A child's ability to understand and manipulate sets of numbers in 1st grade predicts how well he or she will succeed in the math required both in secondary school and for day-to-day living, according to a study published in the current online edition of the journal PLOS One. Yet math tests in the early grades focus instead on how well and how quickly students can solve basic arithmetic problems, often using counting—a skill less connected to students' later math achievement, the study found.
In "Adolescents' Functional Numeracy Is Predicted by Their School Entry..." researchers at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and Carnegie-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, tracked 180 students in 12 elementary schools who were participating in a larger longitudinal study of kindergarten through 9th grade.
