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September 8, 2023 is International Literacy Day. Founded to actively mobilize the international community and to promote literacy as an instrument to empower individuals, communities, and societies, it is now celebrated around the world. Learn more about the projects, people, research, and in-country technical assistance that are contributing to the effort.

How can research inform and improve literacy in the U.S. and around the world? In honor of International Literacy Day, Salinger, AIR's chief scientist for literacy research, answered this question and more.

Pooja Reddy Nakamura has experience overseeing a portfolio of projects on foundational learning in over 20 countries. She focuses on understanding how early literacy is acquired in complex, multilingual contexts. In this profile, Dr. Nakamura shares how governments are using evidence to improve national literacy, the benefits of multilingualism, and tactics that help sustain literacy programs.

International

AIR's FLIP is a multi-faceted foundational literacy and numeracy intervention, supporting teachers, communities, and governments and their partners to strengthen literacy outcomes in primary school learners in low- and middle-income countries. FLIP is being implemented at scale, in close collaboration with the governments of Benin and Lesotho. Pilots were implemented in Laos and Guatemala with Catholic Relief Services.

The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition (FFE) Program provides support to low-income, food-deficit countries around the globe to reduce hunger and improve literacy and primary education, especially for girls. Since 2013, AIR has conducted over 25 evaluations of these projects around the world. More recently, AIR along with its partners has brought research evidence to practice by implementing literacy activities for the McGovern Dole FFE programs in Benin and Lesotho.

Literacy is a fundamental skill that serves as the foundation for an individual's future learning and, collectively, for a country's social and economic development. The eight-year LRCP increased the impact, scale, and sustainability of early grade literacy interventions in the Latin America and the Caribbean region. The program developed state-of-the-art research, capacity strengthening resources and provided technical assistance to host country governments and other key stakeholders. To learn more about the project watch the video above.

Societal pressure to transition to English instruction in earlier and earlier grades in India is strong, especially given the well-documented link between English and upward socioeconomic mobility. This project aims to study the language-driven inequities in India's education system by examining whether-and to what extent-inequitable access to education in languages that primary grade children use impacts their academic performance.

India's Ministry of Education has set out to improve literacy and numeracy nationwide, with a focus on the foundational learning skills of all primary school students. UNICEF India commissioned AIR to assist in providing various levels of technical support on two key assessments, the National Achievement Survey and the Foundational Learning Study.

To support multilingual learning, substantial research is needed considering the complex cognitive, social, cultural, economic, and political factors that affect language-learning practices and policies. The Global Partnership for Education's Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX) has commissioned AIR to generate and mobilize research to support language of instruction policies and practices in Francophone Africa, specifically in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Cote D'Ivoire.

There is significant evidence that learning in a child's first language promotes consistent learning gains across a variety of programs and contexts, but little is understood about how education systems should add or transition to a second language. This study aims to fill this gap by generating evidence regarding factors that contribute to the success of language of instruction transitions for learners' second language literacy skills.

This systematic review examines the effectiveness and fidelity of implementation of various programs in the Latin America and the Caribbean region that aim to improve early grade literacy outcomes, including teacher training, school feeding, computer‐aided instruction, nutrition, and technology‐in‐education.

Although the educational and social context in Honduras presents challenges, the local community has invested considerable time and effort in successfully improving education quality for their children. The USAID-funded Teacher Citizen Participation Project -known as Proyecto EducAcción-aimed to improve child literacy rates through strengthened community participation in education, teacher professional development, and increased access to reading materials.

Despite a twofold increase in primary school enrollment in Mozambique over the past 15 years, educational outcomes remain largely inadequate. Vamos Ler! aims to ensure that Grades 1 to 3 students in Nampula and Zambézia provinces can achieve grade-level fluency and comprehension in local languages.

Millions of children across the world are unable to read a single word even after up to four years of schooling. This landscape report reviews and summarizes available empirical evidence on early grade literacy acquisition and instruction in developing countries.

Students entering primary school in developing countries often struggle when learning to read for various reasons: formal education systems lack resources, teachers are not well prepared, classes are overflowing, children enter school with very little exposure to print, and the language differs from the child's home language. In partnership with Catholic Relief Services, AIR is creating, implementing, and evaluating a Child Literacy Development program for Grade 1 and 2 children in Laos and for Grade 1 in Guatemala.

