CAST, Carnegie Learning to Address Reading Challenges in Math Class

Date:
Tuesday, July 6, 2021

The US Department of Education’s Institute for Educational Sciences has awarded CAST and its partner Carnegie Learning $2 million over three and half years to fully fund the development and evaluation of a system to support middle school students’ reading while solving math problems. 

The partners will develop a set of individualized reading supports for MATHia, Carnegie Learning’s adaptive, artificial intelligence-based, mathematics learning system for middle and high school students. Researchers, working with students and teachers in both urban and suburban school districts, will create a system to deliver supports—some automatically provided, some suggested—based on student interactions in real-time.

Researchers will also create additional supports for teachers to use in LiveLab, Carnegie Learning’s accompanying tool that delivers actionable data to teachers about student performance in real time. These new Live Lab features will alert teachers to when students are likely exhibiting reading challenges and provide recommendations for intervention. 

“We know that students learning math problem solving often struggle with reading,” says CAST Senior Innovation Scientist Bob Dolan, who is the principal investigator on the project. “This project, which we call MARACAS, for Math and Reading Acquisition Co-Adaptive System, is exploring ways to reduce reading barriers for students so they can engage productively while learning math.”

The MARACAS project runs through 2024.

CAST is an award-winning non-profit education research, design, and professional learning organization whose mission is to transform education design and practice “until learning has no limits”™.

Carnegie Learning is an innovative education technology and curriculum solutions provider for K-12 math, ELA, literacy, world languages and more.