpaced reading when the U.S.’ international standing in math already lags behind reading.
Education reporters can follow these simple tips for how to better cover math:
- Explain concepts and classroom practices to your readers — they won’t understand policy interventions without this.
- Understand what the research says — math isn’t a black box or boogeyman, and there are best practices for teaching and learning.
- Enter the classroom — not just for scenes, but to observe what teachers and students are thinking and doing.
- Math, and teaching math, are just forms of communication — dig into how we give information to students.
Journalists can beat their reputation for avoiding math — especially as they’re covering math class. Use resources from Poynter on why math matters for journalists and from The Open Notebook on how journalists can overcome math anxiety.
And good math journalism already exists. Laura Meckler of the Washington Post wrote about tracking in a suburban Ohio middle school. She found a chair in the back of a classroom and described the “the type of high-ceiling, low-floor exercises that are critical to mixing kids in a class.” She let readers see the specific types of math problems that allowed mixed-ability students to co-exist. She answered the questions that parents actually had: “We get the why. We want to understand the how,” a PTA co-president told Meckler.
To help these parents and students achieve better outcomes, access more education, and unlock new career pathways, journalists must engage with the content at the center of the policy and anxiety.
Let’s get started.
Colin Hogan is the education reporter for the New Bedford Light, a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom in Massachusetts. Before journalism, Colin taught multiple levels of high school math at North Panola High School in Sardis, Mississippi, and at East Brooklyn High School in the East New York neighborhood of NYC. Reach him at chogan@newbedfordlight.org or on X: @by_ColinHogan.
Previously from The Grade
Classroom access: Getting it & making the most of it
Efforts to revamp gifted & talented education deserve better coverage
What to do when schools deny access? Don’t give up.
Covering gifted education through an equity lens
How to report from inside a school — even when they won’t give you access