Read Write Inc. Phonics is a complete literacy program targeted at 4- to 6-year-olds learning to read and write, and 7- to 8-year-olds needing to catch up. Fresh Start is a 33-week catch-up literacy program delivered to target children in Years 5 - 8 identified as having fallen behind in reading and writing. Working with Queens University, Belfast, we are implementing a cluster of randomized controlled trials to determine the impact of the programs on various pertinent reading outcomes in the UK.

Many Egyptian students are missing out on foundational literacy skills in the early grades while older students are being passed along into the upper grades without having acquired such skills. In this video, AIR literacy specialist Rebecca Stone talks about how AIR developed a remedial reading and writing program and literacy teacher-training program to address the need in Egypt.

Many students throughout the developing world struggle with reading, and some 250 million children are still unable to read a single word after having been in school for up to four years. In this video, Pooja Reddy Nakamura explains the role that language and multilingualism plays in the global learning crisis.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are bringing about a paradigm shift in what it means to be a reader, and in how education systems must be restructured to support children's acquisition of comprehension and critical reading skills. AIR is providing the Ministry of Education in each country with a set of measurable, uniform goals that define what is expected of students, teachers, school directors, district and regional education officials, and teacher mentors. Read about one participating teacher's experiences in the field.

Many literacy interventions have emerged to help children around the world learn to read outside of school. Elizabeth Spier, an AIR principal researcher, talks about what evidence exists about how effective complementary outside school reading activities are at actually improving overall literacy outcomes.

When children have positive reading attitudes and behaviors, they generally also demonstrate strong reading skills. Drawing on data on 4th-grade students from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), this brief and infographic series explore whether parents' reading attitudes and behaviors are shared by their children.

Many students around the world grow up and go to school in multilingual environments, yet there isn't enough evidence about how to effectively promote reading acquisition in linguistically diverse contexts. The Facilitating Reading Acquisition in Multilingual Environments (FRAME) study addresses this gap by examining the predictors of biliteracy acquisition in South India. Read the final report and related commentary by Pooja Reddy Nakamura, Language in Learning and Literacy: Native Tongues First.

The purpose of this study on early grade reading and English language learning in primary education in Ethiopia was to explore current policies and practice and make evidence-based recommendations to improve early grade reading and English language learning in Ethiopia.

In the United States

Many schools hoping to infuse practices with research have encountered challenges, and Battle Creek Public Schools' experience implementing literary instruction grounded in research is no different. These challenges can serve as lessons for other education leaders, as AIR expert Kerstin Le Floch describes in this In the Field piece.

In this Q&A, AIR's Bitnara Jasmine Park, Abigail Foley, and Rebecca Bates discuss the findings of the 2018 NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Study, which were released this year. They offer their insights into how policymakers, education leaders, and teacher preparation and professional learning programs can use the findings to strengthen literacy instruction.

Literacy and numeracy are cornerstones of our modern society. Jaleh Soroui discusses the data behind the National Center for Education Statistics' PIAAC Skills Mapping tool, and how it can be used by state and county policymakers, administrators, educators, researchers, and others to draft policies, address gaps, set priorities, and allocate resources.

Cultivating Oral Language Literacy Talent in Students (COLLTS) is an early childhood program comprised of units that promote the development of pre-reading skills, oral language proficiency, and background and conceptual knowledge through the use of interactive reading with high-quality children's literature.

There is a pressing need for Spanish-language early intervention programs for students at risk of literacy failure. The Descubriendo la Lectura offers one-on-one lessons in Spanish for a period of 12‒20 weeks to first-grade Spanish-speaking English learners struggling with reading and writing. The program extends the successful Reading Recovery approach to ELs by first addressing literacy in their native language.

A National Center for Education Statistics Data Point shows that one in five adults in the United States have low English literacy skills, meaning that they would have difficulty understanding, evaluating, using, or engaging with written texts.

The go-to source for valid, reliable, and actionable data to inform adult education and training is the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). AIR researchers presented four studies at the third PIAAC Research-to-Practice Conference.

Recent research suggests that dual language education programs, a type of bilingual education program in which students are taught literacy and academic content in English and a partner language, provide more opportunities for English learners to reach higher levels of academic achievement. Read our blog post, Five Ways States Can Support Dual Language Programs, and watch our video, Making Research Relevant: Dual Language Programs Explained for more on this subject.

