3-202 - Improving Early Math Skills and Later Development: Do We Actually Achieve What We Hope?

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Greater success in mathematics is related to college completion, higher earnings, and better health decisions (Reyna, Nelson, Han, & Dieckmann, 2009; Ritchie & Bates, 2013). General math knowledge before school entry predicts mathematics and reading outcomes across primary and secondary school (Duncan et al., 2007; Jordan, Kaplan, Ramineni, & Locuniak, 2009; Watts, Duncan, Siegler, & Davis-Kean, 2014). Children from low-income families enter school with weaker mathematics knowledge than children from more advantaged backgrounds, helping to explain their weak math knowledge later in elementary school (Jordan et al., 2009).

Almost all of the studies on which these conclusions have been based are correlational. There are alternative explanations for the relationship between early math skills and later achievement, only one of which suggests that experimentally improving children’s early math skills would also improve their later outcomes.

This symposium will present three papers exploring this important topic, all of which involve children from low-income families in either a short term or much longer longitudinal investigation of their math skills. All of the papers involve children who have been involved in different projects exploring the effects of an early math curriculum. In the first paper, classroom practices linked to stronger math outcomes are investigated in the context of an experimental curriculum study. The second paper explores the effects of improving early math skills in a low-income sample attending high poverty schools through 7th grade. The final paper is an exploration of the problem of using correlational analyses to determine causal effects.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chair

• Dale Clark Farran, Vanderbilt University

Discussant

• Bethany Rittle-Johnson, Vanderbilt University

Individual Presentations

• Preschool classroom math environments and their relationship to children’s gains in math - Shira Mattera, MDRC; Presenting Author: Michelle Maier, MDRC; Pamela Morris, NYU

• Mathematics Development from Pre-K Through 7th Grade in Urban, High Poverty Students - Presenting Author: Dale Clark Farran, Vanderbilt University; Kelley Durkin, Peabody Research Institute; Jessica Ziegler, Vanderbilt University

• Risky Business: Correlation and Causation in Longitudinal Studies of Skill Development - Presenting Author: Drew Bailey, UC Irvine; Greg J. Duncan, University of California - Irvine; Tyler Watts, University of California, Irvine; Douglas H Clements, University of Denver; Julie Sarama, University of Denver