Math skills in the early years and early grades predict students’ later math success and broad academic success. Research tells us that one way to boost early math skills is by engaging families – through high parental expectations, parent-child math talk and math activities, a rich home learning environment with books and games, and family engagement with school (Eason, 2019). Engaging families in children’s math learning, also referred to as Family Math, may be especially important in California, which serves more K-12 students than any other state. For all these reasons, we’re excited to share findings from a modest interview study that the Center for Family Math conducted last summer to imagine the future of Family Math in California.
The aim of the California Family Math Mapping Project was to investigate Family Math interests, challenges, and opportunities across large public school districts and statewide family engagement nonprofits in California. Our team inquired about existing Family Math efforts, as well as obstacles and opportunities for integrating Family Math into educational priorities, especially low-resource elementary schools. In partnership with the California Masonic Foundation, our ultimate goal was to inform a Family Math investment strategy to encourage broad uptake of Family Math educational practices across California.
Methods. In Summer 2024, we conducted individual and small group interviews with 17 people across 4 populous public school districts, 1 County Office of Education, and 5 family engagement nonprofits, honing in on three primary research questions:
- What is the demand, interest, and appetite for integrating Family Math into educational practices in school districts and family engagement organizations?
- What challenges and barriers, both psychological and structural, exist to prevent integration of family math into educational practices?
- What opportunities, enabling conditions, resources, and programming will help districts’ embrace family math as a strategy for promoting math educational equity and academic achievement?
Findings. We uncovered eight common themes to inform the field of Family Math.
- There is general support for Family Math, but with some caveats. Informants across the board supported the idea of Family Math and family engagement, seeing it as a means to greater academic achievement for students, especially disadvantaged students. To some extent, families were seen as the primary target audience for Family Math efforts (via resources and parent education), when compared to educators (via professional learning, for example). Several also acknowledged a strong focus on literacy in the early grades compared to math and said Family Math could learn from these activities, like well-attended community literacy nights. Informants explained that teachers tend to lean into literacy-focused family engagement because it’s comfortable and because curriculum, staffing, and the “science of reading” all exist to support it. As one district leader put it, “Family Math needs a PR firm!” Finally, Family Math was often described as important, but only a component of something larger, like overall math achievement or college readiness, while some connected it to other areas of learning or wellness, like financial literacy and mental health.
- Districts face structural challenges to adopting innovations like Family Math. Many district leaders described huge fiscal challenges, ranging from staffing cuts of up to 7% to being on the brink of receivership. In this context, some found it hard to imagine adding any new programs or burdens on already strained staff members, preferring that new resources be directed toward reinstating laid off staff. Teachers’ unions were also mentioned as an impediment to family engagement programming in general, although one nonprofit engaged unions as supporters from its inception with great success. Finally, nonprofit leaders interviewed noted helpful leadership qualities among school district leaders when launching new initiatives – including openness to partnership, innovation, and accountability for student achievement.
- Existing Family Math tends to be localized. At the district level, a Family Math point person was often unclear. District leaders often referred our research team to their math leads, while math leads often referred us to family engagement coordinators. Yet, as one informant pointed out, Family Math may present an opportunity to “de-silo” district departments. In addition, district and county-level professional learning tends to cover family engagement broadly, rather than specific content-focused strategies. Meanwhile, existing Family Math efforts mostly reside in very localized contexts, including schools and classrooms (consider Family Math Nights), site-based afterschool programs (sometimes in partnership with neighborhoods or a city), and through other school-level nonprofit partnerships.
- How we frame Family Math is essential. Respondents noted that families, teachers, and children can all benefit from a shift in beliefs around math, from a fixed mindset (“I’m not a math person”) to a growth mindset in which effort and persistence leads to math learning and mastery. Other aspects of what gets communicated and how it is framed to families were also called out by respondents, such as providing basic information on the value of math, helping families see their role and how they can help, and linking Family Math to what families care most about, including their children’s futures, be it financial literacy, college, or STEM careers.
