Your child’s math struggles are more likely about the method they’re being taught than the brain they were born with. That distinction matters enormously — because one of those things a school system is directly responsible for. In early June, nearly 200 teachers from Northern Utah school districts gathered at Utah State University for the third annual Utah LEARNS conference. The event, modeled on the way Singapore trains its teachers to collaborate and share practice, featured hands-on math sessions on a “Problem of the Week” approach and manipulative-based number instruction. Singapore’s math curriculum — built on helping students understand numbers concretely before drilling computation — has produced some of the strongest international math results in the world for decades. Most American elementary classrooms still default to the opposite sequence.
Most American classrooms teach math the way math has always been taught in America. Singapore spent four decades proving there is a more effective sequence. Here is what the research shows and what it means for your child.
Common questions
What is the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) approach to teaching math?
How do I find out if my child’s school uses this approach?
My child struggles with math. Could it be dyscalculia?
Can I use Singapore-style math instruction at home?
Most US math classrooms drill procedures before students understand what numbers mean. Singapore spent 40 years proving that's backwards. Utah teachers are adopting the model. Ask your school which approach they actually use.
What happened at Utah’s Singapore-inspired teacher conference
The Utah Learning for Educators and Researchers through Networked Systems (LEARNS) conference, now in its third year, brought together teachers from school districts across Northern Utah for peer-led professional learning at Edith Bowen Laboratory School, a K-6 charter school on the USU Logan campus. The event grew from the experience of principal Nate Justis, who attended teacher collaboration sessions in Singapore as a Fulbright Scholar in 2022 and was struck by how differently Singaporean educators learn from one another. He applied for and received a $50,000 three-year innovation grant from the Utah State Charter School Board to bring that model home. Additional funding came from the newly established USU Collaboratory for Innovation in Teaching and Leadership, supported by the Emma Eccles Jones Foundation in 2026.
Math was a central focus. Teachers worked through sessions on a “Problem of the Week” model — a structured, inquiry-based approach that asks students to reason through a problem before reaching for a procedure. Teachers also practiced using physical manipulatives to build students’ abstract number understanding. First-grade teacher Peri Green, from Box Elder School District, described the sessions as immediately useful: “I signed up for a couple different math sessions, and I love what I’ve learned so far. I’m excited to try some of it with my students.” Hallie Jensen, a first-grade teacher at Family Lyceum in Clearfield, added: “What I love about the LEARNS conference is how applicable everything is. We know the theory, but sometimes teachers just need the application. I feel like that’s what these workshops do. They bring that application, and you get it from master teachers who you know you can trust.”
The week before the main conference, a Best Practices Forum and Leadership Summit at Green River and Grand County High Schools brought together more than 130 additional teachers from Carbon, Emery, Grand, and San Juan school districts in collaboration with the Utah LEARNS Network.
When it comes to facing the complex challenges of education, collaboration always wins.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
What decades of research says about the math sequence that matters
Singapore adopted what educators now call the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) approach in the early 1980s: introduce a math concept with physical objects first, then representations and diagrams, then abstract symbols. The sequence is designed so that students have a physical feel for what a number means before they are asked to manipulate it on paper. Singapore has ranked first or second in fourth-grade and eighth-grade mathematics in every TIMSS international assessment since 1995. The What Works Clearinghouse, the U.S. Department of Education’s evidence-review arm, has rated Singapore Math curricula positively across multiple studies. The approach is not a cultural anomaly or a resource advantage — it is a pedagogical sequence backed by a clear mechanism: understanding supports computation, but computation alone does not produce understanding.
A 2025 peer-reviewed study published in Cogent Education provides the clearest recent evidence. Among 231 students, those who received CPA instruction significantly outperformed students who received abstract-only instruction on both immediate and follow-up tests — across all prior achievement levels. For students already behind in math, the advantage was sharpest: the concrete and representational stages build the number sense that procedural drill alone never reaches. Research on students with dyscalculia-type difficulties specifically points to multi-representation instruction as the approach most likely to build the foundational cognitive architecture math requires.
