Writers: Research Points To Importance Of Early Math Skills

In commentary for Education Week (3/28), Deborah Stipek of the school of education at Stanford University; Alan Schoenfeld of the University of California at Berkeley, and Deanna Gomby, vice president for education at the Heising-Simons Foundation, write that despite concerns about literacy rates in the early grades, early math skills are better predictors of later academic success than are literacy skills. The writers cite research which found "that in a comparison of math, literacy, and social-emotional skills at kindergarten entry, 'early math concepts, such as knowledge of numbers and ordinality, were the most powerful predictors of later learning.' A large-scale Canadian study from 2010 echoes those findings: Math skills at school entry predicted math skills and even reading skills in 3rd and 2nd grade, respectively, better than reading skills at school entry."