- Statewide education initiatives and funding in California may present promising conditions and audiences for Family Math adoption and scale. Respondents mentioned seven statewide opportunities to consider: (1) the Extended Learning Opportunity Program (ELOP) received a $4b boost post-pandemic to bring afterschool, summer programs, and extended hours to schools. Afterschool program staff often have more contact with parents than teachers and more freedom to do project-based hands-on STEM projects amenable to Family Math integration; (2) Transitional Kindergarten (TK), a relatively new frontier in California without a prescribed curriculum and similar to early childhood programs, may be quite receptive to family engagement efforts; (3) Differentiated Assistance, the state’s way of identifying and funding districts and counties that are struggling to meet CA Dashboard performance targets for vulnerable students (including dual language learners) may be especially receptive to culturally responsive family engagement approaches; (4) Community Schools, with $1.3b in implementation funding, may present an audience receptive to family engagement innovations; (5) the state-funded Community Engagement Initiative (CEI) builds school capacity to engage families and communities in California, and current and prior CEI districts may be open to Family Math innovation; (6) the 2023 Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools offers instructional guidance toward deep and relevant math learning, including real-world connections and cultural competence, ideas that could be addressed through effective family engagement; (7) Selection and adoption of math curriculum by all school districts is happening in the 2024-2025 school year and many choices do not have well-developed accompanying parental guidance nor approved professional development vendors who include family engagement as a part of their curricular support.
- Districts and County Offices of Education offer Family Math parent information and resources from which to build upon. Providing parental information about Family Math was not uncommon among informants, with hopes to expand information even further. Some districts provide Parent Math Guides by grade level, lists of digital resources, and information about math placement in the later grades. These efforts were often a collection of disparate resources rather than systemic efforts. Informants also welcomed the idea of sending home educational resources to families (including math-themed books, math toys, games, and manipulatives), but with associated guidance for how to use such resources. Likewise, some expressed interest in tech-enabled classroom-teacher communication models that incorporate Family Math concepts and activities.
- Districts and County Offices of Education have robust structures for delivering professional learning. District-level and school-level opportunities lie partially in professional learning (PL) to change mindsets and understand approaches to Family Math. One district offers training to support teachers in hosting their own Game Nights with families Other types of PL, such as math coaching, PL institutes, or lesson studies, could also hone in on Family Math. One County Office of Education informant delivers teacher Communities of Practice and a Family Liaison certificate, mostly focused on the basics of authentic family engagement, yet with likely interest in Family Math. Many note that PL must be sensitive both to educators’ lack of time and other contextual circumstances in each school.
- Numerous family engagement nonprofits that partner with schools in California are beginning to integrate Family Math into their programming. Such nonprofits include, but are not limited to, Raising a Reader, Family Engagement Lab, ParentPowered, PIQE, Abriendo Puertas, and the Knowledge Shop. Each of these organizations has connections with NAFSCE’s Center for Family Math via technical assistance, dissemination, and/or thought partnership. They can also all serve as resources for California schools wishing to integrate Family Math into their practices.
Recommendations. Based on these findings, we offer a few key recommendations below.
- Make Family Math resources available for districts. One informant described this idea as a “Family Math resource bank.” Resources might include: (1) a math curriculum compendium that details popular math curricula and associated family guidance and PL vendors who address Family Math; (2) case studies of districts that have embraced Family Math (e.g. District of Columbia and Philadelphia), including testimonials from educators who have experienced its benefits; (3) a communications toolkit that makes the research case for Family Math, describes research-based approaches to Family Math, and offers tested message framing that addresses problematic math mindsets; (4) a guide to hosting Family Math Nights and Math Festivals; (5) tip sheets or practice briefs that situates Family Math within different opportune contexts in California, such as Transitional Kindergarten, Community Schools, and Out-of-School-Time settings; (6) information to disseminate directly to parents that aligns with the CA Math Framework on what children should know at each grade level and what questions to ask to encourage their continued learning; (8) a curated list of supplemental online math resources for families (e.g., Khan Academy), and (9) a Family Math “readiness” framework for adoption of Family Math districtwide.
- Offer Family Math professional learning at the classroom, school, and district level. This would need to be presented as optional, introductory, contextualized to California realities, and preferably incentivized and integrated professional development experiences for already-overloaded education professionals. To this end, a valuable first step would be the creation of Family Math Core Competencies, which would provide a focused but encompassing set of capacities identified in the field as crucial to developing Family Math practice. Upon creating this framework, associated professional learning modules could be developed, allowing for both “drop-in” and cohesive multi-topic sequences. Moreover, the Family Math Core Competencies can also live “on their own” as a standalone framework to inform districts’ own professional learning initiatives.
Hitch family engagement in children’s math learning to schools’ and districts’ literacy priorities. Districts are already engaged in family engagement initiatives to support literacy, and to a far greater degree than math. Coupling Family Math to these ongoing literacy initiatives avoids duplication that may otherwise exist and also taps into a level of comfort thinking about family engagement as a strategy to improve literacy education that does not presently exist in math. This could be done by mixing math into family literacy program models and by creating tools that clarify and explore the link between early math skills and later literacy outcomes in communications with families and educators.