In 2013, 4.4 million U.S. public school students were classified as English language learners. These students come to school with the benefit of speaking a language other than English. The Center supports states, districts, and schools as they work with ELs to achieve English proficiency and meet content standards. Watch the webinar recording of English Learners and Close Reading: Providing Scaffolding for Writing.

The Native American and Alaska Native Children in School discretionary grants program aims to reduce the persistent achievement gap between Native American and Alaska Native youth and their peers in reading and English language arts and college readiness in reading. This qualitative study examined the types of activities grantees funded, and the perceived benefits, challenges, and lessons learned.

According to the Program for Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), the latest international survey of adult literacy, one in six Americans struggle with basic literacy. In this video, students share their struggles and triumphs, including those of a grandmother taking classes because she couldn't understand her young grandchildren's homework, an immigrant who is learning English to get ahead financially, and a laid-off worker convinced that a GED is crucial to getting a job.

This series of infographics illustrates the need for further literacy, numeracy and skills training among adults in America. PIAAC findings show adults in the U.S. lagged behind other countries in the industrialized world in each of the three skill areas. The infographics highlight findings for each state and the U.S. overall

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Literacy Around the World | American Institutes for Research

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Founded to actively mobilize the international community and to promote literacy as an instrument to empower individuals, communities, and societies, International Literacy Day is celebrated around the world. Learn more about the projects, people, research, and in-country technical assistance that are contributing to the effort.

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In this article Research literacy is discussed. Research literacy can assist a person with responding in constructive ways to misconnection. Being more comfortable with research can mean being better able to take part in the dialogue. Teachers can benefit from having research literacy and at least a little knowledge of research design. Learn more here.

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The benefits of social and emotional learning (SEL) are well-researched, with evidence demonstrating that an education that promotes SEL yields positive

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Free SEL Resources for Educators | Second Step

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Explore our free social-emotional learning materials and resources for teachers and school leaders.

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Henriette Offer-Boljahn, Dennis Christian Hövel, Thomas Hennemann

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About movemindfully Our Call and Commitment The complex demands of life today have created increased levels of pressure, overwhelm, and disconnection. As a result, youth and adults have an urgent… Read More »About

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Explore reading basics as well as the key role of background knowledge and motivation in becoming a lifelong reader and learner. Watch our PBS Launching Young Readers series and try our self-paced Reading 101 course to deepen your understanding.

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Pedagogy - Diversifying Your Teaching Methods, Learning Activities, and Assignments | Center for Educational Innovation

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Structured Teaching resource for students with ASD

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Structured Teaching resource for students with ASD

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What is TEACCH?

The TEACCH® Autism Program is a clinical, training, and research program based at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. TEACCH was developed by Dr. Eric Schopler and Dr. Robert Reichler in the 1960s. It was established as a statewide program in 1972 and has become a model for other programs around the world.

TEACCH uses a method called "Structured TEACCHing." This is based on the unique learning needs of people with ASD, including:

Strengths in visual information processing

Difficulties with social communication, attention and executive function

Structured TEACCHing provides strategies and tools for teachers to use in the classroom. These help students with autism to achieve educational and therapeutic goals.  The Structured TEACCHing approach focuses on:

External organizational supports to address challenges with attention and executive function

Visual and/or written information to supplement verbal communication

Structured support for social communication

This method supports meaningful engagement in activities. It also works to increase students' flexibility, independence, and self-efficacy.

Structured TEACCHing strategies can be used alongside other approaches and therapies.

What Does TEACCH Look Like?

TEACCH programs are usually applied in a classroom setting. TEACCH-based home programs are also available. Parents work with professionals as co-therapists for their children so that they can continue to use TEACCH techniques at home.

Structured TEACCHing uses organization and supports in the classroom environment to help students learn best. This includes:

1. Physical organization

2. Individualized schedules

3. Work (Activity) systems

4. Visual structure of materials in tasks and activities

Who Provides TEACCH Services?

TEACCH methods are used by a variety of autism professionals:

Special education teachers

Residential care providers

Psychologists

Social workers

Speech therapists

To become trained, professionals must go through a certification program offered by the TEACCH Autism Program in North Carolina. Trainings are offered both online and in-person on the TEACCH campus.

