As American students continue to flounder in math, Bellwether, a national nonprofit that seeks to improve opportunities and outcomes for marginalized kids, said schools seeking a turnaround must first establish a clear, shared vision of effective math instruction.

“How We Solve America’s Math Crisis: A Systemwide Approach to Evidence-Based Math Learning,” Bellwether’s done in partnership with K12 Coalition, talks about building a teacher and student “math identity” and balancing “conceptual understanding and procedural fluency while creating meaningful opportunities for real-world application.” 

The plan must also ensure that learning progresses “logically and cumulatively” to deepen students’ knowledge as they move through the perennially difficult subject over time. 

“These steps may seem familiar, and that’s because they are widely accepted best practices for developing and sustaining strong instructional design,” the report reads. “However, to be effective, they must be consistently applied over time and throughout the system.”

And that’s where schools have fallen short, Bellwether’s researchers note, despite evidence supporting the approach. 

“Data demonstrate that when high-quality materials, intentional instructional practices, and strong teacher support are combined, students’ math proficiency can improve significantly — even in schools starting with very low baseline scores.”

Anson Jackson, senior partner at Bellwether, sat down with The 74’s Jo Napolitano to describe what schools need to do to get on track. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

What is effective math instruction? 

There’s a couple of layers to that. At the baseline, it is leaders, teachers and essential office personnel all understanding what good math instruction looks like. And they are not just focused on outcomes, but on the practices they want to see in math classrooms, the mindsets in math classrooms. There’s a shared understanding of what they believe math instruction looks like. That then determines how they build their professional development, how they build their training and how they build their assessments. It’s almost like a philosophy on math instruction. Without that philosophy, it’s like whack-a-mole. 

After they reach this consensus, what then? 

You then align on what those systems and structures look like to support that vision for mathematics. If you are focused on hands-on activities, then you want to have systems to train staff on how to develop strong activities to facilitate hands-on learning. If you believe kids need to show the work and do the math, you need to build in systems that allow kids to show the work and do the math on a regular basis. So that’s the idea: build a philosophy, build a vision, and then build a structure to support that vision throughout the district.

What if you don’t implement a shared vision? 

When you don’t have that, success is random. Teacher development is random. You’re always changing what is in front of kids or in front of teachers. When there’s no real shared vision, then the next leader who comes in changes the vision. And, without that shared vision, when you go from grade to grade, students don’t have the coherence of learning, which they need for success in math.

How can schools identify — and adopt — high-quality instructional materials, especially when time and money are tight? 

The first thing they need to do is understand the science behind mathematics and math learning. High-quality materials are backed by science and evidence of learning. Secondly, there must be coherence across grade levels — and in grade levels. The curriculum must be aligned. But before I get to the curriculum, I want to understand the key things that we know by science and evidence happen for kids to learn math at a high, high level. That could involve professional development, training, school visits, observations, doing some light research and analysis of what math looks like and coming to these conclusions as a collective — from the superintendent to chief academic officers, principals and teachers.

From there, I would then have them do a gap analysis of what they know works. They should ask, “What in our curriculum is missing or lacking from what we know should be there?” From that gap analysis, hopefully they’ll determine, “Oh, guess what? Light bulb moment: We are missing the mark on the curriculum or the materials.”

After that, they go through an adoption process where they take a look at what’s out there, and make some choices. But it needs to be a shared learning experience and not just that a team is told to adopt something because experts said it’s good. They should really understand why it’s good and what in the curriculum makes it high quality.

Is there a shortcut for cash-strapped schools with little time to do this? 

The short answer is yes: There’s lots of resources out there, including lists of high-quality instructional materials that are already vetted and backed by science. You can also use Google or ChatGPT to find them. However, this is where implementation can fail, without a deep understanding of the curriculum and why it works. A lot of folks, when things get hard, they put it away, right? 

So, I would say, yes, expert A can tell you the best resource for mathematics teaching and give you a set of resources. And that’s great. But unless they understand the true reasoning behind it and how it connects to learning, teacher practice, and systems, a lot of times it becomes another resource that’s on the shelf in two years.

How do you get teachers to support your approach? 

It’s about trying to get them engaged early on in the process, not telling them what to do, but having them learn what to do. I would not try to beat them down, but have them understand what’s working already and what’s missing. 

The second piece is that I would want to use a coaching model, side-by-side training and support for teachers — and not use it in a negative way. A lot of times we’ll shift to, “You’re not doing this, you’re a bad teacher,” when it’s actually more about a learning continuum, as in, “We’re going to focus on this in year one, year two and year three.”

What’s at stake if we don’t improve kids’ math scores?

The data shows a lot of the careers that are high paying usually have math as a core foundation. And the other piece is we know there’s an equity gap in this country when it comes to those who do math well and those who don’t — which leads to career choices, right? We want to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Disclosure: Andrew Rotherham is a co-founder and senior partner at Bellwether who sits on The 74’s board of directors. He played no role in the reporting or editing of this article.

