Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

Dylan Kane likes his math curriculum. But there’s one important piece missing, he says. The 7th grade math teacher in Leadville, Colo., uses a program that teaches math skills through real-world ...

While this three-step process is the ideal process of applied math, reality is more complicated. Once I reach the second step where I want the solution of the math problem, very often, if not most of ...

From classrooms to kitchen tables, debates about math education are never far away. Should teachers drill multiplication facts or encourage creative strategies to solve problems? The answer, ...

You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an everyday problem, such as calculating a tip at a restaurant or determining the square footage of a room. But what role does math play ...

One of my first vivid memories of math is of timed tests. I still remember how visceral my panic felt–sweaty palms, heart pounding–as I scrambled to recall facts before the clock ran out. You might ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Linda Darling-Hammond is an expert on education research and policy. This blog was updated on June 24, 2026 to clarify a statistic ...