WHITE PAPER

Math Intervention and the

Promise of Adaptive Learning
The necessary gains in math
profciency can only be achieved if
instruction is streamlined to target
the unique learning profle of each
student: comprehension, skill level,
learning style, and strategies for
processing thought.
Executive Summary
Americas schools are underperforming in math education; many students are
not reaching the level of mathematical profciency needed to excel in school or in
the workplace. A consensus has emerged that corrective reform and innovation
is necessary to reverse this trend. Pedagogical models that address the needs of
individual students are gaining broader acceptance. The necessary gains in math
profciency can only be achieved if instruction is streamlined to target the unique
learning profle of each student: comprehension, skill level, learning style, and
strategies for processing thought.
As part of this efort schools use data to identify students who are not making
adequate progress in the core curriculum and are at risk for poor learning
outcomes, and to provide interventions that are appropriate to a students level
of need and responsiveness. The widespread use of this Response to Intervention
(RTI) model is supporting the move toward intervention that is provides an
instructional path that will most efectively improve math profciency for each
individual student.
Adaptive learning is a promising approach that fts within the Response to
Intervention model. It actually goes far beyond the expectation of intermittent
assessment and adjustments to instruction. Formative assessments throughout
the learning process help shape that process. In real-time, every mouse click
is tracked to gain insight into student strategies. Then, based on that insight,
individual learning paths are dynamically created to guide the student through
the curriculum.
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When reaching students
within an engaging
framework, they begin to
proactively drive their own
learning.
Efective adaptive learning has fve
capabilities that make it a complete and
efective approach:
Achieving math profciency is the primary
goal. Getting to that point faster also vital.
A strong math curriculum aligned with
Common Core State Standards.
Sound pedagogy is always the
foundation for instruction, because the
goal is to build conceptual understanding
and procedural fuency.
Instruction integrated with assessment.
Ongoing assessment directs instructional
path step-by-step.
A highly engaging and interactive
learning environment. Student
engagement has many positive benefts,
including improved student choice and
motivation, persistence, and time on
task. When reaching students within
an engaging framework, they begin to
proactively drive their own learning.
Current Inuences on Math
Intervention
Many students are not reaching the level of
mathematical profciency needed to excel
in higher education, the workplace, and the
global economy. We have lost our world
leadership position in basic education,
particularly in math education, falling into
the middle ranks of the developed world.
In the United States, a complex framework
of regulation is attempting to standardize,
assess, and improve curricula and teaching
practices for K-12 students. Intervention
must take place in the context of that
framework.
Mandating profciency with No
Child Left Behind. At the federal level, the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act
was reauthorized in 2001 as the No Child
Left Behind (NCLB) Act. This legislation
focuses on improving student performance
in reading and mathematics. Specifcally,
it requires that all students in grades 3
and 8 achieve profciency in mathematics
by 2014.
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The current Administration and
Congress are working on revisions to NCLB.
In the meantime, the 2001 legislation
remains the federal regulatory standard.
Establishing consistency with math
standards. A state-led efort called the
Common Core State Standards Initiative
has been coordinated by the National
Governors Association Center for Best
Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of
Chief State School Ofcers (CCSSO). Their
K-12 standards for English language arts
and mathematics have been adopted by
most states.
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In those states, it establishes
baseline goals for educational intervention.
Where Common Core has not been
adopted, there typically is alignment
with a strong standards framework such
as the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics (NCTM) Focal Points.
Addressing diversity with IDEA. The
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA), reauthorized in 2004, governs how
states and public agencies provide early
intervention, special education, and related
services to more than 6.5 million eligible
infants, toddlers, children, and youth
with disabilities.
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IDEA changed the way
students are evaluated for special services
by requiring states to allow school districts
to use research-based interventions to
address diverse students needs early on.
Identifying risk with RTI. The most
commonly used model developed by
U.S. educational researchers is called
Response to Intervention (RTI). RTI
integrates assessment and intervention
within a multi-level prevention system
to maximize student achievement and
to reduce behavioral problems. With RTI,
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Current research has
documented that early
preparation in mathematics
is the biggest predictor in
later school achievement.
schools use data to identify students at
risk for poor learning outcomes, monitor
student progress, provide evidence-based
interventions, adjust the intensity and
nature of those interventions depending
on a students responsiveness, and identify
students with learning disabilities or
other disabilities.
