How simple emails could help fix America's math crisis

In the United States, student math performance has been steadily slipping for decades, consistently ranking in the bottom quarter compared to other developed countries. The COVID-19 pandemic only deepened the crisis. 

But a new study led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Behavior Change for Good Initiative (BCFG) suggests that small, behaviorally informed nudges directed at teachers could help turn the tide – at least slightly.

Behavioral science in the classroom

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explored whether carefully designed email messages could influence teacher behavior in ways that benefit student learning. 

Past research has shown that behavioral nudges can increase student motivation and performance. This time, the researchers turned their attention to the adults in the room.

Angela Duckworth, who led the research, is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences and the Wharton School, and co-director of BCFG. 

“Our results showed that simple, low-cost nudges can help teachers support student progress in math,” said Duckworth. “These nudges worked across different school contexts, with effects persisting eight weeks after teachers stopped receiving the nudges.”

The intervention was made possible through a partnership with Zearn Math, a nonprofit educational platform used by millions of students and teachers. 

“Large-scale studies on teacher-focused interventions have been rare due to the high cost and logistical challenges involved,” said Dena Gromet, executive director of BCFG and co-author of the study. “Thanks to our partnership with Zearn Math, we were able to overcome these challenges.”

A megastudy on math progress

This was no small experiment. Involving over 140,000 teachers and nearly 3 million elementary school students, the study tested 15 different types of behaviorally informed email interventions against a simple reminder message. 

The design followed a “megastudy” format, a relatively new experimental approach that allows multiple interventions to be tested simultaneously against a common control.

“A megastudy is a large-scale experiment in which multiple interventions are tested on the same outcome,” explained co-author Katy Milkman, professor at the Wharton School and co-director of BCFG. “This method allows for direct comparisons of their effectiveness.”

Each intervention was based on principles from behavioral science. One asked teachers to make a concrete plan for using Zearn Math in the upcoming week.

Another intervention appealed to empathy by reminding teachers of their students’ needs and potential. Others focused on delivering personalized updates about student progress.

A modest but measurable impact

The researchers found that, on average, behaviorally informed messages led to a 1.89% increase in student math progress during the four-week period in which teachers received the emails. While the effect was small, it was statistically significant – and some messages were more effective than others.

The most successful intervention increased student math progress by 5.06%. This message prompted teachers to log into Zearn weekly to view a personalized progress report for their students.

“Personalized nudges – those that referenced progress updates about a teacher’s own students – were more effective than nonpersonalized ones,” Duckworth noted. This aligns with prior findings in behavioral science that people are more motivated when feedback is directly tied to their own goals or the outcomes of people they care about.

Small nudges solve big math problems

Despite the promising findings, the researchers caution that these types of email nudges are only one piece of a much larger puzzle. 

“These results suggest the need for more intensive support than the light-touch email nudges we tested,” Milkman said. “And they underscore how hard it is to change human behavior.”

Still, the study opens the door to further research into what makes teacher-directed nudges effective – and how they can be improved over time. 

Duckworth emphasized the importance of exploring why referencing personalized data seems to work so well.

“It may be that capitalizing on teachers’ intrinsic motivation to help their students is a distinct and potentially cost-effective approach that can complement other interventions, such as offering performance bonuses and other extrinsic incentives,” she said.

Shaping more effective education policies

The researchers are already looking ahead. They plan to conduct more randomized experiments to better understand the long-term effects of such interventions and to determine why some nudges are more successful than others.

“The better we understand why something works, the more powerfully we can use it to create positive change,” Duckworth said. “Ultimately, this line of research could help shape smarter, more effective education policies.”

In a system where large-scale transformation often feels daunting, these small, strategic nudges offer a glimpse of how behavioral science can help educators – and their students – make meaningful strides, one math problem at a time.

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