Georgia is one of them, something Valencia Stovall, a former state legislator, tried to change in 2020. 

She sponsored a bill that would have allowed a parent to use an address outside their attendance zone as long as the person living there gave permission. The legislation also would have exempted such parents from fraud or forgery charges.

“No parent wants to drive an hour and a half in traffic to get their child in another school,” said Stovall, a Democrat who supports school choice. “They are thinking about the future of their children, and they know education is the key.”

The bill didn’t pass, and to date, only Connecticut has decriminalized what the report — published Tuesday by nonprofits Available to All and Bellwether — calls “address sharing.” 

In a post-pandemic era where more parents are shopping around for schools that better suit their children’s needs, the authors hope other states follow Connecticut’s lead. According to co-author Tim DeRoche, who has previously written about exclusionary , the issue falls under the radar because it’s more common for districts to “quietly kick the kids out of schools, using the threat of prosecution.”  

When districts do involve law enforcement, criminal charges and stiff fines often land on the backs of Black, Hispanic and low-income families, he said. The report points to a in Philadelphia where across 20 districts, families questioned about their residency or disenrolled from schools were disproportionately nonwhite.

“The enforcement is highly selective,” he said. If a school isn’t overcrowded, officials might not report a good student who fits in and doesn’t get in trouble, DeRoche said. “There is a lot of winking and nodding that goes along with this.”

The authors urge states to repeal laws that target address sharing and refrain from using general statutes, like those against theft or perjury, to charge parents who lie about their residence. They also support open enrollment laws that allow families to choose a school in any district, regardless of where they live.

“When Good Parents Go to Jail” follows a 2021 Bellwether report that shows how district boundaries separate families by race and class, with low-income and minority parents often unable to attend a better school in a nearby district even when the district is within walking distance of their home.

Data for sale

As long as attendance is tied to a student’s residence, DeRoche said, districts will be on the lookout for families trying to skirt the law.

“In some ways, districts have to enforce it because these coveted public schools are largely full,” he said.

Those highly desirable schools and districts use a range of investigative tactics to identify offenders, the report shows. 

In released with the report, private investigators say they sometimes use video with night vision software to capture students’ faces on dark winter mornings. Districts also use tip lines and offer rewards to encourage those with knowledge of address sharing to make a report.

, a business that works with over 150 districts in multiple states, purchases U.S. Postal Service records and other databases to track down where students actually sleep at night, said Mike Auletta, a New Jersey-based private investigator who runs the company.

“It’s very difficult these days for a person in the wild to completely conceal where they live,” he said. “You’d be surprised how much of your data is for sale.”

With two young children and a wife who teaches special education at a public school, Auletta said he understands both sides of the issue. But districts are trying to protect their bottom line. Address sharing “strains budgets,” he said. “Now we don’t have enough teachers. Now we have 40 kids in a classroom.”

During the pandemic, which upended students’ living arrangements and caused educators to worry that some had stopped attending school anywhere, districts lightened up on enforcement. But now, more are conducting residency audits because “they’re done putting out fires,” he said.

‘Safe and educated’

Some officials just want to grasp the extent of the problem, while others, especially those with top-ranked sports teams or highly regarded special education programs, enforce the rules more aggressively.

Residency fraud can impact more than just the student in question. A had to forfeit football titles for the 2013 and 2014 seasons because a player’s family provided false residency documents.

In one of the most well-known examples of “boundary hopping,” Akron, Ohio, mother was convicted of two felonies for falsifying records in 2011 after she used her father’s address to enroll her two daughters in the suburban Copley-Fairlawn district.

She spent nine days in jail, but former Gov. John Kasich later to misdemeanors.

“If I had had my way, I would have never gotten into trouble,” said Williams-Bolar, now a parent liaison for Available to All. “It’s very scary for an average parent that just wants their child safe and educated.”

was split. Supporters argued she and her children were victims of an inequitable system, while critics said her punishment was justified. Similar debates over the ethics of address sharing show up on community and sites . 

 A Philadelphia man recently defended his actions in a commentary about school choice. “What the hell — the statute of limitations must be up: I lied, so my son could go to top-rated McCall Elementary School in Society Hill,” . “And I make no apologies for it. We didn’t have financial capital at the time, but we had social capital.” 

Parents confronted with such decisions sometimes contact Williams-Bolar to share their stories, but she understands why most are reluctant to speak publicly. 

“Many parents are worried that they will be the next Kelley Williams-Bolar,” she said. “No one wants a mug shot.”

A push for open enrollment

Some states use civil penalties, such as fines or community service, to discourage address sharing. But back tuition for an out-of-district student can run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the report. The District of Columbia attorney general, for example, multiple parents who live outside the city for lying about their residency. One family owed over $700,000.

In addition to decriminalizing address sharing, Available to All wants states to expand open enrollment policies that allow students to attend school outside their district or zone, like and did this year. 