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The RTI framework
is defned by tiers that allow schools to
ofer increasingly intensive interventions
to those students who are not making
adequate progress in the core curriculum.
Tier I Core instruction. Core instruction
tries to prevent failure and optimize
learning by ofering the most efective
instruction possible to the greatest
number of students. It usually takes place
in a regular education setting as whole
class instruction that produces good
results for most students.
Tier II Supplemental instruction.
Supplemental instruction applies to
students who experienced difculties
with Tier I instruction. It tries to address
instructional challenges that could be
contributing to individual students
learning difculties. It may be in the
classroom or in a special education
setting and involves instruction to small
groups of students or individuals. Some
students might need more support than
others, but most students will respond
quickly and make good progress.
Tier III Intensive interventions
and comprehensive evaluation. This
tier addresses students who did not
show progress in Tiers I and II. It tries
to accelerate their learning with more
intensive help and provide the child with
more efective strategies for learning.
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The Importance of Math Prociency
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES)
is the primary research arm of the U.S.
Department of Education. One of IES
primary research centers, the National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES),
conducts the National Assessment of
Educational Progress known as The Nations
Report Card. According to The Nations
Report Card for 2009, only 26 percent of
twelfth-graders performed at or above the
Profcient level in mathematics.
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Obviously,
we have a long way to go before we meet
our nations goals for math education.
These defciencies in math have
consequences far beyond a students
grade in math class. Current research
has documented that early preparation
in mathematics is the biggest predictor
in later school achievement. Six large
longitudinal studies (from school entrance
to grade 5) were recently completed
by researchers in England, the U.S., and
Canada, examining links between early
numeracy, literacy, attention ability, socio-
emotional skills and, later, reading and
math achievement. The report showed that
early math skills had the greatest predictive
power for future success in school, followed
by reading, and then attention skills. In
their words, Particularly impressive is the
predictive power of early math skills, which
supports the wisdom of experimental
evaluations of promising early math
interventions.
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The fact that a head start in learning
will help children achieve more academic
success down the road is not news in itself.
What is striking, according to this study,
is that mastery of these basic education
concepts supersedes every other predictor,
including social and emotional adjustment,
in guaranteeing childrens academic
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Teachers have more
students and more
mandated achievement
goals, but less federal,
state, and local funding
for classroom aides and
technology.
success. As such, a marked shift in how
schools address their students education is
in order.
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Funding for RTI programs
Under IDEA, federal special education
funds are distributed through three state
grant programs and several discretionary
grant programs. Part B of the law, the main
program, authorizes grants to state and
local education agencies to ofset part of
the costs of the K-12 education needs of
children with disabilities. It also authorizes
pre-school state grants. Districts may use
up to 15 percent of IDEA Part B funds for
Coordinated Early Intervention Services
(CEIS); that is, for students who have
not been identifed as needing special
education, but who may need additional
academic support to succeed. These funds
can be used to support the implementation
of school wide RTI programs and the
purchase of RTI materials.
Additionally, Title I (Improving Academic
Achievement of the Disadvantaged) and Title
III (Language Instruction for Limited English
Profcient and Immigrant Students) funds
may be used to support RTI programs. It is
important to note that Title I, Title III, and
CEIS funds may only be used to provide
services that supplement, and not supplant,
what schools would otherwise provide as a
part of core instruction.
Challenges to Successful Math
Intervention
All educational settings have some
common challenges, and they certainly
apply to teaching mathematics:
Class size. In traditional classroom
settings, the students always outnumber
the teachers. A large ratio of students to
teachers can lead to disciplinary problems,
student inattention and apathy, and a
one-size-fts-all presentation of learning
material.
Lack of resources. Teachers and
administrators are under increasing
pressure to do more with less.
Governmental mandates for education
have increased dramatically, but they have
not been anywhere close to fully funded.
On the contrary, a recessionary economy,
resistance to taxes, and strapped state
governments have slashed budgets for
many schools.
