A key part—though surely not the only part—of early-grades math is ensuring students get the basic arithmetic functions down and, beyond that, making sure they’re able to swiftly and automatically ...

Re “Dismal student test scores deserve boos, not cheers” (Oct. 17): I taught sixth-grade math for 24 years and found that the biggest impediment to teaching at that level was that so many students had ...

Debates over how to teach math echo the conflicts over reading instruction, and some issues are similar. But unlike math, reading—in its full sense—draws on everything a person has been able to learn.