The program includes two certification levels, Practitioner and Advanced Consultant.

Visit the TEACCH website for more information on training and certification.

What is the evidence that TEACCH works?

A 2011 review of more than 150 autism-intervention studies found that the TEACCH program had the strongest evidence of educational benefits of any recognized program. These benefits included improved learning (cognition) and motor skills.

Other studies found benefits of using TEACCH strategies in residential and employment programs for adults with autism.

Is TEACCH covered by insurance?

TEACCH® clinical services are provided as part of the UNC Health Care system's UNC Faculty Physicians group. UNC TEACCH accepts the same insurance providers as UNC Health Care. For a complete list please follow the link provided https://www.uncmedicalcenter.org/uncmc/patients-visitors/billing/insurance-accepted/.

Where do I find a provider trained in TEACCH?

Search the Autism Speaks Directory to find TEACCH-trained professionals in your area.

Visit the TEACCH Autism Program website to locate TEACCH regional centers in North Carolina.

For More Information
TEACCH Autism Program website

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TEACCH® Autism Program is a clinical, training and research method from the University of North Carolina. Learn more about TEACCH® here.

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Unlocking Instruction Through Structured Teaching - IDRA

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• by Nilka Avilés, Ed.D. • IDRA Newsletter • August 2017 The understanding that changes in school organization and practices can ... read more

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Following an established REL Northeast & Islands research protocol, we conducted a search for recent research on how to close the academic achievement gap. We focused on identifying resources that specifically addressed research on how to close the math achievement gap. The sources searched included ERIC and other federally funded databases and organizations, academic research databases, and general Internet search engines (For details, please see the methods section at the end of this memo.)

We have not evaluated the quality of references and the resources provided in this response and we offer them only for your reference. Because our search for references is based on the most commonly used resources of research, it is not comprehensive and other relevant references and resources may exist.

Research References

Huang, X., Craig, S.D., Xie, J., Graesser.(2013) The Relationship between Gender, Ethnicity, and Technology on the Impact of Mathematics Achievement in an After-School Program Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED564107
From the abstract: "The gap among ethnicities and gender in mathematics achievement is a well-known problem. While the gap has been shrinking over the past three decades, it has not completely diminished (Jencks & Phillips, 1998; McGraw, Lubienski, & Strutchens, 2006). The ALEKS, Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces, tutoring system is one promising example of a technology that can target this problem. ALEKS is a Web-based intelligent tutoring system (ITS) that instructs students on the mathematical topics that they are most ready to learn, assesses students' current knowledge, and evaluates student performance on problems related to those topics. In order to better understand the role that technology can play in decreasing achievement gaps for gender and ethnicity, the authors examined the effect of interacting with ALEKS in a 6th grade students' math after-school program. In order to answer the question, Does ALEKS reduce the math achievement gap between two ethnicities (White and African American) compared to a teacher?, a randomized experiment was implemented in which students are either assigned to use ALEKS or are assigned to be taught structured lesson plans from a teacher. The experiment was conducted as an after-school program at five secondary schools in a school district in west Tennessee using a population of 102 students with excellent attendance (45 out of 50 days). This left the teacher condition with 22 males, 29 females; 11 white students and 40 African American students. The ALEKS condition had 28 males, 23 females; 11 white students and 40 African American students. The program was conducted for 25 weeks with 40 days of instruction and 10 days of review assessments. Results from the study suggest that the ITS (ALEKS) helps reduce the achievement gap between ethnicities. While more research is needed, it would appear that the ALEKS condition was able to offer equivalent help to students with different levels of performances, while the teachers' help tends to average performers."

Additional Organizations to Consult

Methods
Keywords and Search Strings
The following keywords and search strings were used to search the reference databases and other sources:

Math achievement gap

WWCs math achievement gap

Databases and Resources
We searched ERIC for relevant resources. ERIC is a free online library of over 1.6 million citations of education research sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences. Additionally, we searched Google Scholar and PsychInfo.
Reference Search and Selection Criteria
When we were searching and reviewing resources, we considered the following criteria:

Date of the publication: References and resources published for last 11 years, from 2008 to present, were included in the search and review.