Lack of time. The most basic resource
time is usually limited to 50 minutes
of daily math instruction in American
schools. Furthermore, American schools
average only 180 days in a school year.
Some reformers are pushing toward a 200-
day school year, which would align with
Thailand, Scotland and the Netherlands,
but still leave us trailing Israel, Luxembourg,
South Korea, and Japan, which leads with a
243-day school year.
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Need for individualized student
instruction. Large class sizes and shrinking
resources make the need for tailored
student learning much more difcult.
Teachers have more students and more
mandated achievement goals, but less
federal, state, and local funding for
classroom aides and technology. This is
unfortunate, because research and actual
practice are showing that adapting the
pace, mode, and style of instruction based
on the wide spectrum of student needs can
be efective in closing the gaps in student
achievement.
Lack of subject-specifc expertise
among teachers. An additional challenge
is more specifc to math education a lack
of math expertise among many teachers.
In the Fall 2005 issue of American Educator,
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Strong curriculum and
pedagogy assure that the
math profciency outcomes
desired are achieved.
a journal published by the American
Federation of Teachers, authors Deborah
Loewenberg Ball, Heather C. Hill, and
Hyman Bass described the dimensions of
this problem:
That the quality of mathematics
teaching depends on teachers knowledge
of the content should not be a surprise.
Equally unsurprising is that many U.S.
teachers lack sound mathematical
understanding and skill. This is to be
expected because most teachers like
most other adults in this country are
graduates of the very system that we seek
to improve. Their own opportunities to
learn mathematics have been uneven
and often inadequate, just like those of
their non-teaching peers. Studies over the
past 15 years consistently reveal that the
mathematical knowledge of many teachers
is dismayingly thin.
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Assumptions for Efective Math
Pedagogy
In the face of all these challenges, the
good news is that all children can learn
mathematics. But to develop efective
math pedagogy for all students, additional
basic assumptions need to be present
throughout the process:
Not all students learn at the same rate
or in the same way.
Intervention is proactive, not reactive.
Even talented students may need
intervention opportunities to be
accelerated beyond the curriculum that
other students follow.
Intervention is about teaching and the
opportunity to learn. It is not a defcit
model for math education.
The term intervention usually indicates
that the students difculties or particular
strengths are in the early stages, when
they can be identifed and addressed
before they become a concern.
Response to Intervention is based on
discovering what works best for an
individual student, not what might be
the best intervention for everyone.
Additional methods are tried until
students respond to the intervention and
improve their skills.
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Solution: Adaptive Learning for Math
Adaptive learning is an approach that
overcomes many of the current challenges
to implementing the RTI model and
providing very efective math intervention.
Strong curriculum and pedagogy assure
that the math profciency outcomes desired
are achieved. The adaptive technology
adjusts instruction to address the individual
student needs overcoming time and staf
resource constraints.
To address the challenges of improving
student performance in math, the frst
and foremost goal is a strong math
curriculum. Math instruction should focus
on the foundational domains of counting
and cardinality; comparing; numbers
and operations in a base ten system; and
algebraic thinking.
But a strong curriculum isnt enough.
The pedagogy itself is of equal importance
and can be signifcantly improved by
moving towards an adaptive learning
model. However, this can be confusing, with
many solutions promising diferentiation
and individualized learning experiences. A
truly adaptive online environment means
ensuring a child is always working at the
right place in the right curriculum.
To be efective, an adaptive learning
strategy should include the following:
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Instruction should connect
new learning to what the
student already knows and
provide opportunities to
apply new concepts and
skills to relevant problems.
Build a foundation of understanding and
skills for struggling learners, immersing
them in lessons that build conceptual
understanding and procedural
knowledge.
Lesson design needs to build accuracy,
efciency, and understanding.
Provide regular practice, which leads to
automaticity.
Empower learners to make self-directed
choices as their confdence grows.
Aligning to math standards is key, but
an efective curriculum also needs to
complement core requirements with
research-based analyses of progression
and comprehension.
Students who struggle typically need
more time to grapple with new ideas
in order to be successful. But simply
allowing students to go at their own
the pace is not sufcient. Flexible,
dynamic lesson paths must be adapted
to ft individual student needs.
