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Whether you’re a parent gearing up for another year of nightly homework battles or an educator wading through an onslaught of parent queries around math instruction, a recent University of Chicago study on the relationship between parents’ math anxiety and their children’s academic achievement might pique your interest.  

After observing several hundred elementary students and their caregivers over the course of a school year, the research team, led by psychologists Sian Beilock and Susan Levine, discovered that when math-anxious parents provide homework help, their children learn less math and are more likely to experience math anxiety themselves—a finding that has big implications not just for parents, but for the districts and schools working to support them.

Erin A. Maloney, the study’s lead author, emphasizes that parents are their child’s “first and most sustained teachers.” She also notes that schools consistently message to parents that their involvement in the learning process is key to their child’s success. Unfortunately, parents are rarely provided with the tools and resources they need to support their child’s learning with confidence. As a slew of news items and viral posts on social mediademonstrated last school year, parental math anxiety is a reality that has only been exacerbated by the use of unfamiliar teaching methods and new standards, leaving parents everywhere frustrated and discouraged.

So what’s to be done? Maloney suggests that schools combat parents’ math anxiety by providing them with “structured activities that allow [them] to interact with their children around math in positive ways … in the form of math books, computer and traditional board games, or Internet apps.”

She says families might also benefit from general tips for homework help and video models of effective teaching. Resources like these can act as a lifesaver for parents who feel lost at sea when faced with number lines and area array diagrams, but want desperately to connect with and encourage their child’s learning.

Creating and distributing resources to support parents is a huge job (especially when you consider that many parents of elementary school kids don’t speak English as their first language). Yet forward-thinking school districts across the country are making significant strides in supporting their parents. For many, Upraised Math is a key element of their strategy to build parent capabilities by explaining new teaching methods in parent-friendly language, and encouraging structured at-home learning experiences. Upraised offers an exciting opportunity for schools to lower parents’ math anxiety and drive student achievement simultaneously.