The movement to help students understand rather than memorize has had far-reaching effects, including a backlash against teaching methods such as timed tests.
U.S. students’ reading and math performance still hasn’t rebounded
Progress in reading and math remains elusive for American students, and the gap continues to widen, according to national reports.
Latrenda Knighten has always loved mathematics.
As a child, she remembers breathlessly inheriting timed tests, fast, low-stakes tasks that required students to complete a few simple problems in a short amount of time. Knighten couldn’t understand why the training, also known as Crazy Hours, caused “extreme anxiety” among her siblings and some of her students.
So when she became a teacher herself, Knighten gave her students timed tests multiple times a week. The answer shocked her.
“Students were getting sick. They were crying because they couldn’t do it that quickly. … It was part of the curriculum, but we stopped using it because we weren’t seeing any productive results because of the impact it was having on the students,” Knighten said.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, of which Mr. Knighten is currently president, will eventually issue a statement saying that timed tests do not measure fluency, can have a negative impact on students, and should be avoided.
Opposition to timed tests was also briefly included in a controversial set of guidelines on best practices for teaching children basic math skills that the New York State Department of Education issued in May.
All of this is part of a larger “math war” that has been raging for decades as some educators battle old teaching methods that they say promote memorization over actual understanding. New York state guidelines say the goal is for students to understand basic math concepts and think critically about how to apply them to other situations, rather than simply memorizing or regurgitating facts.
However, this instruction has drawn harsh criticism from those who argue that explicit instruction and repeated practice have been proven to be the best way for children to retain the information they need to grow.
According to Education Week, educators, education officials and politicians at both the state and local level are fighting over which educational philosophy is most effective, rekindling a debate that raged during the 1989 “Math Wars” conflict over whether math education prioritizes conceptual understanding or foundational skill acquisition.
“I think what people fall into when it comes to learning and education is much the same way they do with politics: they get stuck in unproductive, unhelpful camps, so wrapped up in their own identities that they can hardly talk to people who might think differently than they do,” said Nicole McNeil, a psychology professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies mathematical cognition.
How New York City tried to improve children’s math skills
New York state education officials contacted Deborah Loewenberg Ball, a professor at the University of Michigan and director of Teaching Works, to compile her research on best practices for teaching numeracy, the math equivalent of literacy, into an easy-to-understand guide for use by policymakers, school districts, and teachers.
Early math education focuses on developing “fluency” and “automaticity” using basic facts, such as knowing the answer to 5 times 6, Ball said. However, memorizing facts is not the end goal.
“The main goal that we really need is a culture where adults don’t say, ‘I’m not good at math,’ and when they’re given some kind of math problem, they can reason correctly,” Ball said.
Ball’s brief, published in May, argues that traditional methods such as timed tests and graded or “explicit” instruction are not necessarily the best teaching methods to achieve this. Inquiry-based approaches, in which students learn in part by making inferences about how they approach mathematical problems, can “enhance mathematical problem solving and reasoning,” the guidance claims.
But more than 165 teachers, parents, school psychologists, special educators, administrators and advocates signed a petition in October calling for Ball’s guidance to be revoked. Benjamin Solomon, an associate professor in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at the University at Albany, said in an accompanying letter to the state education commissioner that the brief is “seriously flawed.”
Mr. Solomon said explicit instruction, often referred to as the “I do, we do, you do” approach, should be “the primary form of instruction for all children.” He said timed tests do not cause math anxiety and are the only way to measure math fact fluency.
Solomon said the booklet is “sowing a lot of confusion” among New York educators, and while it doesn’t force teachers to make changes, he worries that if it’s widely implemented, student test performance could stagnate.
“I hope I’m wrong,” he said.
But the New York State Department of Education seemed undeterred by the backlash.
“While NYSED recognizes the passion and dedication of those who signed the petition and shares their dedication to improving math outcomes for all students, we will not be swayed by misinformation or initiatives that undermine our efforts to advance educational equity and excellence,” wrote Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs JP O’Hare in response to Mr. Solomon’s petition.
Discussing the latest battle in the ‘math wars’ in New York
Solomon said the New York debate reflects a broader battle, also known as the “math wars,” that has been going on for decades.
The conflict has recently spawned strong camps like the “Science of Mathematics” movement, which has criticized some of the teaching practices recommended by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and competing curricula such as “Illustrated Mathematics,” an inquiry-based approach used in New York City and school districts in all 50 states.
Despite opposition from educators, state test scores for New York City public school students actually rose in the 2024-2025 school year after Mayor Eric Adams overhauled the city’s math curriculum.
The backlash against math education has been intense at times, with one company filing a defamation lawsuit against a North Carolina parent who had publicly criticized the curriculum.
Some experts say the best way to teach children is probably somewhere in the middle.
“This is not a black-and-white situation,” said Gregory Cizek, professor emeritus of educational measurement and evaluation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “My view is that there’s no right or wrong here, but both groups really want what’s best for children and math learning, and I think both parties have something to offer.”