Make connections explicit. Too often,
students who need intervention fail
to look for relationships or make
connections among mathematical
ideas on their own. With this in mind,
lessons need to provide clear visual
models to guide the student toward
under-standing and articulating
mathematical relationships. With strong
virtual manipulations, models can, over
time, be removed and students will
work with numbers and other abstract
representations.
Provide a wide variety of learning paths
through the curriculum adapted to a
childs specifc needs.
Build on prior knowledge. Instruction
should connect new learning to what
the student already knows and provide
opportunities to apply new concepts
and skills to relevant problems.
Build a mathematical vocabulary
so the student has a context for
understanding the language of
mathematics.
Integrate instruction and assessment
to quickly identify learning gaps and
determine the appropriate lesson path.
Continually assessing comprehension
allows students to skip what they know
and focus on what theyre ready to
learn.
Monitor and assess not only right and
wrong answers, but what strategies
students use to solve problems.
Provide scafolding within lesson
content that identifes and sequences
the concepts and skills that are
essential to the content being taught.
Once the content is scafolded,
instruction is organized in a way that
supports the students learning.
Feedback on incorrect responses
should do more than repeat the
problem. Efective feedback scafolds
hints, providing gradual supports that
allow a student to build understanding
of a problem. After all, mistakes
represent prime learning opportunities.
Provide math instruction within an
engaging learning environment that
helps motivate students and increase
persistence and time on task.
Provide teachers and administrators with
detailed views of each childs progress
with insight, in real time, into student
comprehension and academic progress.
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Efective adaptive learning
has fve capabilities: strong
curriculum, state-of-
the-art math pedagogy,
integration of instruction
and assessment, a highly
engaging experience,
and the goal of meeting
profciency expectations.
Emerging online technology for adaptive
learning provides other benefts that
may not be as obvious. Online learning
benefts teachers by sharing some of
the burden of individualizing classroom
instruction, helping make their time more
productive. Its a highly efective way to
deliver instruction across a diverse student
population.
Conclusion
Against a backdrop of a complex and ever-
changing regulatory setting, a consensus
view has emerged that education must
support all students in meeting grade
level profciency standards, even in an
environment of diminishing resources to
address those needs.
All of these factors point to a need for
an increased level of efective instruction.
Response to Intervention (RTI) models
are making headway but are hampered
by resource constraints. Truly adaptive
learning overcomes many of these
constraints combining strong alignment
to math profciency goals and advances in
technology to deliver truly individualized
instruction. Efective adaptive learning has
fve capabilities: strong curriculum, state-
of-the-art math pedagogy, integration
of instruction and assessment, a highly
engaging experience, and the goal of
meeting profciency expectations.












Endnotes
1. No Child Left Behind ED.gov. (n.d.). Retrieved
from www.ed.gov/esea.
2. Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.).
Retrieved from www.corestandards.org.
3. IDEA Building the Legacy of IDEA 2004. (n.d.).
Retrieved from idea.ed.gov.
4. Essential Components of RTI. (2010). Retrieved
from www.rti4success.org.
5. Response to Intervention Tiers without Tears.
(n.d.). Retrieved from www.ncld.org.
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Bellevue, Washington, and launched its frst
online learning product in January 2009.
DreamBox Learning Math has won more than 35
top education and technology industry awards
and is in use in all 50 U.S. states and throughout
Canada. The DreamBox Learning Math platform
ofers a groundbreaking combination of
Intelligent Adaptive Learning technology, a
rigorous mathematics curriculum, and a highly
motivating learning environment. DreamBox
Learning Math captures every decision a student
makes while working in the program and adjusts
the students learning path appropriately,
providing millions of individualized learning
paths, each one tailored to a students unique
needs. DreamBox supports teachers and their
practice in every type of learning environment,
ofine or online. For more information about
DreamBox Learning Math and the DreamBox
Math for iPad app, please visit: dreambox.com.
LEARNING
For more information, contact Client Care at 877. 451. 7845,
email schools@dreambox.com or visit dreambox.com.
DreamBox Learning, Inc. 2014