Search Priorities of Reference Sources: Search priority is given to study reports, briefs, and other documents that are published and/or reviewed by IES and other federal or federally funded organizations, academic databases, including WWC, ERIC, and NCEE.

Methodology: The following methodological priorities/considerations were given in the review and selection of the references: (a) study types - randomized control trials, quasi experiments, surveys, descriptive data analyses, literature reviews, policy briefs, etc., generally in this order; (b) target population, samples (representativeness of the target population, sample size, volunteered or randomly selected, etc.), study duration, etc.; (c) limitations, generalizability of the findings and conclusions, etc.

This memorandum is one in a series of quick-turnaround responses to specific questions posed by educational stakeholders in the Northeast & Islands Region (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, US Virgin Islands, and Vermont), which is served by the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands at Education Development Center. This memorandum was prepared by REL Northeast & Islands under a contract with the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), Contract ED-IES-17-C-0008, administered by Education Development Center. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of IES or the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

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What does research say about how to close the math achievement gap?

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Following an established REL Northeast & Islands research protocol, we conducted a search for recent research on how to close the academic achievement gap. We focused on identifying resources that specifically addressed research on how to close the math achievement gap.

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Record numbers of U.S. students severely struggle with math, but only a fraction of them receive screening and support targeting potential math disabilities.

While math teachers in a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey this spring estimated that 40 percent of their students perform below grade level in math, only 15 percent of teachers said their students have been screened for dyscalculia, a learning disorder that affects a person's ability to understand number-based information and math.

That's why some researchers and educators are working to leverage what we know about the connections between dyscalculia and the much better-known dyslexia to identify new avenues to improve math learning for struggling students.

"We need to realize that children who have math difficulties will often also have difficulties in other domains," said Daniel Ansari, a professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at Western University in Ontario, where he heads the Numerical Cognition Laboratory. "There's lots of good reasons to think that that is probably more the norm, and that very specific profiles of children who will only struggle with math and nothing else, they're more the exception."

Dyscalculia, a severe, persistent learning disability in mathematics, affects about 5 percent to 8 percent of school-age children nationwide. That's roughly the same as those affected by dyslexia. Children with dyscalculia may have difficulties in a wide array of areas, including understanding the meaning of numerical symbols, such as number words and digits, and spatial processing, such as mentally rotating an object to match an example shape.

Dyscalculia and dyslexia often share underlying problems with attention, visual and working memory, and studies estimate a third to 75 percent of students with dyscalculia also have dyslexia, dysgraphia, or attention deficits.

While there are some potential genetic risk factors for dyscalculia, just as for dyslexia, strong classroom instruction and home support are the most important factors in mitigating both disabilities.

At first glance, reading and math disabilities may seem to have little overlap. "In reading, the skills do build upon each other more naturally than in math," said Margaret Howells, a math teacher at the independent Wheeling Country Day School in West Virginia who specializes in helping students with dyscalculia. "In math you've got so many different types of things like telling time and fractions and multiplication, where you have so many different processes that you have to master."

Yet there may be more overlap than first appears. Vanderbilt University research professor Lynn Fuchs and her colleagues are tracking indicators and interventions for math disabilities in early grades. They find that children's phonemic awareness and ability to verbally count Arabic numerals in kindergarten are strong predictors of their risks of both dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Interestingly, Fuchs said, the inability to count out loud predicts young children's risk of math disability regardless of how well they understand the concept of ordinality, or putting numbers into a sequence. Just as songs and rhymes are often used to teach the alphabet and early-phonics rules, experts say verbal counting songs (such as skip-counting songs) should be standard in early grades.

And Sarah Powell, an associate professor in special education at the University of Texas at Austin, found math interventions intended to improve calculations were more effective when they also focused on language comprehension, attention, and working memory.

"We want to move children to retrieval, to the extent possible, but we're not just trying to get them to memorize math facts-that's not a good intervention. In a good intervention, we're dealing with number sense, number knowledge, broadly defined number lines, counting strategies, decomposition [breaking a whole number into smaller numbers], all of it," Fuchs said.

"By trying to capitalize on what we know about shared forms of cognitive processing for dyslexia and dyscalculia, we can improve outcomes in an efficient way," Fuchs said, "which is important ... because in schools, when you have difficulty across reading and math and really require intervention in both areas, you're a lot more likely to get reading intervention than math intervention. Reading will take priority almost everywhere."