The system-level problem is not individual teachers — it is the curriculum and professional development infrastructure that trains teachers in procedural instruction and then provides no pathway to update. Most US teachers were prepared in programs that lead with abstract notation and computation drill. A student with slower processing speed, weaker working memory, or less natural number sense runs straight into the gap that sequence creates. “When it comes to facing the complex challenges of education, collaboration always wins,” Justis said in his keynote. Utah’s model is one concrete answer: bring master teachers together to share what the research supports, give them time to practice it, and send them back to classrooms with tools they can use immediately.
Key takeaways
- Singapore leads math assessments because the sequence is different: Concrete objects before pictures, pictures before symbols — that order builds number understanding that procedural drill alone skips entirely.
- The research is clear on struggling learners: A 2025 peer-reviewed study found CPA instruction outperformed abstract-only teaching across all prior achievement levels, with the sharpest benefit for students already behind.
- This is a system problem, not a child problem: Most US teachers were prepared in procedural-first programs with no pathway to update. Utah's Singapore-modeled conference is building that pathway one classroom at a time.
What this means for your child’s math struggles today
If your child is hitting a wall in math, the first question is not whether they are “a math person.” It is whether the instruction they are receiving builds understanding or skips straight to procedures. In a classroom where teachers drill facts before students have a feel for what numbers actually represent, a child with weaker working memory or slower processing speed — common in kids who also struggle with reading — gets further and further behind. More drill does not close that gap. Different instruction does.
The tradeoffs are real. CPA instruction takes longer in the short term: students need time with physical objects and visual representations before moving to abstract equations. A school under pressure to cover curriculum and hit test benchmarks sometimes treats this as a luxury. The research says that framing is backwards — the time invested in concrete and pictorial stages is precisely what makes abstract computation stick for kids who need the most support. The Singapore system has had 40 years to prove it.
Two questions give you useful information fast. First: when your child is stuck on a math problem, what are they taught to do? An answer that centers on manipulating objects, drawing it out, or building the concept from scratch is a good sign. An answer that centers on remembering which procedure to apply is worth following up on. Second: does the math program your school uses build number sense systematically before introducing computation? Ask that directly and in writing. The answer tells you a lot about what your child is actually getting — and what you may need to reinforce at home.
What I love about the LEARNS conference is how applicable everything is. We know the theory, but sometimes teachers just need the application. I feel like that’s what these workshops do.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Parents have the right to know whether their child’s math instruction builds the understanding that makes computation stick, or skips that step and hopes repetition fills the gap. The system that routes kids straight to worksheets before they understand what numbers mean is the one that creates the failure spiral. That system is not inevitable, and Utah’s teachers went and found a better model. The Learning Success All Access program builds the multi-system cognitive foundations — including the visual processing, working memory, and number sense skills — that make math instruction land for kids who need it most.
See what All Access gives your child
See MTSS for schools
Is your child struggling in school?
Get your free personalized learning roadmap
You describe what you see at home. We turn it into a plan you start this week.
- Answer 5 short questionnaires about what you already notice, 30–45 minutes at your own kitchen table
- Your child sits no test and gets no score: nothing to schedule, nothing for them to dread
- You do the answering, the AI does the writing, and a person reviews it before it reaches you
- Access all 40+ courses instantly: reading, math, focus, processing and more, with new ones added regularly
Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
References
- Utah State University Today — Teachers Across Utah Empowered at 3rd Annual Utah LEARNS Conference (June 18, 2026)
- Cogent Education / Tandfonline — Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract instruction: enhancing students' achievement in mathematics (peer-reviewed, 2025; 231 students)
- U.S. Dept of Education / What Works Clearinghouse — Singapore Math intervention review (positive rating)
- HMH / Math in Focus — Singapore Math Research Evidence Base
- PMC / NCBI — Synthesis of math interventions for students with math difficulties (2025)