Most states have some provision related to open enrollment on the books, but barriers like tuition still keep families from taking advantage of the opportunity, DeRoche said. have laws that make the process easier, like offering transportation, according to the libertarian Reason Foundation.

The debate over open enrollment played out in Missouri this year, with education leaders, especially in rural areas, that would allow districts to opt in. They argued their schools would lose enrollment and the funding that goes with it. And they said it’s difficult to compete for students when they can’t raise as much in property taxes as wealthier districts. The in the Senate, but is likely to return next year.

The idea can be just as controversial in dense urban areas where well-off families pay steep home prices to buy into neighborhoods with the most sought-after schools, DeRoche said. 

“These are families with [Black Lives Matter] , but they go apoplectic if you suggest that maybe this school shouldn’t be closed to families outside the zone,” he said. “[That] leads to the distorted home prices, which exacerbates the problem that only wealthy folks can attend the best public schools.”

Disclosure: Stand Together provides funding to Available to All, Bellwether and The 74. Andy Rotherham co-founded Bellwether and sits on The 74’s board of directors.

For example, 39 million Americans have a traditional degree program, leaving them little chance to recoup their investment. Only half of students who began a four-year degree in 2012 at the same school. Despite progress in recent decades, large disparities in completion rates remain based on and .

Even those who earn a degree may not get the value they’re expecting. found that 25% of bachelor’s degree programs took more than 10 years to pay back their net cost to students — and even worse, 10% never broke even. Because few schools make this information easily available, most students do not know their odds when choosing where to enroll.

The financial consequences of betting wrong can be devastating. Americans hold a combined $1.76 trillion in college debt. An estimated $280 billion belongs to individuals who didn’t finish the postsecondary pathway they started, whether it was a traditional degree or one of the growing number of non-degree options. within five years of dropping out — and neither did 33% of students who did complete their program. That debt burden disproportionately affects and students.

This is not to say that traditional higher education lacks value. But that value isn’t distributed consistently, equitably or transparently — a fundamental problem that gets lost amid the intense focus on cost and debt. The postsecondary system must do a better job of equipping people to make informed choices that fit their life goals and circumstances.

That power of choice is the foundation of , our newest Beta by Bellwether initiative. We are working with a diverse group of stakeholders to explore how three enablers of choice — information, navigation and options — can be levers for transforming education beyond K-12.

Information: Anyone pursuing education after high school needs clear, timely, accessible, customizable, comparable and credible information that helps answer the questions “What do I want to be?” and “Which path will best help me succeed in that pursuit?” We have identified 10 specific elements of information that people need to exercise their power of choice. These include tools and opportunities that help them understand their strengths and interests, learn about a broad range of professional possibilities and understand the requirements and advancement opportunities in specific professions. It also includes details about programs that could prepare them for their chosen pursuit: admission requirements, true cost, completion rates and the likelihood of seeing the expected return. 

Much of this information already exists, but it’s rarely brought together in a timely, easy-to-use form. This lack of transparency is a choice made by postsecondary institutions — the problem isn’t data science so much as political science. Leaders need to summon the political will to ensure the public can access relevant information to drive choice, performance and accountability.

Navigation: Many individuals find simply having information is not sufficient for choosing a degree or credential program. Navigating such a complex system requires a network of social capital that people with privilege commonly have and those from systemically marginalized communities often lack: trusted, informed and unbiased advisers to support them in making choices. The messenger can be as important as the message; without the right messenger, critical information might never be delivered or misunderstood.

This navigation support can come from parents and family, peers, teachers, dedicated advisers, community leaders and people in prominent and influential roles in society. It can even come from examples shared by strangers who inspire and inform. Technology can play an important part in extending the reach of these navigators — and a growing number of platforms already provide support directly to students and equip navigators with the information they need.

Options: Meaningful choice also requires versatile, inclusive, high-quality pathway options. People need opportunities to advance professionally and personally throughout their lives — not just right after high school — as their interests, goals and circumstances evolve. The number and variety of postsecondary options is already growing rapidly: , with a net growth of 109,000 that year alone. Only 234,000 of these were traditional degree programs, with the remaining 843,000 representing options such as credentials, certificates, badges, assessments, apprenticeships, licenses and work portfolios.

Some of these newer options are tailored for specific populations, such as people already in the workforce who haven’t yet earned a degree or credential. Some focus on specific approaches, such as on-the-job training. Many offer an increasingly necessary way for people to advance or change their career as technology and the labor market shift the nature of their work. However, this proliferation of new options heightens the importance of helping individuals find the ones that provide real value: 42% of nondegree programs in Third Way’s analysis didn’t increase participants’ earnings enough for them to recoup the net cost.

These three enablers of choice, working well and working together, cannot address every challenge the postsecondary system faces today. But they represent a dramatic improvement. By prioritizing them, leaders and policymakers can help ensure that more Americans can pursue education beyond K-12 knowing it’s a wise choice rather than the current game of chance.

Disclosure: Andy Rotherham co-founded Bellwether Education Partners. He sits on The 74’s board of directors.