The American math crisis is serious. Since 2013, eighth-graders’ scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have fallen by 11 points, while fourth-graders’ scores have decreased by five points.
Overall, the 2025 results present a bleak picture: most seniors lack proficiency, and nearly half lack even basic math skills. Specifically, the national average math score for 12th grade in 2024 was 3 points lower than in 2019, reaching the lowest level recorded since the current trend line began 20 years ago.
Consider for a moment that the Governing Board sets “NAEP Proficient” as the goal. The new results show that only 22 percent of 12th graders nationwide meet this benchmark. But, even more alarmingly, fully 45 percent of high school seniors – the highest percentage ever – are performing below the “NAEP Basic” level.
The NAEP results are especially troubling from an equity perspective. While the top 10 percent of students held steady, all other performance levels declined, indicating that the gap between the highest performers and everyone else is now larger than ever.
This national crisis demands urgent solutions. One promising but underutilized approach lies outside the classroom: engaging parents at home with practical math tools from the very beginning of children’s math learning. Early math skills predict later achievement, and caregiver engagement is central to early skill development.
The Case for Parent Engagement in Math
A long-standing tradition in economics and developmental psychology emphasizes that skill formation begins early in life and that families play a central role in the process. Gaps in math achievement by socioeconomic status appear well before kindergarten.
Unlike reading, where daily storytime is an everyday routine, math learning at home tends to be less visible and more intimidating. Parents often report math anxiety, uncertainty about how to approach it, and a lack of developmentally appropriate resources. Research indicates that low-income parents, in particular, tend to engage their children in relatively few math-related activities at home.
This “math engagement gap” is significant because early numeracy skills predict future academic achievement, persistence in STEM fields, and labor market success. However, despite its significance, parental support for math development lags behind efforts in literacy. To reverse the concerning trends shown in the most recent NAEP scores, interventions that help parents nurture numeracy from the beginning must be considered.
To the extent that technology for parents to use at home is of high quality, fun, and engaging, it may directly increase children’s skills without increasing parental engagement, or it might also reduce frictions to parental effort, thereby increasing the time that parents are engaged and/or the quality of the time they spend in educational activities with their children.
A small but growing body of literature is examining the role of technology in the development of children’s human capital. To the extent that technology for parents to use at home is of high quality, fun, and engaging, it may directly increase children’s skills without increasing parental engagement, or it might also reduce frictions to parental effort, thereby increasing the time that parents are engaged and/or the quality of the time they spend in educational activities with their children. Using math apps may change parents’ roles from teachers to moderators during the child’s math learning process, which can relieve the stress and burden of parent engagement, thus requiring less effort from parents and increasing enjoyment for both parents and children.
Two Experiments in Chicago
Two recent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted by the Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab at the University of Chicago, of which I am a co-director. The trials offer some of the first causal evidence to date on how digital math apps can help parents improve their children’s math skills. These two studies show that enhancing parental engagement in math learning with high-quality digital materials improves children’s early numeracy for disadvantaged families.
The MPACT Study
The Math for Parents and Children Together (MPACT) study enrolled 758 low-income preschoolers (ages 3-5) and their caregivers from 30 publicly subsidized preschools in Chicago. Families were randomly assigned to five groups:
- Control (no math materials, only a storybook).
- Math apps (a tablet preloaded with age-appropriate apps).
- Analog math kit (the “MKit,” with games, activity cards, and manipulatives).
- MKit + weekly text messages designed to help parents overcome “present bias” (procrastination).
- MKit + weekly “growth mindset” messages.
Children’s math skills were measured using the Woodcock-Johnson test at baseline, after 12 weeks, and again six months later.
Findings:
- The math apps and the MKit, along with the present bias messages, significantly improved math achievement six months later by approximately 0.20 standard deviations (SD), equivalent to a four-point gain in national percentile rankings.
- These same two groups also reported significantly greater parental engagement in math activities, by about one-quarter to one-third of a SD.
- By contrast, neither the analog kit alone nor the kit combined with growth mindset messages improved children’s math skills. One reason for this finding is that most parents in the MPACT study already had a high level of growth mindset at baseline, which substantially reduces the marginal benefits of any intervention aimed at cultivating a growth mindset.
The results suggest that technology (apps) and behavioral supports (text messages to mitigate parents’ tendency to procrastinate) can lower barriers to parental engagement and, in turn, improve child skills. Providing parents with materials isn’t enough, as many don’t utilize them.
Apps can help level the playing field by providing high-quality, easy-to-use math instruction directly to parents, allowing them to use it at home with their children. This is especially valuable for families who lack such resources otherwise.
The About TIME Study
The About Technology in Math Engagement (About TIME) trial expanded the inquiry to a socioeconomically diverse sample of 459 preschoolers from Chicago. Families were randomized into:
- Control (a non-math coloring book).
- Math apps (a tablet with four curated numeracy apps).
- Analog math kit (high-quality manipulatives, games, and activity cards).
Unlike MPACT, About TIME included both tuition-based and subsidized preschools, allowing the research team to test whether math apps benefit all families or primarily those with fewer resources.
Findings:
- On average, neither math apps nor analog kits showed significant effects across the entire sample.
- But, children of parents without a college degree (non-BA parents) in the math app group showed a 0.17 SD increase in math skills.
- When the About TIME sample was limited to children in publicly funded preschools (to reflect MPACT), the results were nearly identical: apps produced a 0.16 SD gain in child math skill, similar to MPACT’s 0.20 SD.
- Neither intervention had a detectable impact among children of BA parents, likely because their homes already contained comparable resources.
