Recent studies show that early math skills are one of the best predictors for later success. Students who enter school with strong fundamental math skills show greater scholastic achievement in 5th and 8th grade, high school and the labor market. Here are a few excerpt of Prof. Greg Duncan (Northwestern University) talking about his findings:
“Math coming into school is important because kids who do well in math early on tend to do very well in school. And math is important later on because kids who do well in math in high school end up doing well in the labor market.
“(My research shows) the links between school success and achievement in, say, 5th grade or 8th grade, and the kind of skills that kids bring into school. It’s a pattern that seems to be showing up in a number of different data sets from several different countries and different historical periods: If you do kind of a horse race and ask, ‘What sort of skills and behaviors do kids bring to school that are most important for how successful they are in school?’
“Those skills and behaviors are elementary math skills – knowing numbers and ordinality, things like that. Literacy skills, knowing letters and word sounds and behaviors, things like being able to sit still and pay attention, being able to get along with other kids and teachers (aren’t as important).
“If you put all those things side by side and just say, ‘What’s most predictive of how successful kids are?’ it turns out that math skills are more important than literacy skills or behaviors.”
From the summary of his published paper, titled "School Readiness and Later Achievement", Prof. Duncan goes on to talk about how other predictors, like basic literacy and being able to sit and pay attention, are important predictors, but not as strong as basic math skills. Other factors, like socioeconomic status, family background, gender, and behavioral issues at young ages, are insiginifgant predictors.
Prof. Duncan hypothesizes that one of the reason for this is that strong math skills lead to a "can do" attitude that helps students throughout their schooling and career.
"One possibility is that kids who have initial difficulties come to think of themselves as not good at math and maybe even not good at school. ...with math in early grades, kids get a lot of concrete feedback."
“This concrete math feedback might start kind of a cycle where kids are thinking, well, they’re really good at school and math or not very good at school and math. (Either way), that would be self-reinforcing and set off these other secondary effects.
So what can parents do to help? Well, based on the work of a collegue, Prof. Duncan has some ideas. One of them is to play math games! Games that involve counting can impact a childs abilities in math months later after only a few play sessions.
-Robert Whiteside
Sources:
https://edsource.org/2013/early-math-matters-top-researcher-discusses-his-work/50061
School Readiness and Later Achievement, Greg Duncan, et al., 2007
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