Leveraging dyslexia supports for math

Howells came to her own approach to teaching students with dyscalculia through a reading intervention. A decade ago, Wheeling Country Day School developed a multisensory center to support students with dyslexia using a common intervention called the Orton-Gillingham approach, which uses visual, auditory, and tactile activities to help students better organize and process language.

Howells, a math teacher, had been using the approach for a few years when she began to adapt the model to help her students with similar behavior and attention problems in math.

One of the first dyscalculic students Howells worked with, "struggled greatly in subtraction with regrouping; we used blocks and blocks and blocks for a long time to help him understand that, but since he was in fourth grade, we were also working on understanding fractions ... so we were kind of hitting it at both ends," she said. "A structured literacy lesson does a lot of natural interweaving of previous activities or previous concepts that you've worked on, and it brings them back around in a patterned way so that students get that exposure and more practice."

Now, the school is piloting a dyscalculia-adapted version of the dyslexia intervention, both through in-person sessions with students with math disabilities in Martinsburg, West Va., and in online sessions with students in Pittsburgh, Pa. and Waterville, Ohio.

Students may start a session with counting chants-by twos and tens, forward and backward, for example-before practicing mental math problems and pattern recognition or using manipulatives like base-10 blocks or a Dutch rekenrek, which is similar to an abacus.

"We used to think that maybe children with developmental dyscalculia were just born with a deficit in their ability to process quantity. I think that hypothesis has been quite resoundingly rejected at this point," Ansari said. "I think [that's] a very positive message, because we can also now assume that a lot of developmental dyscalculia has to do with how children are taught math and how they are given opportunities to learn about numerical symbols very early on."

Teachers need greater guidance

Integrating interventions for dyscalculia and dyslexia may also help ease in teachers who have not had as much experience delivering math interventions.

In the EdWeek Research Center survey, nearly 75 percent of teachers said they had received little to no preservice or in-service training on how to support students with math-related disabilities, and 40 percent said they have no math coach or interventionist at their school.

K-8 math coaches Elly Blanco-Rowe and Jen Gleason of Teaching Matters, a nonprofit professional-development organization in New York City, said most of the math teachers they work with had not previously been trained to provide systemic, evidence-based interventions for struggling math students.

"For example, there's a strategy called the five practices, which is a more inquiry-oriented approach," Gleason said. "It emphasizes the discourse that is really important for students to learn from each other: to be able to justify their solutions, compare solutions, agree and disagree. ... It is an important way to build conceptual understanding in the mathematics classroom that looks very different [from traditional teacher preparation]."

The dire headlines about students' math performance in recent years may have a silver lining, as millions of dollars in federal and foundation money have been dedicated to developing more math interventions and professional development for teachers. Powell, for example, is training math educators to provide more explicit approaches to word problems to students with dyscalculia as well as English learners.

Nurturing parent advocacy in dyscalculia

There's still a long way to go before math learning disabilities get the same attention as those in literacy, experts caution.

"I think the problem with dyscalculia is that it is still very much something that people don't talk as much about. With dyslexia, it's not just the research that's further along; it's also the advocacy for struggling readers. There's not the same sort of advocacy for struggling math learners," Western University's Ansari said.

For example, while nearly all states have laws defining dyslexia, fewer, such as New York, Texas, and West Virginia, explicitly mention dyscalculia.

Laura Overdeck's Be Part of the Equation initiative, launched earlier this school year, hearkens back to an old-school anti-drug campaign to impress on parents the need to educate themselves about math disability issues and "talk to their kids about math."

The program provides math conversation starters and homework help sheets for parents. Overdeck, the founder of the nonprofit Bedtime Math, recommends schools educate parents about dyscalculia and encourage families to develop habits around math puzzles and games-in the same way schools often do with family read-a-thons.

"If we're going to catch up on our math gap in this country, we can't dump it all on teachers; we need more adults on deck, and the parent is the person closest to that child," said Overdeck. "But parents are not confident with math. They're nervous about their 3rd grader's homework. We need to at least have parents able to do elementary math alongside their kids."

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Dyscalculia and Dyslexia: Reading Disabilities Offer Insights for Math Support

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Many students with math disabilities also have dyslexia. New research into the overlap reveals clues that could shape better math interventions.