- Providing math apps to non-BA families did not change the total amount of time parents devoted to children’s math learning. Instead, these parents adjusted their time allocation, significantly reducing the time spent on analog math materials while modestly increasing the time spent on math apps. This finding highlights the greater efficiency of math apps for boosting math skills among children whose parents are not college-educated.
- Non-BA parents reported on surveys that their children enjoyed the About TIME apps and said they would recommend these materials to other parents. They also noted that the About TIME apps provided them with good ideas for helping their children learn math and inspired their children to explore both math and non-math-related ideas.
Thus, the two studies together provide replicable evidence that math apps can meaningfully improve early numeracy for disadvantaged families.
Not all digital products are created equal. Policymakers and educators should identify and promote evidence-based apps that have been vetted for their developmental appropriateness, usability, and engagement.
Why Apps improve early numeracy in disadvantaged families
Survey and usage data shed light on why apps outperformed analog kits:
- Higher usage among disadvantaged parents: Parents without college degrees reported using the apps more frequently and positively than BA parents. Objective usage logs confirmed this pattern.
- Perceived effectiveness: 74 percent of non-BA parents reported that the apps taught math more effectively than their current materials, compared to 40 percent of BA parents.
- Reduced burden: Apps provided feedback, guided activities, and built-in incentives, decreasing the instructional load on parents and alleviating math anxiety. Analog kits needed more parental scaffolding, leaving some parents exhausted.
In other words, apps can help level the playing field by providing high-quality, easy-to-use math instruction directly to parents, allowing them to use it at home with their children. This is especially valuable for families who lack such resources otherwise.
Math Apps: Implications for Equity
Both MPACT and About TIME emphasize an important point: universal interventions may not benefit everyone equally. In these studies, advantaged families saw little progress, while disadvantaged families experienced significant improvements. This suggests that math apps could be an effective equalizer.
Put differently, providing universal access to high-quality apps could help bridge skill gaps arising from differences in parental education. In About TIME, the baseline difference between children of BA and non-BA parents was about 25 percentile points. The math app intervention narrowed roughly one-third of that gap within six months. Offering accessible, practical resources to parents who need them most is one way to improve standards and outcomes simultaneously.
The MPACT and About TIME experiments show that when disadvantaged families use well-designed apps, their young children’s math skills improve significantly. These results are consistent across different studies, groups, and over time. In contrast, simply providing analog materials is not enough.
Broader Lessons for educational design
These studies also underscore broader principles of effective educational design.
- Personalization: Apps adjust to children’s skill levels, keeping them engaged with the right level of challenge.
- Reducing cognitive load: By guiding instruction, apps can lower parental stress and help make learning easier to maintain.
- Encouraging interaction: Many apps prompt dialogue between parents and children, fostering the kind of “math talk” that has been shown to predict numeracy.
- Supporting motivation: Elements such as gamification and instant feedback help maintain engagement over time.
Together, these design features explain why apps succeed where analog materials falter.
Sustaining Engagement with Math apps
A caveat: app usage tends to decline over time. In About TIME, engagement decreased by 54 percent by the third month and by 78 percent by the fifth month. This highlights the need for strategies to sustain use, such as updated content, adaptive challenges, or integration with school-home communication.
Still, even with decreasing use, the intervention showed measurable improvements. Continued investment in design and support could enhance these results.
Policy and Practice Recommendations
- Invest in high-quality math apps. Not all digital products are created equal. Policymakers and educators should identify and promote evidence-based apps that have been vetted for their developmental appropriateness, usability, and engagement.
- Distribute apps widely and support targeted groups where needed. While advantaged families might gain less, universal access ensures disadvantaged families can access resources without feeling stigmatized. Additional supports (e.g., text reminders) can further increase engagement.
- Integrate with parent support programs. Apps can be embedded in broader strategies, for example, in preschool family engagement initiatives or pediatric “prescriptions for play” to routinize at-home numeracy engagement.
- Sustain usage. Developers and funders should prioritize updating content, varying challenges, and exploring behavioral supports to maintain parent and child engagement over time.
- Preserve parental agency. As with all technology, digital tools for developing young children’s math skills must support, rather than replace, parents, offering flexible control and transparent guidance.
Conclusion
The U.S. math crisis demands urgent solutions. While debates rage over curricula, standards, and pedagogy, evidence from Chicago shows that one promising lever lies in parents’ hands: high-quality math apps.
The MPACT and About TIME experiments show that when disadvantaged families use well-designed apps, their young children’s math skills improve significantly. These results are consistent across different studies, groups, and over time. In contrast, simply providing analog materials is not enough.
The MPACT and About Time interventions are built on low-cost elements and can be scaled up to serve a larger population. Nearly 90 percent of families in these samples reported having a digital device (either a tablet or a smartphone) to download apps. Scaling up the math app treatment should not require providing additional digital devices to most families. Most of the math apps tested in the interventions were free (two of them charged $2 and $3 one-time fees, respectively). Additionally, a texting program that sends behaviorally informed messages to parents to reduce their present bias can be integrated into the existing routine texting programs used by many preschools at a minimal additional cost. Compared to other interventions, a program utilizing math apps and behavioral messages to enhance children’s math skills may be a relatively cost-effective approach. This result thus points to new avenues for efficient policy intervention to improve children’s math skills at home.
The lesson is clear: to close gaps and reverse national decline, efforts must start early, start at home, and provide parents with tools that lower barriers to math engagement. Math apps are not a silver bullet, but they are a proven, scalable, and cost-effective part of the solution.
If America wants to improve its alarming national math test scores, parents must be part of the equation.
The author is a professor at the University of Chicago. She has no financial stake in research conducted there.
